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The most egregious fault of Susan (now Susan the Grouser) is that she refuses to believe that Lucy sees Aslan, because no one else can. When Lucy finally declares that she must follow Aslan whether the others do or not, Susan threatens, "Supposing I started behaving like Lucy." The irony is that Susan would do well to make her actions more like those of her younger sister.

What's so wrong with making the movie Susan more delightful than in the book? In his essay "On Three Ways of Writing for Children," Lewis describes what he calls the Boy's or Girl's Book with its immensely likable schoolboy or schoolgirl—think of the Hardy Boys or the Nancy Drew series. In discussing this type of book, Lewis points out: "We run to it from the disappointments and humiliations of the real world: it sends us back to the real world undivinely discontented. For it is all flattery to the ego. The pleasure consists in picturing oneself the object of admiration."

By including some very unflattering aspects of Edmund in the first story and Susan in the second, Lewis keeps these works from becoming simply Boy's or Girl's Books. As we identify with his flawed protagonists, Lewis reminds us that our own actions and attitudes are not always as perfect as we think, and that each of us has the capacity for wrongdoing. Leaving out Susan's shadowy side might sell more movie tickets, but risks turning the second film into the very kind of story Lewis chose not to write. In addition, since this will be her last appearance in the Chronicles, making Susan all goodness and light would fail to prepare us for her (perhaps temporary) rejection of Narnia in the final book.

Wish number four: Stay firm on the truths about the two ways of living. Lewis wants to inform young readers and remind older ones that a life lived exclusively for self is not exciting or fun, but is a small, ignoble life. It is definitely not cool, or even very interesting. Lewis clearly asserts through the Chronicles that the self-centered life leads only to sorrow, isolation, and ultimately destruction.

This truth was made very clear in the first Narnia film's depiction of the White Witch, living all alone in her castle of ice, as well as in its grim portrait of the early Edmund and his betrayal. If the Caspian trailer is any indication, the film's visual rendering of Miraz's unhappy existence will provide further support for this claim.

It is impossible to miss Lewis's corresponding message: that the virtuous life, the life lived for something beyond one's self, is a real adventure, one with hardship that must be taken seriously, but an adventure not to be missed because it is the only path that leads to genuine happiness, real fulfillment, and true community. This second point was also vividly captured in the first film. In times like ours when the word virtuous has gone out of fashion, this is a truth we need to be reminded of again and again.

Finally, get the ending right. The Caspian trailer shows the four children being drawn into Narnia from a London Tube station rather than from the platform at an "empty, sleepy, country station." This might not matter very much except that on the final page of the book, readers are told how the country station which had earlier seemed flat and dreary to the children now becomes "unexpectedly nice in its own way, what with the familiar railway smell and the English sky and the summer term before them."

Lewis does not want his readers to despise real woods because they have read of enchanted ones. Nor he does not want his protagonists to find their own world somehow diminished because they have been to Narnia. He wants the journey to make all real things in the Pevensies' world a little enchanted. And so they are. In these three everyday elements—the smell of the railway, the English sky, and the summer term—we find what might be labeled as a sacramental ordinary, a deeply rooted sense of enjoyment and appreciation of the commonplace that was an essential part of Lewis's life.

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