Hi Jayofmo, 

So the "Nuclear Weapons" arguement is something that has been brought up a few times in the forum topic on the Timeline Change below, but personally it's one that I'm not convinced by.

https://community.narniaweb.com/community/general-movie-discussion/the-magicians-nephew-to-feature-scenes-set-in-1950s

Firstly, as was noted in NarniaWeb's reporting of the location-based filming, none of the background set details seem to suggest they are trying to portray the real world as a place living under the fear of Nuclear annihilation. If anything it's all surprisingly upbeat - lots of emphasis on music, rebuilding the old world, a royal parade... Much more echos of Narnia than Charn. 

Secondly, if you really wanted to lean into a commentary on Nuclear Weapons (which really doesn't seem like Greta Gerwig's vibe) I'm not convinced that setting the film after Hiroshima is more impactful than having it beforehand. Aslan's warning feels like more of an ominous warning when presented beforehand, but something of a comical "oops, too late" moment if set afterwards. 

Overall, I think the most obvious and logical answer to the time change lies in the opening line of the book. We know from previous interviews that Greta Gerwig has gone deep on Lewis's writing and potentially even picked out the film's working title of "Ordinary Time" from a pivotal line of dialogue from the book, therefore it feels quite likely that she's taken a forensic level deconstruction of the text, rather than going off-piste with a Nuclear War allegory. 

I wonder if the reason for the change is just that Greta Gerwig first read the books when she was a kid in the 90s or the 2000s and she liked to imagine going to Narnia herself then. If so, I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, I kind of understand the impulse but on the other hand, it bothers me that such a sweeping change was made more for sentimental reasons than for the artistic reasons. 

Anyway, I'd like to agree with Jayofmo since he's new here and I'd like to encourage a new member, but I agree with Icarus that if the filmmakers want to emphasize parallels between the Deplorable Word and nuclear weapons, setting The Magician's Nephew before the rise of nuclear warfare actually makes more sense.

I don't think the change improves upon the story, but it is a valid one.

Well, even if the timing in our world was updated (like the MN film is being sent in 1955), the world of Narnia could as well be still set as they are in the books. It doesn’t even have the same time span anyways (given at the end of LWW, when the Pevensies are adults and when they come out of the wardrobe, they’re kids again). 

I don’t really like the idea of the timeline change, but if nothing else is changed I might be curious just to see what the movie is like. If the characters are much like they are in the books it might be worth viewing the movie at least once. It would be only curiousity which would motivate me to watch the film.  I have still not decided whether I want to watch it and support a film that isn’t completely faithful to the books.  I will probably always prefer the BBC version and the Walden films over Greta Gerwig’s Narnia since they are much more likely to be something like authentic Narnia.

@icarus Firstly, as was noted in NarniaWeb's reporting of the location-based filming, none of the background set details seem to suggest they are trying to portray the real world as a place living under the fear of Nuclear annihilation.

Now that is a fair point for you to make, but I'd have to differ for actual real life in1955, when I was seven at the time, & when nuclear testing was also under way at the time, not only USA, at the Bikini Atoll in 1958, 3 years after, but also UK at Woomera, an Australian facility, established as early as 1947. Russia was also doing nuclear testing in Kazakhstan, I believe. In 1963, the world did really come to a dangerous point over Cuba. I remember hearing it on the news, with Nikita Khrushchev thumping his table with his shoe at the UN for emphasis, pictured also in the newspapers. Our cottage matron had the newspaper delivered, & she liked to have the radio on whilst we got through our morning chores before marching off to breakfast, assembly & school.  Even in 1955, the Cold War, & hearing about it, could & did make real life a bit tense, even for children, then, especially when students had family involved in the military.  It was also in 1955, that one of the other girls borrowed LWW from the school library, and read chapters from it to the rest of our dormitory. I can remember not hearing clearly it was coats in the cupboard, & thought it was cakes, instead. 

@jayofmo The big question is, how does this timeline change affect The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe?

A good question, I think, when in 1995, the date you actually mention, I can't think of anything happening in UK to cause the government to do anything remotely as drastic as to evacuate children to the country, as in 1939. But was it only Walden which pinned LWW, accurately, to that time? What did BBC do in its television depiction? And what about the 1979 cartoon version? As far as I can remember, the 1979 cartoon version didn't specify the era, or even have much reference to Magician's Nephew or any explanation for the wardrobe being magical. 

I can see Greta Gerwig's point of changing the actual time frame for MN, when so much had happened in the 1st half of the 20th century: 2 World Wars, a great depression, the industrial revolution, of which Uncle Andrew is such a proponent, in full swing, up to 1955, and beyond. I could relate to MN easily when I finally read that book, because after 1956, I had my own grandmother, born 27/3/1896, to ask about her childhood, & what life was like then. But she & her generation passed away, long ago & 1955, the year MN was published, might be easier for people of today to relate to, than 1899, or 1900, when Digory & Polly were said to be children. 

But was it only Walden which pinned LWW, accurately, to that time? What did BBC do in its television depiction? And what about the 1979 cartoon version? As far as I can remember, the 1979 cartoon version didn't specify the era, or even have much reference to Magician's Nephew or any explanation for the wardrobe being magical. 

The BBC TV version opens with the children getting on the train to the country and Susan mentions "When the bombs stop falling on London," and she realizes that reminder of their reality upset Lucy.

The 1979 version doesn't mention the air raids. Lucy, reflecting on her first trip to Narnia (it opens as Lucy leaves Narnia for the first time and tells her siblings that she's all right) thinks "It's been a few weeks since we came to stay with the Professor." There's no mention as to why. This was my first exposure to Narnia, and having grandparents who lived in the country who let their grandchildren stay with them for a week in the summer, I assumed it was something like that. It was actually quite some time before I found out exactly what the air raids were.

I think moving the timeline forward does complicate exactly how they end up in the Professor's house, but there could be some clever explanation done. As I said in the original post, the important thing is having the children in the house with the wardrobe. They do that, the story can play out generally intact, but I do think having some sort of uncertainty in their real world that mirrors the children being threatened by Jadis in Narnia can be a strong storytelling point and it would be a pity if it's disregarded.

Posted by: @jayofmo

but I do think having some sort of uncertainty in their real world that mirrors the children being threatened by Jadis in Narnia can be a strong storytelling point and it would be a pity if it's disregarded.

As has come up a few times in other discussions, the fact is that in the actual original story, Lewis himself disregards it completely. After the one mention of "the war" in the second line of the first chapter, he makes no further reference to it anywhere else in the book — not even implicitly, let alone directly. Absolutely nothing about the threat to the children's world, the uncertainty they're living under. Nothing about the air raids, or whether or not their father or other male relatives are serving in the armed forces (in fact, Susan declares the Professor will "write to Father" if he agrees there is something wrong with Lucy, which suggests their father is not away fighting). Nothing about rationing, let alone it being the reason why Edmund is so greedy for a sweet treat. Nothing about the effects the war might be having on the children psychologically. They're having the time of their lives at the Professor's house until Lucy starts making her strange claims. Even Edmund's transgressions are later blamed on "that horrid school" he's been going to, not on anything to do with the war. And there are no comparisons made at all between the threat the White Witch poses to the children in Narnia and the threat Hitler's forces pose to them in their own world. 

Basically, if we take out that single reference in the opening paragraph, there's absolutely nothing in the book itself that suggests its exact time setting. It could be any period in the early to mid 20th century. The idea that the war is an essential part of LWW's setting and atmosphere is an interpretation that several screen and stage versions have taken on. Lewis himself, in writing the story, doesn't do that at all.

The first ever TV adaptation of LWW, in 1967, is now mostly lost, but the few minutes of surviving footage include a reference to the children coming to stay with the Professor because their parents are away on an archaeological expedition. So even then, with WW2 much more within living memory, the producers of that adaptation didn't see the war as necessary to the plot and came up with another reasonable excuse for the Pevensies to be staying in the Professor's house without their parents being with them.

On the other hand, Lewis makes a HUGE deal of the period atmosphere of MN, possibly because it's the era of his own childhood that he's describing (although he himself was only two years old in 1900 and he lived in Belfast, not London). We have references from him, in his narrator voice, to famous literary characters (Sherlock Holmes and the Bastables), the price and quality of sweets, the clothes people wore, everyone having "lots of servants", and then of course the whole scene where Jadis wrecks the hansom cab and is heckled by a crowd of Londoners with Victorian-era Cockney accents. I'm sorry we won't be having any of that in this upcoming movie, as it's such a memorable element of the original story (and I for one, as a seven-year-old first-time reader in late 1980s Australia, had no trouble at all understanding and picturing those scenes). I'm willing to watch it and see what Greta Gerwig does do with the period change and the many other elements of the story that look like they're going to be different from the book — none of which we can fairly judge until we've seen the final product — but I doubt it'll come across as a "faithful" adaptation, whatever else it may be. I could be wrong, though... 

Posted by: @courtenay

As has come up a few times in other discussions, the fact is that in the actual original story, Lewis himself disregards it completely. After the one mention of "the war" in the second line of the first chapter, he makes no further reference to it anywhere else in the book — not even implicitly, let alone directly. Absolutely nothing about the threat to the children's world, the uncertainty they're living under. Nothing about the air raids, or whether or not their father or other male relatives are serving in the armed forces (in fact, Susan declares the Professor will "write to Father" if he agrees there is something wrong with Lucy, which suggests their father is not away fighting). Nothing about rationing, let alone it being the reason why Edmund is so greedy for a sweet treat. Nothing about the effects the war might be having on the children psychologically. 

If I could play Devil's Advocate for a minute, perhaps these things were not explicitly mentioned because they went without saying.  I mean, the war had only been over for 5 years when Jack published LWW and it must have still been fresh for everyone who had lived it.  I have no doubt that the very first families to read this book were picturing this stuff even if it wasn't mentioned or alluded to in anyway (beyond the  second line of the first chapter of course).  Of course it has very little bearing on the story in the long-run, and that's why we've had such a mix of adaptations playing these elements up and others toning them down or removing them entirely (which includes alterations to the time period).  I would argue for preserving it (subtle as it was) just because it was a reflection of the times when it was written.   

@glenwit Good points, and I'd thought about that as well. In any case, though, Lewis isn't writing a story about "the war" and its effects on a group of children; he's writing about their adventures in a fantasy land. Even though the war was very much recent history for his original readers, he's not in any way even implicitly encouraging them to think about it and to project their own memories of it onto the story, as he still could have done in subtle ways if he wanted to. As I said, if you take out that one reference at the start, there is nothing else in the story at all that enables the reader — either in the 1950s or the 2020s — to pinpoint exactly when these events are taking place. If he'd thrown in even an occasional word here and there about rationing, or air raid shelters, or blackout regulations, or soldiers, or listening to the radio for news from abroad, that would clue us in. But he doesn't.

By contrast, one of Lewis's best works of adult fiction, The Screwtape Letters, was written in the midst of WW2 — it was first published in 1942 — and it DOES make explicit references to the war, and to the air raids in particular... 

... All this, too, while the war was still on — barely even beginning to turn in the Allies' favour — and nobody on earth could have known how it would end. So yes, there is Lewis writing a work in which he definitely does want his readers to have then-current events in mind, and he's not shy about making that clear. Which makes me reckon that if he felt it was essential for readers of LWW to bear all the implications of World War 2 in mind as they're reading, he would most likely — even so soon after the events — have been a bit more explicit about it.

And it's that lack of genuine connectedness with WW2 in the original story that means it can be set in other eras without necessarily ruining it — even possibly in 2025, if Gerwig wants to increase the canonical time gap between MN and LWW. That brings other issues, of course, to do with how modern-day children might handle being pulled into a medieval-style fantasy world with no modern technology and internet connectivity. Maybe Gerwig's real reason behind moving MN to 1955 is because she really does want to set LWW (and the subsequent books) in the 21st century and do a totally new interpretation of Narnia in that way? It's the most likely explanation I can think of, though it'll be a controversial move and I wonder what changes it'll mean and how well it will come off. Again, we'll just have to see what happens. 

@courtenay 

Yeah for sure. I mean, it's definitely a complicated issue. Maybe I'm just a purist for keeping time periods the way they are. I can't imagine Narnia taking place in the 21st century anymore than I can picture Oliver Twist in the 1950s. 

That said, I do agree with you 100% that the war should not have any bearing on the character development, because it's not a war story. Your contrast with Scewtape Letters is a point well made - I love that novel as well! 

Posted by: @jasmine_tarkheena

I actually kind of like the medieval setting for the world of Narnia because it gives it a timeless quality. Although I don’t consider Narnia to be a fairytale, the medieval setting helps to create that mystical atmosphere that wouldn’t be present in modern times. Especially since modern times are filled with technology and gadgets that would distract from the magic of Narnia.

Just to be clear, I was referring to the scenes in our world being set in modern times, in a future adaptation of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe that is a sequel to the upcoming movie of The Magician's Nephew — which, we already know, is set in 1955, so all the chronologically later books will have to have an even later period setting for their this-world scenes. 

But there is no indication (so far) that Greta Gerwig will be giving Narnia itself a modern-style setting with technology and gadgets and so on, or anything other than the medieval atmosphere that it has in the books. 

@courtenay 

I consider Narnia to be a kind of fairy tale, and the medieval setting would work for all the locations that are in Narnia. In our world it is a different matter.  The Magician’s Nephew would work best if the part that takes place in our world is in Victorian England or somewhere near that time. The 1950’s is too modern for that story. I think having automobiles would be out of place and the styles of clothing do not fit.  I don’t know how much of that period Greta Gerwig will use, but I don’t like the idea of placing the time period there at all.  C. S. Lewis knew what he was doing when he chose the time periods for each book, and I don’t see any reason to change it.  But I am somewhat curious to see what the film will be like even if it is a poor version of the story.  Maybe my curiosity will be enough to motivate me to watch the film.