They changed Aslan's voice, which is what the ape did. Netflix's The Magician's Nephew moves C.S. Lewis's story from 1900 London into 1950s glam rock Britain. They gave Aslan a red-striped face and multicolored eyes, which director Greta Gerwig says was inspired by David Bowie, and the lion speaks in Meryl Streep's voice. In The Last Battle, Puzzle did all the work. He carried the water and hauled the loads and said of course, Shift, of course. When something yellow came over the waterfall into Caldron Pool, Puzzle went in after it. The water nearly killed him. He came out half-drowned and bruised, dragging a lion's skin the size of a hearthrug. Puzzle wanted to bury it. Lions are solemn, he said, "because of you know Who." Shift just called it a winter coat. He sent the donkey downriver to a market that had no oranges. Alone, he got out a needle and thick thread and a big pair of scissors. He cut the body short. He sewed a long collar for a long neck. He put ties under the belly. Every now and then a bird passed overhead and he stopped his work and watched it, because he did not want anyone to see what he was doing. Puzzle wore the costume, but Shift was the engineer. Every generation puts a new skin on the old stories. Totally normal. But lately the new skin keeps the old face and sews in a new mouth. The story you were raised on comes back wearing its own face. Lewis opened his last Narnia book with this test.. "A good deal of Puzzle's grey nose and face could be seen through the open mouth of the lion's head. No one who had ever seen a real lion would have been taken in for a moment. But if someone who had never seen a lion looked at Puzzle in his lionskin, he just might mistake him for a lion, if he didn't come too close, and if the light was not too good, and if Puzzle didn't let out a bray and didn't make any noise with his hoofs." A costume only works on somebody who has never seen the real thing. A skin holds up from far away, on a screen, in a trailer. Up close, in the pages, the stitches show. Every costume looks better in the dark, so hold the new version next to the old book in daylight. The disguise dies the moment the creature opens its mouth. Lewis's lion sings a world into being. Gerwig told christian media critic Ted Baehr a year and a half ago that she loved the old 1979 cartoon. Now she has swapped the mouth of the one who sings the world. Wait and hear what the new one sings. When Puzzle finds his conscience and asks what will become of them if the real Aslan turns up, Shift says he never does turn up, not nowadays. At that exact moment the sky answers with a thunderclap. The ground trembles. Puzzle hears a warning. Shift, whose mind works very quickly, hears permission. He tells the donkey he was just going to say the thunder was the sign they were waiting for. The objection gets sewn into the costume. Every single no from heaven gets tailored into a yes. And that's the needle still in the ape's hand. Notice who Lewis refused to mock in the story. Puzzle isn't the villain. He's cold and tired, and a voice he trusts keeps telling him he isn't clever. Lewis saved his anger for the ape with the scissors and gives the donkey mercy. So if people we love get swept up by the trailer, they are not the enemy. The film itself may be lovely. We'll judge it the way Lewis taught us, up close and in good light. Nobody gets taken in because they are stupid. They get taken in because nobody ever walked them up to the real lion. The enemy has never made anything. He wears. He puts on light, he puts on scripture, he puts on a lion's skin. Lewis was writing about what the war looks like when it comes for the children. That part belongs to us. The answer to a dressed-up story has always been familiarity. So read the real books. Read them out loud to the kids in your life until the real lion's voice lives in their ears. Kids who walk with Aslan thru seven books can't be sold a donkey in a skin, at any distance, in any light. The movie comes out next year but the war is older than any calendar, and it's always been a fight over who speaks in the lion's voice.