Dawn Treader: Off Course and Adrift (Jeffrey Overstreet)

Link: Dawn Treader: Off Course and Adrift (Jeffrey Overstreet)

J.R.R. Tolkien told C.S. Lewis to stop lamenting his attraction to pagan myths and fairy tales. Pagan myths—with their stories of paradise lost, war in heaven, and worlds redeemed by a dying god—expressed humanity’s longing for reconciliation with the divine and anticipate the advent of Christ, the “true myth” of the Gospel.

Lewis, inspired, imagined a series filled with characters from pagan myths. In Narnia, fauns, dryads—even Bacchus himself—bow before Aslan, who justifies, redeems, and reigns.

But all this gets lost in translation. Critic Steven Greydanus points out that the filmmakers even overlook the significance of the title: They never once show Caspian’s ship fulfilling its purpose and sailing eastward toward the dawn— toward Aslan’s country.