Local teen takes part in London 'Narnia' premiere

Albemarle County resident Matthew Reynolds went a long way to get interviews to put up on his Aslanscountry.com website.

He went all the way to London — like, where the queen lives.

Mr. Reynolds, 16, created and operates the site, which focuses on the fantasy world of C.S. Lewis’ “Chronicles of Narnia” and especially the recent movie releases.

Second, the site is so successful that 20th Century Fox, the distributor of the most recent Narnia movie, “Voyage of the Dawn Treader,” paid to send Mr. Reynolds to the movie’s London premiere.

“Fox called and offered to fly me to London for the premiere. I left on Monday, arrived on Tuesday and came home on Friday. It was a pretty quick trip,” Mr. Reynolds said. “I wasn’t quite 16 yet and that was a problem for Fox because they couldn’t send me by myself so they paid for my mother to go as well.”

They touched down in London, were whisked to their hotel, got dressed and hit the red carpet.

“It was the royal premiere and the queen was there and it was exciting being on the red carpet and seeing the actors and actresses,” Mr. Reynolds said. “It was a pretty big deal, with decorations on the buses and Lester Square had billboards and ‘Narnia’ in Christmas lights.”

The trip was full of surprises. Fox, it seemed, had more in mind than just a pleasant trip. The distributor wanted Mr. Reynolds to cover the premiere, and the movie, for his site and gave him the same access to the cast as other entertainment reporters.

Speaking as an entertainment journalist, with whom was he most impressed among those he interviewed?

“Douglas Gresham, who is C.S. Lewis’ stepson. He has so much insight and knowledge, and hearing about what he had to say about C.S. Lewis and Narnia was great,” Mr. Reynolds said. “One of the central concerns that C.S. Lewis had was that he didn’t want the books turned into films because he didn’t want Aslan turned into a cartoon lion. With modern computer graphics and technology, that’s not a concern anymore.”

As a movie critic, which of the three Narnia films — “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” “Prince Caspian” or “Voyage of the Dawn Treader” — does he prefer?

“In my opinion, ‘Dawn Treader’ is the best of the three movies. There’s a lot of character development, the acting is really good and the special effects are great. It’s also in 3-D and the ending is an epic battle that is really exciting,” he said. “They’ve done some great character development in the movie and the characters have temptations they need to overcome and you can see the stages they go through. C.S. Lewis was a Christian and there is some of that in the layers of characters.”

Mr. Reynolds has been a Narnia fan for half of his life.

“I was introduced to ‘The Chronicles of Narnia’ when I was 8 through some videos that were made by the BBC,” Mr. Reynolds recalled. “I’ve also read and reread the books and read the first one when I was 11. The books make you use your imagination and you can go into places in your mind when you’re reading a book that makes it a great experience. With a movie, it’s all laid out for you.”

As the movies came out, Mr. Reynolds joined several online communities discussing Narnia and decided to create his own site in June 2009.

“I design websites as a hobby and so it just kind of happened,” he recalled. “I was 10 when the first movie came out but I got older and started learning more coding and I could do it. I knew that there was a lot of interest.”

The site gained in popularity and 20th Century Fox agreed to partner with Mr. Reynolds on several occasions. When the premiere came up over Thanksgiving weekend, Fox called with the offer.

“I didn’t know I was going to be in on the press junket and get to interview the cast members. It was put on video and it’s being edited so we can put it on the website,” he said. “What was really great was that we went to dinner with the press people and it was my 16th birthday dinner. It was great to be around [professionals] and feel like I fit in. It was a great experience.”