Google me: Film gets attention but it's the book that counts online

By JULIET ROWAN

Hype surrounding expat New Zealand director Andrew Adamson's The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe grew this week when the identities of the film's four young stars were revealed.

The actors playing C.S. Lewis' beloved Narnia children had been a closely guarded secret, despite them filming in Auckland all month.

Now pictures have shown the four - Georgie Henley, 9, who plays Lucy; Skandar Keynes, 12, who plays Edmund; Anna Popplewell, 15, who plays Susan; and William Moseley, 17, who plays Peter - looking every bit the pale but inquisitive English youngsters of the book.

Hype about the film is evident on the web but does not match the volume of internet material on Lewis' classic.

Like Peter Jackson's adaptation of JRR Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, the movie has a lot to live up to. Pop "the lion, the witch and the wardrobe" (or alternatively "lion, witch and wardrobe") into Google and 101,000 entries appear.

Second on the list after one of several teaching guides to the book is narnia.com.

The site gives synopses of the seven stories in the Narnia chronicles. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was published first in 1950. The site features interesting titbits on the author, his characters and the upcoming film.

The site says Lewis wrote that the idea for the books came to him from images - "a faun carrying an umbrella, a queen in a sledge, a magnificent lion".

A quiz tests Narnia knowledge with questions such as "How does Lucy leave the wardrobe door when she goes into it?"

Unfortunately, it doesn't tell you whether the answer is open, just a little ajar, closed or locked behind her.

Into the Wardrobe, on the other hand, provides all the answers it can.

Obviously the work of a devout fan, the site is "dedicated to C.S. Lewis" (that's Clive Staples "Jack" Lewis) and features biographies, an index of scholarly papers and a chatroom. It also informs, in pernickety fan-site fashion, that the Narnia stories can be read in "two logical orders" - the order they were originally published, or by following Narnian chronology, which places The Magician's Nephew first and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe second.

Adamson may be a slick Hollywood director (his credits include Shrek), but he has more than fans to win over.

For Christians, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is not just an adventure story of four children passing through a wardrobe door into a fantasy land of mystical creatures - it is a biblical allegory of the triumph of good over evil.

ChristianAnswers.net says there was "nothing objectionable" about the 1985 cartoon version of the story. Reviewers Dale and Karen Mason gave the 95-minute film 4 1/2 stars and a moral rating of excellent.

Will Adamson be able to score the same?