The Chronicles of Narnia (Netflix reboot)

[mstrox 6,651]

3 hours ago, Yavar Moradi said:

 

 

Do you roll your eyes at all of them collectively, or are there just certain parts (i.e. Aslan giving a lecture or something) which you find cringey? I guess there are a few parts of them which make me roll my eyes... but if anything my wife (who wasn't really raised Christian... her mother was more into astrology which she also regards as nonsense) became a bigger fan of the Narnia books and movies than I am. Maybe because she can look at them more as an anthropologist might, not having any of the unpleasant associations with Christianity that I do from being brought up in it.

 

For me, the allegory overall is just too heavy-handed.  One of those book series for me where it’s so blatant that the only real value I could derive is from a Christian angle, or at least in most of the books.  Like listening to a Christian Band and not just a band that happens to be Christian, if that makes sense.

 

Oddly, my sister who is a pastor also agrees with that take, although she phrased it in terms of the books’ “theology” - she does like other Lewis writings though, just not Narnia.

 

I have no negative connotations with religion and my own experiences with it have been completely positive.  I have no problem with it as a way of explaining morals as long as it leads from a place of love (which comes down more to the people/organization than the book).  It’s just not something I believe in personally.  I do think that TL,TW,ATW holds up fairly well.

[Yavar Moradi 2,599]

Interesting, since I'd say the first book is one of the most dependent on allegory of the seven. The Last Battle is the least successful and most awkward, IMO, with it tackling the Book of Revelation.

 

I do really love The Horse and His Boy, which is mostly just a fun adventure and not really very allegorical at all.

 

Yavar

[mstrox 6,651]

Yeah, my favoritism towards that one probably has some component of subconscious nostalgia re: early childhood exposure - I didn’t read the rest until later.

[PokeDocMatt 57]

1 hour ago, Yavar Moradi said:

i do really love The Horse and His Boy, which is mostly just a fun adventure and not really very allegorical at all.

 

Yavar

I’ve been waiting for a Horse and His Boy film ever since I was a child. BBC didn’t do it, Walden Media didn’t… it’s a fantastic story. It’s practically a screenplay! It’s begging to be done!!

[Yavar Moradi 2,599]

18 hours ago, PokeDocMatt said:

I’ve been waiting for a Horse and His Boy film ever since I was a child. BBC didn’t do it, Walden Media didn’t… it’s a fantastic story. It’s practically a screenplay! It’s begging to be done!!

100% agreed! Such a fun adventure with great characters. Maybe there’d be some modern concern about middle eastern stereotypes, but as someone who’s half middle eastern (Persian to be exact) and who loved Disney’s Aladdin in the 90s… I say bring it on!  

 

Yavar

[Knight of Ren 789]

I'm also wondering in what kind of order they're going to adapt the books, since there's like two official ones: by release date, and by chronology in the story. I think I read them first in chronological order, but the movies they did in the early 2000's were clearly going by release date, stopping at the third book (there were even rumours of a Silver Chair adaptation back in the day), so I don't know what order they will do. I guess it makes more sense in a way to do it in chronological order, as the jumps back and forth could be a bit confusing for people not as familiar with the stories, especially with Narnia's genesis in Magician's Newphew coming right before the Last Battle but I we'll see...

[Yavar Moradi 2,599]

Dear God (said the athiest) it better be publication order, or nothing. That book re-ordering by a publisher after Lewis’s death was utterly moronic.

 

Yavar

[ThePenitentMan1 743]

It's one thing Narnia has in common with Star Wars: you start with the original classic, not the Prequels.

[Knight of Ren 789]

Yeah, that would be the better order, but perhaps they think it would work better for the general audience if the story is told in a chronological manner. But I hope they keep the release order for the films as well.

[Yavar Moradi 2,599]

12 hours ago, Knight of Ren said:

Yeah, that would be the better order, but perhaps they think it would work better for the general audience if the story is told in a chronological manner. But I hope they keep the release order for the films as well.

I don’t know who you think “they” is (if Douglas Gresham is still a driving force behind Narnia adaptations as I think he is… he’s definitely for publication order, and a prime reason the Walden Films ignored the new “book order”).

 

The Magician’s Nephew is explicitly written as a prequel, to be read after LWW. It is meant to explain certain mysterious things witnessed in previous Narnia books, so that the reader goes (for example) “ohhhh, so THAT’S why there was randomly a lamp post in the middle of a snowy forest!” Have that explanation in advance, and Lucy discovering Narnia for the first time loses a great deal of its magic.

 

And besides that, The Horse and His Boy (again, a favorite of mine) doesn’t even FIT chronologically, no matter what the stupid new spines say. It happens *fully in Narnia* (no time in our world) during the original reign of the Pevensies… which occurs during the final chapter of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. So strictly speaking, to adapt that chronologically Netflix would have to adapt most of LWW, but then at some point in the final chapter of that book have a lengthy novel-length side adventure where only some of the Pevensies figure into the story, and THEN adapt the end of LWW where the four Pevensies all return to our world (before eventually ending up back in Narnia for Prince Caspian).

 

Yeah, just stick with publication order. It’ll be way less confusing and way more enjoyable for everyone.

 

Yavar

[A. A. Ron 1,742]

Chronological or roughly chronological would be better in terms of casting considerations and maybe it would mean Magician's Nephew actually gets made before Netflix pulls a Disney and abandons the series unfinished. That said if you could actually produce new adaptations quickly, say 1 movie/limited series per year, I think a compromise release order like this could work pretty well:

 

Wardrobe

Magician's Nephew

Caspian

Horse and His Boy

Dawn Treader

Silver Chair

The Last Battle

 

The big problem is keeping the actors for the Pevensie children, Eustace and Jill appropriately aged since they have to appear all the way up to Last Battle.

[Yavar Moradi 2,599]

Caspian is a direct sequel to LWW. Dawn Treader is a direct sequel to Caspian. Silver Chair is a direct sequel to Dawn Treader. How does it in any way make sense to break those up with unrelated adventures, each of which have character continuity from the previous published entry??

 

The only “casting considerations” to worry about re: Magician’s Nephew are Jadis (adult character so not a big issue) and Aslan (would be CGI). The Horse and His Boy could be done last, just before The Last Battle, since both of those two books feature adult Pevensies. If you do Horse and His Boy between Caspian and Dawn Treader (again I say: why?) then you’d *definitely* have to recast the Pevensies older for it. Please explain to me why you think it’s better to interrupt the Caspian narrative with a totally unrelated adventure which doesn’t even take place during that time in Narnia, but rather centuries before (in Narnian time), during the original Pevensies reign (final chapter of LWW)?

 

Yavar

[A. A. Ron 1,742]

6 hours ago, Yavar Moradi said:

Caspian is a direct sequel to LWW. Dawn Treader is a direct sequel to Caspian. Silver Chair is a direct sequel to Dawn Treader. How does it in any way make sense to break those up with unrelated adventures, each of which have character continuity from the previous published entry?

And Last Battle is a sequel to Silver Chair. The idea is to have the series in continuous production and do what Star Wars tried (and failed) to do when Disney took over. You start with a “main event” movie, then release a “side” movie in the off year to keep interest up while the next main event movie wraps up production. It’s really not that confusing man.

 

6 hours ago, Yavar Moradi said:

The only “casting considerations” to worry about re: Magician’s Nephew are Jadis (adult character so not a big issue) and Aslan (would be CGI). The Horse and His Boy could be done last, just before The Last Battle, since both of those two books feature adult Pevensies. If you do Horse and His Boy between Caspian and Dawn Treader (again I say: why?) then you’d *definitely* have to recast the Pevensies older for it.

Again, this would be a Wardrobe movie in for example 2025 and then a Caspian movie in 2027.  That’s even less of a gap than Disney had. Would that be a hard timeline to keep? Sure. But if Harry Potter can do 8 movies in 10 years, 7 Narnia movies in a little less time should be doable too.

 

As far as young actors go, you need young Edmund and Lucy for Wardrobe-Treader (if not Last Battle). And you need young Eustace for Treader-Last Battle. You get the same problem of aging child actors by following publication order and breaking those last four up as you do if you break up the first three. Last Battle is also the big problem movie because it kind of requires you to use all of the kids from previous movies, or at least young Digory, Polly, Eustace, Jill and the 3 Pevensies who actually get to go to Heaven (imagine the poor young actress for Susan who doesn’t get to do the last one with her friends ). Like you said, adults are easier, but there’s an argument for adult Digory to be included in Nephew and adult Susan to be Horse and His Boy and Last Battle, depending how you want to portray… that.

[Yavar Moradi 2,599]

3 hours ago, A. A. Ron said:

And Last Battle is a sequel to Silver Chair. The idea is to have the series in continuous production and do what Star Wars tried (and failed) to do when Disney took over. You start with a “main event” movie, then release a “side” movie in the off year to keep interest up while the next main event movie wraps up production. It’s really not that confusing man.

 

Yes, having The Horse and His Boy (which takes place during the original Pevensie reign, IN Narnia) come out in between Prince Caspian and Dawn Treader (which take place only a year or two apart in Narnia, but like a thousand years after the original Pevensie reign there) is very, VERY confusing and you still haven't explained why you think that order makes sense.

 

Last Battle *obviously* has to be adapted last; there's no way around that. It's NOT just "a sequel to Silver Chair" as you characterize. It's *also* a sequel to The Magician's Nephew. And The Horse and His Boy. It gathers up EVERYBODY (well, except Susan and I hope they do change that for the movie, lol) from all the previous books. It's the Avengers: Endgame crossover event of Narnia.

 

So yeah... barring it being somehow produced simultaneously as The Magician's Nephew and The Horse and His Boy (which IMO make sense to put out as "supplemental" *after* the main sequential run of LWW/Caspian/Dawn Treader/Silver Chair... just as they were published) I do think Last Battle only makes sense to do at the end after the other six books. And that might mean a few of the actors are aged a little bit more than one might light. But Hollywood has 29 year olds playing teenagers all the time. I think it'll be fine.

 

And you bring up a good point about how efficiently they were able to produce the Harry Potter movies with young actors (even though by movie 4 they had all aged quite a bit, perhaps more than ideal). I really hope that they could and would produce all 7 Narnia adaptations within say an 8 year period.

 

Yavar

[Jay 37,352]

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