If you’re wondering why during the Golden Age of Hollywood, in the era of the studio system, actors were, in a word, “managed,” look no further than the below. Actors certainly didn’t like being controlled — who does? — but part of the reason the Cary Grants, Katherine Hepburns, Barbara Stanwycks and John Waynes now live forever in the stratosphere of legend (and there was a Golden Age to begin with) is due to the fact that this kind of stupidity — the kind of stupidity that shatters images and deflates box office right along with audience anticipation — was simply not allowed:
Today’s Daily Mail:
Ahead of the release of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader next Thursday, Neeson said: ‘Aslan symbolises a Christ-like figure but he also symbolises for me Mohammed, Buddha and all the great spiritual leaders and prophets over the centuries.
‘That’s who Aslan stands for as well as a mentor figure for kids – that’s what he means for me.’
Neeson, 58, who grew up in Ballymena, Northern Ireland, is a practising Roman Catholic and was named after his parish priest. His actress wife Natasha Richardson died in a skiing accident in March last year.
Two years ago, he teamed up with an order of American Catholic priests to bring out a CD of spiritual meditations for Lent.
Walter Hooper, Lewis’s former secretary and a trustee of his estate, said the author would have been outraged.
‘It is nothing whatever to do with Islam,’ he said.
‘Lewis would have simply denied that. He wrote that the “whole Narnian story is about Christ”. Lewis could not have been clearer.’
He attributed Neeson’s remarks to political correctness and a desire to be ‘very multicultural’, adding: ‘I don’t know Liam Neeson or what he is thinking about… but it was not Lewis’s intention.’
William Oddie, a fomer editor of The Catholic Herald and a lifelong fan of the Chronicles of Narnia, accused Neeson of ‘a betrayal of Lewis’s intention and a shameful distortion’.
He said: ‘Aslan is clearly established from the very beginning of the whole cannon as being a Christ figure. I can’t believe that Liam Neeson is so stupid as not to know.’
Now, I like Liam Neeson, so let me just say … damn.
“Prince Caspian,” the second film in the “Narnia” series that came out a couple of years ago, was a success but nowhere near as successful as the first and enough of a disappointment that Disney decided to drop the franchise. Thankfully, 20th Century-Fox decided to step in, but “Dawn Treader” is it. This one soars or the franchise is over.
And what happens just a week before the release of the latest expensive installment of a franchise on the bubble of extinction? An actor puffed up with his own importance decides to attack the very heart of the series and take what it means — it’s very essence — away from the very audience that can make it the most profitable. I don’t want to see some goofy, multi-cultural, politically correct fantasy movie because nowadays everything’s multicultural, politically correct and goofy. Call me intolerant, but I want to see a Christian movie, a movie that honors and respects my beliefs and affirms them. And if Muslims want the same, more power to them. But this ain’t it.
But please Liam, don’t stop there. Do tell us what “Taken” is really about. Let me guess, a father’s journey through an evil Walmart in search of a daughter captured by crass American materialism?
How would you like to be the money people behind “Dawn Treader” right now?
Somewhere, Louis B. Mayer and Darryl F. Zanuck are laughing their asses off.
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