Other Titles • The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005) • The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe • The Chronicles of Narnia • more
Ultimately, all the film’s elements— from locations and designs to practical effects and digital wizardry—would come together in the most challenging sequence of all: the climactic battle for Narnia as Aslan’s army takes on the forces of the White Witch. Andrew Adamson had envisioned a spectacular scene involving some 20,000 characters on screen at once—one that sprung primarily from his imagination. “In the book, the battle is one about a page and a half long. Lewis writes about it in very simple, ‘you should have been there’ terms, but in my imagination was always this incredible battle with minotaurs against centaurs against fauns and satyrs. We had to show the battle, an incredible battle like nothing that has ever been done before,” says the director.
The sequence was shot at New Zealand’s Flock Hill Station, on a rugged plateau featuring snow-capped vistas. There, the film’s cast and hundreds of extras dressed in the otherworldly creations of WETA and K.N.B. played out the war for Narnia’s future. Later, Rhythm & Hues employed the same groundbreaking software used to create the spectacular battles in “Lord of the Rings”—the artificial-intelligence program known as Massive—to multiply the fighters into the tens of thousands and to control each fighter’s individual moves and motions. “We have 20 to 30 creatures on-screen at any one time, and they each have their own unique attributes in terms of how they jump, run, walk, move and fight,” observes Dean Wright. “It’s an enormous challenge to make this look believable, but with the computer simulations, you have the tools you need to make it look as good as it possibly can.”
When the battle was completed, Andrew Adamson knew his Narnia had truly made the journey from a fantastical vision in a child’s fevered imagination to the motion picture screen. “Making this film was a daunting exercise in every way,” sums up Adamson. “It was very technically daunting in terms of effects and digital creations and daunting from a filmmaking perspective in terms of scope and design. It was daunting to work with four children as the main characters. But, I think the most daunting thing of all for me was simply the responsibility I felt to this beloved story. It’s a huge thing to try to live up to what millions of people have imagined and dreamed about Narnia over three or four generations but that is what we set out to do.”
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