The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005)
★★★ — The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005)
C. S. Lewis published The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in 1950, the first of seven novels set in Narnia, and the book has rarely been out of print since. It had already been adapted for BBC television in 1988, so by the time Hollywood came calling in the mid-2000s, the story of the Pevensie children, the White Witch, and the great lion Aslan was familiar to several generations of readers on both sides of the Atlantic. The timing of this 2005 production was no accident: with Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy freshly concluded and Warner Bros. printing money with Harry Potter, there was considerable appetite for big-budget fantasy with literary roots. Walt Disney Pictures and Walden Media, working alongside the C. S. Lewis Company, clearly had ambitions to establish Narnia as a franchise of similar stature, and the 143-minute running time alone signals that nobody here was treating it as a modest family picture.
Andrew Adamson was an interesting choice to helm something on this scale. His previous features had both been animated, most notably Shrek and Shrek 2, and while those films demonstrated a sure hand with large-scale computer-generated visuals and broad audience appeal, live-action fantasy was a different discipline entirely. The production drew on locations across New Zealand and the Czech Republic, among others, and the visual effects work on Aslan, a fully computer-generated character required to carry enormous emotional weight, was one of the more technically demanding undertakings in the film. The screenplay was handled by Ann Peacock, Christopher Markus, and Stephen McFeely, adapting Lewis's source material for what was always going to be a broad, family-oriented release.
The four child leads, William Moseley, Anna Popplewell, Skandar Keynes, and Georgie Henley as Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy respectively, were largely unknown at the time of casting, and the film rests considerably on their shoulders. Henley in particular, the youngest of the four, was genuinely new to professional acting when production began. Alongside them, Liam Neeson provides the voice of Aslan, lending the character a gravity that the role requires, while Tilda Swinton takes on the White Witch, a part that calls for a very particular kind of theatrical menace. For fans of the source material, this was a production with a great deal riding on it. Whether it delivers on that promise is, of course, the question.
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005) arrived in the golden age of fantasy epics, sandwiched between Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings and while it holds its own visually and structurally, it never quite captures the same emotional or imaginative lightning. Based on C.S. Lewis’s beloved novel, it follows four evacuated siblings who stumble into the wintry realm of Narnia, where they’re destined to help the noble lion Aslan overthrow the tyrannical White Witch. The premise is timeless, the production values high, and the child actors surprisingly strong. The visual effects, particularly Aslan and the battle sequences, were impressive for the mid-2000s, and the snowy landscapes of Narnia feel both enchanted and eerily desolate. Tilda Swinton is chillingly elegant as the White Witch, gliding through scenes with icy authority, and the themes of sacrifice, faith, and redemption are handled with sincerity, if not subtlety. Yet for all its polish, the film lacks the deep emotional resonance of its contemporaries. Where Potter thrived on friendship and coming-of-age intimacy, and LOTR on epic heroism and loss, Narnia feels more like a well-staged allegory than a lived-in world. Part of the issue is tonal imbalance: it swings between childlike whimsy (talking beavers, Turkish delight) and sudden, intense violence (battle deaths, crucifixion parallels) without fully bridging the two. The result is a film that feels slightly unsure of its audience, and its heart. Narnia is a decent, handsomely made fantasy that tells a classic story with conviction, but it never quite soars. It’s the forgotten sibling of 2000s fantasy, not because it’s bad, but because it’s just a little too safe, a little too distant, to leave a lasting mark on the soul. Still worth watching, especially for younger viewers, but don’t expect it to haunt you like Middle-earth or Hogwarts.
I keep coming back to that idea of the "forgotten sibling", because it really does nail something that's hard to pin down about this film. It's polished but unremarkable in a way that almost no single element deserves, if that makes sense. No one performance, no single sequence, no individual technical choice is the problem, and yet the whole adds up to something a bit less than the sum of its parts. If you're in the mood for 2000s adventure filmmaking that swings rather harder and with considerably less restraint, my reviews of Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga and Mad Max: Fury Road, both adventure films I've covered on the blog, might give you a sense of what it looks like when a big-canvas action film actually commits to its own vision. Narnia, for all its considerable craft, never quite commits in that way. A fine Sunday afternoon watch, but not one that lingers once the wardrobe door swings shut behind you.
Rating: ★★★ | Year: 2005 | Watched: 2026-04-23
Trailer
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
Stream: Disney Plus
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Related on Movies With Macca
More from Andrew Adamson: Shrek 2 (2004) · Shrek (2001)
More from United Kingdom: Lessons of Darkness (1992) · Shinjuku Boys (1995) · The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) · Blue (1993)
More from the 2000s: Kirikou and the Wild Beasts (2005) · Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004) · Daredevil (2003) · Apocalypto (2006)
More adventure: Alice in Wonderland (1951) · The Eagle (1925) · Louisiana Story (1948) · The General (1926)
More family: Alice in Wonderland (1951) · Wonder (2017) · Kirikou and the Wild Beasts (2005) · Anastasia (1997)
