The Silver Chair is great, but I think The Last Battle has it beat.
Dawn Treader was the book I was most worried about being filmed. But Prince Caspian was the one I was second-most-worried about, and they did a fine job with it (minus toning down the religious points). And everything I’ve heard and read from advance screenings so far says they nailed DT triumphantly.
If they can get past DT, which has serious narrative challenges in bringing it to the screen, they should have a good shot at doing the same for the rest of the books. Everything else has strong imagery and a strong narrative flow; it’s just a matter of putting it up. DT has strong imagery, but not a strong narrative flow. PC had a decent narrative flow (with room for improvement) but a lack of strong imagery on the page. (Horse And His Boy has similar problems but not as much of them.)
Hello all,
Alex kindly called my attention to this discussion; and as Bobx3 points out, I address the issue being discussed here in Chapter 10 of Gregory MacDonald, All Shall Be Well. So I thought I would reproduce below a few paragraphs (sans footnotes) where I contrast the way in which MacDonald and Lewis respectively understood the nature of hell.
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Few thoughtful Christians today . . . accept the idea of an eternal torture chamber; and according to some, particularly those who follow the lead of C. S. Lewis, hell is a freely embraced condition rather than an externally imposed punishment. In Lewis’ own words, “I willingly believe that the damned are, in one sense, successful, rebels to the end; that the doors of hell are locked on the inside.” It is not God who rejects the sinner forever, in other words; it is the sinner who finally rejects God forever. Nor is it God who ultimately defeats the sinner; it is the sinner who ultimately defeats God. So, as Lewis also conceded: “it is objected that the ultimate loss of a single soul means the defeat of omnipotence. And so it does.” But MacDonald found the very idea of such a defeat almost inconceivable: “those who believe that God will thus be defeated by many souls, must surely be of those who do not believe he cares enough to do his very best for them. He is their Father; he had power to make them out of himself, separate from himself, and capable of being one with him: surely he will somehow save and keep them! Not the power of sin itself can close all the channels between creating and created.”
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So herein lies, I believe, the one point in MacDonald that C.S. Lewis seems not to have appreciated sufficiently: There can be no ultimate triumph of God’s justice or righteousness, according to MacDonald, apart from a triumph of his love, because both require the absolute destruction of sin. The failure to appreciate this point fully rendered Lewis’ own defense of hell, as we encounter it in *The Problem of Pain *, fundamentally incoherent. For here Lewis imagined an utterly wicked man “who has risen to wealth or power by a continued course of treachery and cruelty”; then, after describing the man’s wickedness in great detail, Lewis asked his readers to suppose that the man is never “tormented by remorse or even misgivings,” that he eats like a schoolboy and sleeps like a healthy infant, that he is “without a care in the world,” and that he is “unshakably confident . . . that God and man are fools whom he has got the better of.” Would it not be an outrage of justice, Lewis in effect asked, for such a man to remain content with his own actions and never to be forced—even against his own will, if necessary–to see them for what they are? “In a sense,” wrote Lewis, “it is better for the creature itself, even if it never becomes good, that it should know itself a failure, a mistake. Even mercy can hardly wish to such a man his eternal, contented continuance in such ghastly illusion.”
Note the words “Even mercy.” Here Lewis saw, however dimly, why divine mercy and divine justice require exactly the same thing. But the thing that justice requires is the very thing that Lewis’ account of hell excludes; hence, there can be no ultimate triumph of justice on Lewis’ account. For the damned never do discover, on Lewis’ account, that they are “a failure, a mistake”; neither does God successfully shatter the “ghastly illusion” underlying their wickedness. To the contrary, from their own point of view the damned are “successful, rebels to the end,” utterly defeating God’s love for them and thus utterly defeating his justice as well. As I have suggested elsewhere:
MacDonald also understood the nature of hell very differently than Lewis did. For whereas Lewis depicted hell as a place where Satan rules (see The Great Divorce) and from which God is utterly absent, MacDonald regarded both hell and the lake of fire as special manifestations of God’s holy presence. This difference also manifests itself in their respective understandings of the image of fire. According to Lewis, “The prevalent image of fire is significant because it combines the ideas of torment and destruction”; but according to MacDonald, the importance of this image is that it combines the ideas of destruction and purification. As MacDonald never tired of reminding us, “our God is a consuming fire” and the consuming fire of his love will in the end consume (or destroy) all that is false within us: “The consuming fire is just the original, the active form of Purity, that which makes pure, that which is indeed Love, the creative energy of God.” So even the fires of hell exist for the purpose of the ultimate redemption of those in it. “For hell is God’s and not the devil’s. Hell is on the side of God and man, to free the child of God from the corruption of death.” Or, as Paul explained in 1 Corinthians 3:10–15, “the Day” is coming when fire will test the works of Christian leaders and will consume some of their works as if they were wood, hay, or straw (v. 12). Although those whose “work is burned up . . . will suffer loss,” they will nonetheless “be saved, but only as through fire” (v. 15). Alluding to the same idea, MacDonald wrote:
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Some here might also find of interest the following footnote on I Corinthians 3:10-15: “Nor should one take seriously, in my opinion, the ways in which some Protestant theologians and commentators try to explain away the obvious purgatorial implications of Paul’s image here. Perhaps the silliest suggestion would make verse 15 out to be a metaphor for being ‘saved by the skin of one’s teeth’—as if this were an intelligible idea in Pauline theology and as if the relevant salvation were little more than fire insurance rather than, as Paul himself pictured it, a complete destruction of the old person or the false self. And not much better is the association of 1 Corinthians 3:10–15, where fire has a real work of testing to do and actually consumes that which is false in us, with Amos 4:11 and Zechariah 3:2, where the image is that of a brand being plucked from a fire. A far more relevant context would be Malachi 3:2–3, where we read: ‘But who can endure the day of his coming [my emphasis], and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire and like a fuller’s soap; he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the descendants of Levi and refine them like gold and silver until they present offerings to the Lord in righteousness.’”
Thanks Tom, it’s always good to hear your thoughts 
I found your comments really helpful, particularly as I hold both CSL & GMD is such high regard. It’s just such a shame Lewis didn’t seem fire as purifying. The closest analogies I can think of are from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader where Aslan tears the dragon skin off Eustace or maybe the fire-birds that brought fire-berries to Ramandu rejuvenate (vaguely similar to purification?) him. Was there anything in his science fiction?
I think GMD’s perspective sees God as more glorious, all mighty and sovereign. I don’t think the Devil deserves to rule Hell.
Tom, excellent as always. I can’t wait to get the book.
The idea intrigues me so much that I’m determined to sooner or later. 
Well I was thinking of the movie. I’ve only seen the trailer, but the owls are awe-inspiring.
Why, so they don’t ruin the other stories? I think they’re doing a pretty good job. Not mind-blowing, but a fantastic way of giving pictures to the stories nonetheless. Dawn Treader does look promising, though.
Awesome.
You mean similar problems to Prince Caspian? Because I think it has the best narrative flow, possibly. Although it’s more of a collection of serials with somewhat of an ambiguous climax. Of course, most of his stories were like that to some degree (non-formulaic, at least), which is what gave them that aspect of realism. I think it’s just my personal opinion. 
Good ones.
Nothing direct like that in his science fiction. Although, Ransom does experience aspects of purification/rejuvenation throughout his various ordeals. The science fiction is less allegorical and symbolic (although Narnia wasn’t exactly just a bunch of symbols) and more of a speculative story of the universe that was meant to be fairly realistic and in line with physics and celestial knowledge (of his day, and I think he probably did pretty good, considering what they knew).
Amen. Agreed completely.
No, I enjoyed the first two films, and my wife and I actually own both movies. 
It’s just that when I re-read a book after watching the movie, what I originally imagined tends to be replaced by what I’ve seen and heard in the movie. But it’s neat to see how others imagined it, even if it’s not exactly what you had in mind.
Ah, I see. My trouble is the opposite. I have a hard time imagining anything, so seeing a movie helps me to visualize it. 
Ah, the younger generation, what do they teach them at schools these days! 
