I really held out hope that Hollywood would get its act together after the woke era cost it billions of dollars and a lot of burned goodwill between it and the audiences, but it would appear there are still chunks of it that have no intention of learning anything.
Back in March, rumors began swirling that Greta Gerwig (the director of Barbie) had been given the job of adapting C.S. Lewis's globally beloved book series "The Chronicles of Narnia" into a Netflix series of movies. I had hoped against hope that Gerwig's somewhat religious background would cause her to respect the series, but didn't expect much out of her, since her feminism seems to overpower her sense in terms of storytelling.
My suspicions only grew as it was rumored that Meryl Streep would play Aslan the Lion, the creator of Narnia and an allegory for Jesus Christ, in Gerwig's adaptation of "The Magician's Nephew." It was a rumor that immediately sent fans of the series into a boycott stance, and rightfully so. Now, according to The Hollywood Reporter, it seems the reports of Streep playing a part she has no business playing are true:
Nephew, which was published after the most famous of the book in the series, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, serves as the latter’s prequel. It follows two youngsters who, thanks to an uncle’s magic dabbling, unleash the evil White Witch into a turn of the 20th century London.
Craig is reportedly playing the uncle, Mackey the White Witch, and Streep voicing Aslan, the talking lion who in the books is the King of Kings.
"The Magician's Nephew" tells the story of the creation of Narnia through Aslan's song, how Jadis the Witch entered the realm from a different world, and how the actions of main characters Polly and Digory set the stage for the events that would follow in "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe." Throughout this story and the following stories, Aslan is always presented as male with male qualities, including a mane.
How Gerwig is planning to get around all of this, including the scene where Jadis cuts off Aslan's mane to humiliate him before she sacrifices him on the table, is anyone's guess.
It should be noted that these still are reports, but no one from Netflix, nor Gerwig herself, has corrected the reports, even in the face of the ongoing backlash around the rumors.
While I was hoping for a great adaptation of "The Magician's Nephew," as it's one of my favorite books in the series, in a way, I hope we're going to get something that's so bad that it ruins faith in Hollywood by audiences deeply. Far deeper than anything Disney did with its brands.
I'm seeing Hollywood make some decisions that seem to be middle-fingers to Christians lately. Streep's casting as Aslan seems disrespectful in and of itself as, being an allegory for Jesus, not only gender swaps him, but does so in order to give the role to a woman who once called disgraced producer Harvey Weinstein "God," and gave a standing applause to Roman Polanski who had fled the country after sexual intercourse with a 13-year-old girl.
In addition to being the wrong gender to play Aslan, she's also the wrong person for the role, since many people will be hearing the voice of a woman who openly supported great evil. It feels insulting just thinking about it.
Moreover, as I reported back in February, Cynthia Erivo was cast to play Jesus in the Hollywood Bowl stage production of Jesus Christ Super Star, which also feels like an intentional middle finger to Christians, given she identifies as "queer bisexual."
These two things might be unrelated, but the timing sure doesn't make it feel that way. It's like they're trying to rebrand Jesus into something more modern, but Christ never needed a rebranding.
My hope is that this insult goes deep enough to where people finally just passively begin ignoring Hollywood to a large degree. I don't anticipate a loud and abrupt boycott like you saw with Bud Light, and I don't want that either. Over time, people get over it and go back or their anger subsides.
No, what I want is just a passive giving up on Hollywood. A loss of faith in their ability to create anything that doesn't insult the audience, the source material, or even anything original that's worth engaging with. To be honest, very few things truly make me get excited about Hollywood productions nowadays, with few exceptions, and I think a lot of people feel that way.
I think a lot of people are just tired, and they've begun going elsewhere for their entertainment. As I reported in April, YouTube has taken over as the king of entertainment platforms with most people going there for escapism, news, and entertainment more than any other platform by leaps and bounds.
READ: We Have an Uncontested King of Entertainment Platforms That Will Make Major Studios Very Unhappy
Moreover, with AI becoming more and more advanced to the point where video creation can be done with a simple prompt, I don't see how Hollywood continues as it has, and to be honest, with it throwing jabs out like it is, I don't really care.
