The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

About the film

Contains story spoilers.

During the Blitz, the four Pevensie children are evacuated from London to the country home of Professor Kirke. While playing hide-and-seek, Lucy slips inside a wardrobe and emerges in Narnia, a snowbound land under the White Witch Jadis. She meets the faun Mr. Tumnus, who confesses that he was supposed to report any human child to the Witch but chooses to let Lucy go. Back at the house, only a short time has passed, and her siblings initially doubt what she has seen.

Edmund later follows Lucy through the wardrobe and meets Jadis. She offers him Turkish delight and promises him power if he brings his siblings to her. Edmund returns home and denies that Narnia exists, leaving Lucy isolated while his own desire for recognition makes him vulnerable. After the children accidentally break a window and flee the housekeeper, all four enter Narnia together. Peter scolds Edmund for lying, and they learn that Jadis has taken Tumnus because Edmund betrayed the faun’s location.

The children meet Mr. and Mrs. Beaver, who explain that Aslan—the true ruler of Narnia—is returning and that a prophecy connects the end of Jadis’s reign to four human children sitting on the thrones of Cair Paravel. Edmund secretly slips away to find the Witch, but she is angry he has come without his siblings and orders wolves to capture them. Peter, Susan and Lucy escape with the beavers. They encounter Father Christmas, a sign that the winter spell is weakening; his gifts give them practical means to defend themselves, including a sword and shield for Peter, a bow and horn for Susan, and a healing cordial for Lucy.

The group reaches Aslan’s camp, where Peter meets the lion and begins to understand that leadership will require more than being the oldest. Jadis’s wolf scout attacks Lucy and Susan, and Peter kills the wolf when the sisters are threatened. Aslan’s forces track the fleeing scout and rescue Edmund. The reunion does not erase Edmund’s betrayal, but Aslan receives him and makes room for him to repair the damage. Jadis then arrives to claim Edmund under Narnia’s ancient law, which gives her a right to punish traitors.

Aslan secretly offers himself in Edmund’s place. Lucy and Susan follow him to the Stone Table and witness Jadis kill him, then remain beside his body through the night. At dawn, the table breaks and Aslan returns, explaining a deeper magic that Jadis does not understand. He takes the sisters to the Witch’s castle and restores the Narnians turned to stone there. Meanwhile Peter leads the battle against Jadis’s forces, with Edmund fighting beside him and breaking the Witch’s wand at great personal cost.

The battle turns when Aslan arrives with the restored creatures. He kills Jadis, while Susan shoots her servant Ginarrbrik as he attempts to finish the badly wounded Edmund. Lucy uses her cordial to heal her brother. The children are crowned at Cair Paravel and rule for fifteen years. As adults, they chase a white stag and rediscover the lamppost Lucy first saw; passing back through the wardrobe returns them to childhood, with almost no time elapsed in England. Kirke listens to their story, leaving them open to another return.

Andrew Adamson’s adaptation gives the wartime evacuation and the children’s arrival in Narnia substantial weight, making the real world’s danger part of the transition into fantasy. The film’s Narnia has visual stages: the cold forest around Tumnus, the Beaver household, Aslan’s camp and the Witch’s castle. A growing thaw changes the landscape before the armies meet. The creature-filled battle expands the final act beyond the children’s private journey, but individual actions remain easy to follow: Peter takes command, Susan supports the fight at range, Lucy heals, and Edmund chooses to oppose the Witch he once trusted.

Georgie Henley's Lucy approaches Narnia through curiosity and an immediate attachment to Tumnus. Skandar Keynes gives Edmund a more defensive way of entering the same world: a promise of importance can appeal to somebody who feels overlooked at home. William Moseley's Peter has to replace the authority of being the eldest with decisions whose consequences he cannot entirely foresee. Anna Popplewell's Susan supplies caution, which can be useful without always making her certain what to do next. Their familiar sibling habits keep surfacing in a place that asks them to become public figures. Tilda Swinton's Jadis offers gifts and threats with the confidence of somebody accustomed to defining what other people need. Against her, Liam Neeson's voice gives Aslan a measured authority that allows quieter scenes to matter beside the spectacle. The eventual return to England does not remove the siblings' memories of Narnia. It instead puts a remembered adulthood inside their earlier bodies, turning an apparent escape back into another change they must understand together. James McAvoy's Tumnus makes that initial welcome carry both affection and apprehension.