We’ve got ourselves a winner.
We started with a bracket of 64 Christian films spanning eight decades and several genres of filmmaking. And now, after thousands of votes, you have answered the question: What is the Greatest Christian Movie of All Time?
The winner and undisputed champion is …
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
Congrats to all you Narnia fans out there! The adaptation of the beloved story from C.S. Lewis has taken the Christian movie crown. The Passion of the Christ gave the Pevensies their toughest competition yet, but The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe would not be denied. Aslan and Co. took in 60% of the votes and the title of Greatest Christian Movie of All Time—certainly something to roar about.
Here’s a recap of the film’s dominating run through our bracket:
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe opened the tournament by shellacking China Cry, taking in nearly 94% of the votes and providing a foretaste of what was to come. In the second round, it took down Paul, Apostle of Christ with 88% of the votes going its way. From there, it moved on to the Big 16, knocking out the original God’s Not Dead film with 79% of the vote. It won its next matchup against I Can Only Imagine in a 76/24 split, before trouncing Ben-Hur in the Famous Four with 71% of the vote. Finally, in the Championship Round, it squeaked out a win (by its standards) against The Passion of the Christ, winning a mere60% of the vote to take the crown. Impressive stuff.
As Plugged In said in its review of the film: “C.S. Lewis’ classic children’s tale has finally made it to the big screen in a way that captures the novel’s breadth and splendor … Chases. Fights. Battles. Beavers! A lion named Aslan who becomes a picture of Jesus. And the love that binds four siblings together. These are just a few of the reasons the land of Narnia is so loved by so many.”
Congratulations to The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe for being voted the Greatest Christian Movie of All Time! And thank you to everyone who voted and participated in this little competition. We hope you had as much fun with it as we did!
10 Responses
It’s a great movie, no doubt about that, but how it managed to beat other superior films like God’s not dead, the ten commandments, and the passion of the Christ is beyond me.
Probably weight of votes, especially given Mel Gibson’s controversies and the talk over the upcoming new Narnia adaptation (I expect Greta Gerwig to do well with it). The first of the Disney Narnia movies made more money than all three of those other films put together—younger viewers probably haven’t seen The Ten Commandments (even I haven’t seen it), God’s Not Dead had a niche audience and a bunch of unflattering cultural stereotypes, and The Passion of the Christ was wholly unsuitable for young viewers. The Narnia movies I saw, despite the first one still being rather intense at its ‘crucifixion-analogy’ scene, didn’t really have these disadvantages.
The Passion made 612 million at the box office, while LWW made 745 million. The Ten Commandments, adjusted for inflation, made 1.5 billion(122 million in ‘56)
The real question is how anything beat out either Prince of Egypt or Ben Hur, one being in the top three animated films ever made, and the other the best film outside of Lord of the Rings period.
Heck, even Chariots of Fire is better, and this isn’t a knock on LWW.
It was a tough call for me between Narnia and Passion. But I had to give it to Narnia because, as much as I loved the message of Passion, it’s really the kind of movie you only watch *once*. Once is all I’ve seen it. And once is enough. As an *experience*, there’s no topping it.
But that’s not what I consider makes a good movie. A good movie is something I can watch over and over and over again. Narnia gives me that in ways that the others just don’t.
It was a tough choice for me in the final round. “The Passion of the Christ” extremely moved and affected me, but its R rating and nearly unrelenting violence makes it less accessible to families. I voted for *The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” because I believe it has had greater cultural impact.
I partially agree with you, but I think we draw different conclusions. I’m less concerned about the rating per se—it’s a letter, and not all movies necessarily deserved the ones they were given (I would have given “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” a PG-13 for its intensity, for instance)—and more, as you say, about the “nearly unrelenting violence,” compounded by the story breaking one of my favorite rules about book adaptations (the story needs to make sense and to be cohesively explained to people who weren’t familiar with the book). Both “The Passion of the Christ” and “Silence” deserved at least the R ratings they were given, but the latter was violent only briefly while the former essentially never stopped and would, in my opinion, justify an NC-17 rating. Mel Gibson’s own “Hacksaw Ridge” absolutely deserved this. However, your mention of the letter brings up a really good point, in that back in the early 2000s, I saw a lot of parents making a big “no buts” deal about what was this movie rated, what was this game rated, and yet many parents made their one “R-rated movie” exception be quite possibly one of the worst choices to take a child or young teenager to.
That said, I hadn’t noticed until looking it up that “The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe” did indeed make more money than “The Passion of the Christ” did (and I most definitely don’t expect “The Resurrection of the Christ” to repeat that level of success, particularly not with Gibson’s baggage). I’d always figured it was the latter that made more money.
Mark, I have considered watching the PG-13 version of The Passion of the Christ, but I know the violence will overall cause a negative mood. Even though I am now an adult and so it would be interesting to see The Passion of the Christ movie to find out what I missed out on as a teen, if a movie has a tragic event based on real life, like the I am Not Ashamed movie or Priceless, I’ll feel awful about it for days.
As a Narnia fan I’m happy that The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (2005) won. I want to urge people who’ve enjoyed the Narnia movies to take a minute praying for C.S. Lewis’ stepson Douglas Gresham, who helped guide the directors, and his family. His health was not doing well in the last update.
Having LWW win this award is akin to picking the winner of a middle-school talent show: Too many mediocre acts, and the best don’t deserve the praise they get.
I’ll give the film credit for one thing, however: It’s more theologically sound and less theologically errant than the books are, and by a gigantic amount.
Prince of Egypt is good for what it is, but it’s more memorable for its music and songs than anything else. The story itself was told much better in the ten commandments.
And Ben Hur has great Jesus moments in it, but the character of Ben Hur himself is more often than not way too boring and annoying to be considered great. The opening and closing scenes of Ben Hur are great, and the scenes of Jesus preaching are well done, but the movie itself is long dull and uninteresting. The ten commandments is far more memorable and interesting than Ben Hur will ever be.
And in my opinion the Hobbit films are greater than LOTR in every way possible.