Posted by: @icarus

I definitely also agree that female lions are more well known for being hunters rather than mothers, however I still think that overall it's one of the few logical explanations that exist for why a director might gender flip the role in the first place - that in a story about creation and new life, having the creator of new life be a female (of any species) does at least make "some" thematic sense.

It does, from that perspective. But even as someone who's never been a mother herself (not out of deliberate choice; it just hasn't worked out that way, and now I'm getting too old), if I were going to create a fantasy world (or modify someone else's) and give it a female creator — which makes good sense in itself — I'd choose a figure that's readily associated with mothering and motherliness, as well as with power. (I also agree we don't have to factor in Greta Gerwig personally here, but she IS a mother, so it's fair to assume she's drawing on personal experience if she chooses to portray motherhood — divine or earthly — in some way in her work.)

And apart from lionesses not having that symbolic association in Western cultures historically in the first place, there are very good reasons why they would be an absolutely terrible symbol of motherhood. These are things that wouldn't have been known in ancient times when lions started to be used symbolically, and probably weren't well known in Lewis's time either, not that he was intending to draw on realistic lion behaviour when he created the character of Aslan. But this is something that's pretty widely known today, as it gets brought up regularly in nature documentaries and non-fiction books about lions: when a male lion kills or otherwise defeats another male lion and takes over his pride, the victorious lion kills all the cubs in that pride that were sired by the previous lion. I doubt the mothers of those cubs simply stand back and watch, but they clearly can't or won't prevent it — and once that's done, those lionesses afterwards don't hesitate to mate with and have cubs by the lion who killed their previous children.

Yes, that is ugly — horrific, really — to us humans, though it obviously makes sense from the perspective of lion ethics, however those work. But it does make it impossible for me, at least, to think of a lioness as representing motherly protectiveness and unbreakable motherly love.  

I will add I don't find those nature facts trouble me at all in thinking of the (male) character of Aslan as he is in the books. Even if Lewis knew about such gory details, he clearly wasn't aiming to have Aslan think or behave like an ordinary non-talking lion in our world — and male lions, once again, already have enough symbolic value in our history that it's easy to see Aslan from that non-naturalistic perspective, as we're supposed to.

But female lions don't have anything like that symbolic value and resonance, as I keep saying. We don't have an existing set of meanings or characteristics that we instantly think of as applying to them, as we do with male lions (realistically or not). We really only have what we know about from modern nature studies. And so, if some modern author decided to create a fantasy world — even one totally unrelated to Narnia — with a lioness mother goddess figure, I for one would most likely respond at once with "Er, excuse me, mate — you do realise that is really not a very fitting symbol for what you're trying to convey here??"

So that's where we're still at. If someone has decided that Aslan, as a divine creator figure, makes more sense as a female lion than as a male one... they've apparently missed all the symbolic resonance of Aslan as a male lion and replaced it with something that, despite the outwardly simple gender swap, absolutely does not work in the same way at all, for so many reasons (and not just the religious / Christian ones either). That on top of the fact that they don't seem to know how to handle the PR disaster this has already caused (and is still causing) among fans.

Did they honestly not think about what a bad choice this is on so many levels — or what a bad thing it is to leave the public believing it's going to happen, even if it isn't? Or do they just not care?? Once again, there is no explanation that truly makes sense.

Posted by: @icarus

It could just be something as simple as they tried out a singing male Lion and couldn't make it look good on screen,.so decided to switch things up.

Well, now there's another thought, but if they can't make a singing male Lion look good on screen, I doubt they'll have any more success with a singing Lioness!