and after that post about not being critical I invite you to
GUESS WHAT I’M MAD ABOUT TODAY
That’s the one.
Is it even worth saying why this is such a just plain bad unskilled choice? A bad storytelling move? A shock-and-awe stunt with no value behind it?
Probably not. Because I already said, and lots of people have already said: Greta Gerwig only knows how to make movies about Greta Gerwig for Greta Gerwig. She is woman and she wants people to associate her with woman so she makes everything about that.
But even if this is just a “rumor,” guess what, the Screen Rant title is stupid too. The way people are responding to this is stupid.
If someone took a popular classical representation of Muhammed, or Martin Luther King Junior, or Margaret Sanger, and then swapped the gender, would you be saying “Oh that’s better!”?
No no. Really. I want you to take a step back and look at this like you’re an alien landing on the planet and you have to build an opinion from scratch.
Wonder Woman is a fictional character inspired by Margaret Sanger. This year a new movie for Wonder Woman comes out, directed by Michael Bay—and he changes her gender to a male. She’s still called “Wonder Woman,” she’s just a man now. The character inspired by Margaret Sanger, big Women’s Right’s pioneer, is now played by a man.
How do you feel now? How about you, little alien that just dropped onto our planet? Are you saying, like Screen Rant, “Hey if this rumor is true it’s actually better than when Wonder Woman was played by women!”
You know why you feel like having Wonder Woman be played by a man is stupid? Because it’s alienating to take something that stands for a particular truth and invert that truth. A core reason for why anyone likes that thing is because it reminds them of that truth.
Doesn’t matter if you don’t agree with that truth. Doesn’t matter if you need to turn heads and get people talking about your story. Who the heck are you? Who are you, that you think you can take something someone else said and bend it back upon itself until it folds over like an inverted fingernail and hurts everybody who was ever attached to it??
It’s bigger than you. You don’t get to make it all about yourself, and “Oh boy here I go it’s all about rock and roll, get on the bus or GET RUN OVER—“ you selfish, small-minded, self-absorbed
Just as a business move, religion aside, this is a stupid choice. 90% of your audience—alienated. The remaining 10% won’t give the movie legs outside of opening day. You know who’s buying the books and the merch and the costumes for their kids and clamoring for sequels—it’s the Christians who liked the books and what they stood for. You will not get that, no matter what you get on opening day with your political spectacle, if you alienate that audience.
But back to the actual point:
Aslan is a supposal-stand-in for Jesus of Nazareth. Who was a Man. He was also (or at least claimed to be, from Gerwig’s perspective) the same God who invented the two genders, and specifically chose to come dwell among mankind as a man.
A whole world religion is built off of this.
And that whole world religion deeply respects and has found generations’ worth of meaning in C. S. Lewis’ particular supposal for the life and purpose of Jesus Christ. Who chose to come as a man. And Lewis’ supposal that resonated with so many generations was Aslan, who is male.
It is very important that the qualities Jesus chose to reveal about Himself be revealed in Aslan. Therefore, Aslan must be male.
You can’t mess with Aslan. You can’t make changes to him. When you do, you might as well be flipping the bird to the entire Christian religion. Nevermind destroying the story.
For example, Aslan cannot be, say, a jackal. Do you know why? Because even though God created jackals the same way He created women, the same way He created lions and men, God chose to compare Himself to lions, and to compare jackals to desolation. Over hundreds of years, through multiple different prophets and people in multiple walks of life, the God of the universe picked out lions to portray Himself, and other animals to portray other things.
And you’re gonna go “Nah I got something better.”
“By those who come near Me I will be treated as holy, And before all the people I will be glorified.” - Leviticus 10:3
You better not. You don’t know what you’re messing with.
I mean, I’m not surprised. I told everybody, Greta Gerwig can’t make anything that isn’t all about her. It’s the same thing she did with Barbie. She made Barbie Woman and Mattel-Founder God and rendered God obsolete and made Woman New God, in her movie. And she is woman. She does the same old same old tripe that humanity has been doing when left to itself since the dawn of literal time: “Replace God With Self.”
It’s abominable. It’s as bad a decision as it can be. Doesn’t matter where you’re standing or how you’re looking at it.
Can she stop making movies for a second? And actually learn the source material?
