@icarus Lewis's whole vibe (and I'd say that of Tolkien's too)seems to be a rejection of modernity, and a harkening back to a pre-industrial Britain.

And how! In fact, that is a main theme of MN, in particular, when it goes back to the pristine innocence of Narnia's creation, and how it was marred by the warring, jealous, angry, lustful, "entitled" and utterly immoral Jadis' arrival in Narnia, greedily helping herself to one of those sacred apples. I can see that also in Tolkien's work as well, especially in "The Shire", where Hobbits live, if not over the Ditch, in "Middle Earth", itself.  

And that pre-industrial argument is also shown by the characterisation of Uncle Andrew. However, I think that it is Queen Victoria's association with British "colonisation", itself, that is to say, the latest bugbear & issue, that MN's producers, by changing the time frame of the Narnia chronicles, might well be avoiding, rather than Uncle Andrew's admiration of industrialisation, shown by his reaction to the growing lamppost. 

I’m sure that Lewis would not like any time change in the adaptation of the Narnia books. He didn’t particularly like making dramas from his books, although it seems like altering the timeline is more extreme.  If he were living today he might say something like “Leave my books alone!”.  I am not sure if I would agree with those who say that no movies should ever be made from books, but I could understand Lewis’ views as being a kind of medievalist like Tolkien.  Parts of the Narnia stories are set in more modern times like the Victorian era and World War II, and keeping those times would be more faithful to the books themselves if they were left intact. Lewis might view changing the timeline as tampering.  I guess one could view any movie made from a book as an alteration.  But then again films are a way of getting children to read more books, and using the media to promote in them cannot be all bad. The books may be read more often because of people watching the films.

Posted by: @narnian78

I’m sure that Lewis would not like any time change in the adaptation of the Narnia books. He didn’t particularly like making dramas from his books, although it seems like altering the timeline is more extreme.  If he were living today he might say something like “Leave my books alone!”

If he were living today, Lewis would have a reasonable amount of creative control over adaptations of his books, and would certainly be able to decide which studios / directors he was willing to sell the filming rights to. I also don't think he would approve of the time period change (and, if they really are planning to make Aslan female, or outwardly male but with a female voice — which we still haven't confirmed either way — it's safe to say he REALLY wouldn't approve of that). But unfortunately, he's no longer here to have any influence over such things. I believe he did, during his lifetime, indicate he wouldn't be entirely opposed to a film or TV adaptation of Narnia, but he disapproved of everything produced by Disney (or am I confusing him with Tolkien there?), and he definitely didn't want Aslan to be played by a man in a lion costume.

(Which means that the now-almost-lost 1967 TV adaptation of LWW, only a few years after Lewis's death, was already going against the author's wishes, because it did have Aslan played by a man in a lion costume. It also changed the time period, removing the WW2 setting and having the children staying with the Professor while their parents were away on an archaeological expedition. We don't know what Lewis would have thought of that, but at least that wouldn't have as much of an impact on the "feel" of the story as moving MN from 1900 to 1955 undoubtedly will.)

Even sometimes when an author is alive and able to be involved in an adaptation of his or her works, the final product can end up being something that the author explicitly disapproves of — two examples from the past that I can think of are Roald Dahl with Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, and Michael Ende with The Neverending Story. And of course, while Douglas Gresham, Lewis's stepson, had some input into the Walden trilogy of Narnia movies, he wasn't happy with all the decisions they made, particularly in the case of VDT, but he obviously wasn't able to veto those changes entirely. (Although I believe one of the main reasons SC didn't go ahead was because Gresham rejected the proposal to make it into a "girl power" action movie.) Sadly, we've heard recently that Gresham is terminally ill and not able to contribute to Netflix's Narnia adaptations, or otherwise I would guess he also probably wouldn't agree to the time period change (and he also most definitely wouldn't approve of any possible changes to Aslan's gender).

I do take heart, rather cynically, from the likelihood that if this production of MN is hugely unpopular, then Netflix will be reluctant to lose even more money and probably won't go ahead with the rest of the series, and that will be a lesson to any future filmmakers about the unwisdom of tampering too much with the source material. And if the rights to Narnia become available again, they might some day be bought by a studio that really cares deeply about doing a faithful adaptation. Or at least we can dream... But I will still definitely watch Netflix's MN when it comes out, at least once — even if I'm sitting there gritting my teeth all the way through it to keep myself from screaming — just so that I at least know what I'm critiquing before I critique.

@courtenay 

I wish that all of the 1967 adaptation would have survived so that we could see what the entire production was like. The time setting for our world was apparently not designated so can we assume it was the 1960’s?  The series was made in black and white so it didn’t really look like one of today’s films.  The parts that survived do have kind of an antique look about them like an elementary school play.  But C. S. Lewis would probably not have liked the series not having a specific time setting. That is understandable, but I wouldn’t reject all Narnia films such as the BBC version and the Walden films since they mostly followed the timeline.  The authors of most books are not likely to be pleased entirely with the film versions.

Posted by: @narnian78

The time setting for our world was apparently not designated so can we assume it was the 1960’s?

I don't think there's enough surviving footage for us to tell visually — as far as I know, there's only the conversation between Aslan and the White Witch, as well as some remarks from the Professor, who was the narrator, but nothing that indicates the exact time setting (like obvious period clothing styles). However, the Professor does mention the children's parents being on an archaeological expedition, and that's enough to indicate that the writer(s) definitely dropped the wartime setting. There's no way a British couple could have realistically gone off to dig up ancient buildings and artefacts and so on while that particular war was going on — it affected every aspect of everyone's life in the UK, in ways it's hard for us to comprehend today. There were huge restrictions on travel and transport and fuel usage, and every able-bodied adult was expected to be working either directly for the war effort (serving in the armed forces, working in factories, or in intelligence, and so on), or else doing things that were necessary to keep the country going (producing food and other essentials, teaching schoolchildren, etc.). It's extremely unlikely that some middle-class couple would have been able — or willing — to swan around doing archaeology in a foreign country under those circumstances, especially considering so many parts of the world were involved in that war and international travel could have been very dangerous.

And since this 1967 adaptation was made only 22 years after the war ended, with everything well within living memory for adults, I think we can safely say they definitely changed the time period and set it well after the war, most likely in the then present day. It wouldn't make sense otherwise. 

Posted by: @narnian78

But C. S. Lewis would probably not have liked the series not having a specific time setting. 

Would he? I see no evidence in the books that the specific time period of the real world scenes was super important to CS Lewis.

Could you perhaps elaborate on why you think that was the case?

@Courenay However, the Professor does mention the children's parents being on an archaeological expedition

What?? Where?? In my editions of the Narnia Chronicles, I don't remember that the Pevensie children's parents were on any sort of expedition, let alone an archaeological expedition.

In VDT, Mr & Mrs Pevensie famously went on a speaking tour to America and took Susan with them when she was no good at schoolwork & they thought she'd gain more out of the trip than the other children, whilst Peter was studying for exams at Professor Kirk's place. Whilst Edmund & Lucy were sent to stay with Eustace & his parents. In SC, where the Pevensie family were, was not part of the story.

In LWW, all the family went to Professor Kirk's place due to the very real evacuations. And in The Last Battle, at the end of the book, Mr & Mrs Pevensie caught the same train that the 7 friends of Narnia were catching, when Mr & Mrs Pevensie wanted to go to Bristol. Now, I daresay that Bristol as an historic & strategic location, would be a good place for an archaeological dig, but I can't remember in any of the books where the text specified that was their purpose in going there. 

Did you hear the professor mention it in one of the audio versions, perhaps?

Posted by: @waggawerewolf27

@Courenay However, the Professor does mention the children's parents being on an archaeological expedition

What?? Where?? In my editions of the Narnia Chronicles, I don't remember that the Pevensie children's parents were on any sort of expedition, let alone an archaeological expedition.

They were talking about the 1967 TV adaptation, where an Archeological Expedition is used as the conceit for LWW in lieu of using World War 2.

@icarus 

I don’t think he would have liked any changes in the time setting. He chose the Victorian period for the beginning of The Magician’s Nephew.  Why would he want to see it changed to the 1950’s or any other time period when the Victorian period worked the best? He knew what he was doing when he chose the time period.  Actually Lewis did not like the idea of dramatizing his book into plays (the same would go for movies), but I don’t entirely agree with him in that.  But I believe Lewis said he didn’t like the way Disney portrayed characters (I think it was the animation style).  I think it is too artificial for Narnia. If the filmmakers are really going to respect the author they should keep as much as possible whatever is in the book, although there may be some necessary changes. It is understandable that Lewis would not like altering the timeline because it could be seen as tampering with an author’s work. Why would he have believed that unnecessary changes are acceptable? 

Posted by: @icarus

I see no evidence in the books that the specific time period of the real world scenes was super important to CS Lewis.

Posted by: @narnian78

I don’t think he would have liked any changes in the time setting. He chose the Victorian period for the beginning of The Magician’s Nephew.  Why would he want to see it changed to the 1950’s or any other time period when the Victorian period worked the best? He knew what he was doing when he chose the time period.

My take on this — and I've said things to this effect before — is that the late Victorian setting for MN does seem to be "super important" to Lewis, as he makes a far bigger deal of it than he does of the this-world setting in any of the other books. He puts a lot of effort into telling us about things like the clothes that people wore, the cheapness of sweets, having "lots of servants", the toughness of a very traditional maiden aunt like Aunt Letty, the firmness with which morals were drummed into children's heads, and of course all the action of the street scene with Jadis wrecking the hansom cab and being taunted by the crowd of Cockneys. It is classic turn-of-last-century children's book stuff, and it really works. Lewis is, so to speak, just about channelling Edith Nesbit — one of his own favourite childhood authors, a point he underscores by name-dropping "the Bastables", the enterprising children from Nesbit's lively and funny Treasure Seekers trilogy — and you can just tell, from the way he writes about these things, that he was having a great deal of fun recalling and recreating the era that he himself grew up in.

So although we'll never know exactly what Lewis would say to the prospect of moving the setting of MN forward to 1955 (the present day at the time he published it), I would say it's a pretty safe guess that he'd baulk at it.

On the other hand, what we were mainly talking about above was the changing of the time period of LWW, as was done with the first two screen adaptations of it (1967 and 1979). And in that case, Lewis makes almost nothing of the time period in which the original story is set — in fact, it doesn't seem to be important to him at all. 

I've said this a few times as well, but here it is again: if you cut out that one reference to "the war" near the beginning of the first paragraph, there is nothing in the entire book that places it within a specific time period. No references to clothing or popular culture, no mention of rationing or blackouts or bombing or fears for relatives who are in the armed forces. Not even the slightest hint that the children are suffering any kind of psychological effects from their own displacement or from the turmoil their country and the wider world are going through, let alone comparisons between that turmoil and Narnia's situation under the White Witch. And "Oh, but it's all implied, because it was recent history for Lewis's first readers" is not actually a very strong argument. LWW is aimed at readers under the age of 10, so the original audience would have been infants or very young children during the war, and most likely wouldn't recall a lot of those details clearly without specific prompting — which Lewis doesn't provide at all.

The only logical conclusion I can come to is that he wasn't writing a "war story". He just uses the war as an excuse to get the four children away from their parents and into the Professor's mysterious old house in the country, and then, it seems, he pretty much forgets about the war entirely. That's illustrated further by the fact that in VDT, the Pevensies' parents and Susan go off on a lecture tour of America, and the stay at the Professor's old house (now sold) is referred to as being "long ago in the war years". But according to the internal chronology and to the not-always-accurate-to-the-books timeline that Lewis later wrote up, this story is taking place in 1942 — two years after the events of LWW — at which time in real life, the war was at its height, America was now in on it too, and there is NO WAY the adult Pevensies and their teenage daughter could realistically have been gadding about in the States on an academic trip!!

So, my point is... Lewis took great care with establishing the period setting of MN (which was in fact the last Narnia book to be completed as he was writing them, though it was the second last to be published). He took almost no care at all with establishing the period setting of LWW (the first Narnia book he wrote) or of most of the others.

And so changing the period setting of MN means making major changes to the essence of the story Lewis wrote, which we can probably surmise he wouldn't be happy about if he knew. But changing the period setting of LWW without otherwise changing the essence of the story IS possible, and has been done twice already. We still don't know what Lewis would say to it, but it's far less of a desecration of what he wrote than changing the setting of MN will inherently be.

@icarus They were talking about the 1967 TV adaptation, where an Archaeological Expedition is used as the conceit for LWW in lieu of using World War 2.

Aha! Thank you. I haven't heard of that TV adaptation which I assume was an American production & therefore may not have been ever available on TV in Australia. Not that I had much time to watch TV in 1967 when I was working full-time, sometimes doing overtime shifts as well, studying an extra 9 hours per week at technical college, and in between, ha! ha!  , I was allegedly "doing a Susan", what with nylons, lipstick & invitations etc.  

@courtenay And since this 1967 adaptation was made only 22 years after the war ended, with everything well within living memory for adults, I think we can safely say they definitely changed the time period and set it well after the war, most likely in the then present day. It wouldn't make sense otherwise. {Quote 1} 

Yes, I agree with what you said. Especially when archaeology even between the wars, when Agatha Christie accompanied her husband, Max Mallowan, to places like Egypt & Syria, was more concentrated in the Middle East, itself a theatre of war, because of oil drilling in Iraq & Arabia, rather than elsewhere in the world. My eldest sister-in-law started work in one of those British war-time factories, my husband could watch at a distance the bombing raids at Peterhead, near Edinburgh as a child & their eldest brother served on D-Day ships, etc. When my in-laws migrated to Australia in 1952, they did so on a converted troopship which had been damaged in WW2 but had been refitted for the purpose. 

Even sometimes when an author is alive and able to be involved in an adaptation of his or her works, the final product can end up being something that the author explicitly disapproves of... {Quote 2}

Even when a book is published the first time, the publisher might still order the author to make amendments for various legal reasons, such as plagiarism, defamation etc. I first became aware of this when chasing up quotes for some work I was doing. Second or more editions can also show or hide alterations for various reasons. And having followed the Harry Potter books, and the subsequent films, I am also aware of such alterations because of filmmaking, which JK Rowling has already pointed out, herself. 

@narnian78  It is understandable that Lewis would not like altering the timeline because it could be seen as tampering with an author’s work. Why would he have believed that unnecessary changes are acceptable? 

But since C.S. Lewis has passed away, I suspect he'd be far less upset about a time change, down the track 60 years later, than he might have been about altering Aslan's lion-like masculinity for even one film depiction.  And I doubt even in his wildest nightmares would he have anticipated the anti-colonialism agitation of the past 3 years, depicted in the news, let alone the return of some WW2 issues, which is why I think that Netflix has made this time frame alteration. 

Posted by: @narnian78

He chose the Victorian period for the beginning of The Magician’s Nephew.  Why would he want to see it changed to the 1950’s or any other time period when the Victorian period worked the best?

I'm not a fan of changing the time period of The Magician's Nephew, largely for reasons Courtenay mentioned. It just changes the "vibe" of the book too much for me. But I can't resist pointing out that C. S. Lewis was writing backward from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. His first thought with MN probably wasn't "what would be the ideal time period for this story to take place." It was "when would Prof. Kirke from the first book have been a child." 

Posted by: @waggawerewolf27

Aha! Thank you. I haven't heard of that TV adaptation which I assume was an American production & therefore may not have been ever available on TV in Australia.

Actually, it was made by ITV, Britain's first independent television channel (which broke the BBC’s monopoly of more than 3 decades).

Talking of American productions, though, there's another point that isn't often discussed. The 1979 animated adaptation of LWW was released in two different versions — one with the voices done by British actors, the other with American actors (except for the voice of Aslan, which was provided by Stephen Thorne in both cases). So it could be argued that not only was the period setting changed for this one — we're not told at all why the children are staying in the Professor's house, but their clothes are consistent with a 1970s setting — but, in the American version, the location was implicitly changed as well.

I don't know why that decision was made, although I would guess the idea of having American accents may have been to make young viewers in the US feel more at home with the story. Whereas to me — as an Australian, but one who grew up with a lot of British literature and television — Narnia is so quintessentially British that I can only imagine a version of it with American accents would feel totally jarring. (I've only ever seen the British accent version of the 1979 animation, which is the one that was shown on Australian TV.) But it does underscore the fact that even changing the implied location of the this-world scenes in that story doesn't necessarily have a huge impact on the plot, especially since so much of the action takes place in Narnia anyway.

MN, on the other hand, has a lot more of its plot set in our world than any of the other Narnia stories do, which is why I don't see how that setting can be changed (as it is being) without it altering the feel of the entire story.

Posted by: @waggawerewolf27

And I doubt even in his wildest nightmares would he have anticipated the anti-colonialism agitation of the past 3 years, depicted in the news, let alone the return of some WW2 issues, which is why I think that Netflix has made this time frame alteration. 

That's a possibility, although I can't think of any issues to do with colonialism and empire that have any real connection with the Narnia stories. MN in the original book is set at the height of the British Empire, but that really doesn't come into the plot at all, even tangentially. (In fact, the only empires depicted in the Chronicles are explicitly violent and destructive ones — Charn and Calormen — in contrast to Narnia, where there's never any sense throughout its history that its rulers have ever decided to conquer other lands and oppress their inhabitants and exploit their resources. Narnia just isn't like that.)

One thing's for sure — it'll be interesting to see what this Netflix version of MN actually does with the 1955 setting, let alone what LWW and subsequent films do with the modern or near-modern setting they'll have to have! (If they get made at all. ) 

@Courtenay (In fact, the only empires depicted in the Chronicles are explicitly violent and destructive ones — Charn and Calormen — in contrast to Narnia, where there's never any sense throughout its history that its rulers have ever decided to conquer other lands and oppress their inhabitants and exploit their resources. Narnia just isn't like that.) {Quote 1}

Except under Miraz, in PC, of course, when the native Narnians were driven underground, by the Telmarines, the descendants of pirates, who took over the place. Not to mention Governor Gumpas on the Lone Island, and the slave market that had been allowed to flourish there. And yes, that is precisely the picture of colonialism painted these days, since the then Prince Charles did the handover in Barbados on November 30/December 1, in 2021, when that country transferred from being a Constitutional Monarchy to a Republic, whose first President, Sandra Mason had been the Barbadian Governor-General. The following January, when the now Prince & Princess of Wales toured the Caribbean in 2022, there was quite the hullabaloo about colonialism & past slavery in places like The Bahamas or Jamaica, where the Prime Minister was pushing to do the same, claiming reparations for past mistreatment, such as slavery, which had been going on in that area ever since Christopher Columbus' 1492 arrival.

I'm not saying that UK was squeaky clean, because slavery has gone on since Biblical Jacob's 11th son, Joseph, was a lad, usually involving defeated enemies, even though Egyptology scholars would deny it. Just about every Eurasian empire, including the Moguls & China, & including more modern European empire-builders, like the Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Austrian, Italian & Dutch were every bit as guilty as the British until they saw things differently. But even before Queen Victoria's reign from 1837 to 22nd January in 1901, Great Britain's voting system had been cleaned up, in 1832, British subjects were forbidden to deal overseas in slavery in 1807, and slavery, in Britain itself, and elsewhere, in Canada & South Africa, for instance, was banned in 1833, thanks to William Wilberforce, whose plaque is in York Cathedral, which I have visited at least twice. And though in Queen Victoria's reign, all men, not only those who owned property or plenty of money, were enabled to vote in 1867 in the second Reform Act, India, previously more involved with trade, became the British Raj in 1858, famously ending in 1947, when it split up between India, itself, and Pakistan.  There were other additions, also, when after Germany claimed Northeast New Guinea in 1883, Great Britain claimed Papua in 1888, before transferring it into Australian hands, by 1905. (I should be saying this on the history thread, though ). 

And that is just the problem with Calormen, also. It does have some resemblance to the Ottoman Empire, & both were run on slavery, though we have no idea of Calomene colonies there, if any. Philip Pullman & his cohorts would be having a field day at the expense of a Narnia production. It doesn't make any difference that Shasta, as fair as his descent from Frank & Helen would suggest, was to be a slave, if Arsheesh & Anradin had anything to do with it. The Tisroc, with his "19 other sons", reminds me of Selim 1, also called Selim the Grim, who has been said to have murdered his 19 other brothers to ensure his ascent to the Ottoman throne (or divan). And who conquered all of the Middle east from the Turkish border to Egypt, dislodging the Mamelukes after the 29th May of 1453 Ottoman conquest of Constantinople. 

I don't know why that decision was made, although I would guess the idea of having American accents may have been to make young viewers in the US feel more at home with the story. {Quote 2}

When Harry Potter & the Philosopher's Stone was released first, the publishers also changed the American edition, including the title, which became Harry Potter & the Sorcerer's Stone, along with changing the spelling & any phrases that USA children might not understand into something more comprehensible. Translators also have to do similar things like that. I'm not surprised that American publishers would also reform the British turn of phrase in the Narnia Chronicles as well. 

Posted by: @waggawerewolf27

Except under Miraz, in PC, of course, when the native Narnians were driven underground, by the Telmarines, the descendants of pirates, who took over the place. Not to mention Governor Gumpas on the Lone Island, and the slave market that had been allowed to flourish there. And yes, that is precisely the picture of colonialism painted these days... 

Ah, true. (I was writing rather late at night last time.) But that was just my point — colonialism in the world of Narnia is ALWAYS portrayed as evil, regardless of who does it. That's the overall message: taking over other countries by force and exploiting their people and resources is wrong. It's a message that is very pertinent in the world today.

I've also said this before, but talking of Calormen, that particular empire specifically is portrayed as the kind of place we all love to hate these days: a society that's highly materialistic and hierarchical, with massive inequality between rich and poor and exploitation of the powerless by the powerful; a society that's deeply misogynistic (girls have no say in who they marry and there is zero evidence of women being allowed to participate in government or having any positions of power and influence), has no concept of human rights in general, practises slavery unabashedly, and one of the main ambitions of its rulers is to conquer as many other lands as possible.

Seriously, if future film-makers can be careful to portray Calormen in a way that doesn't make it look visually like an insulting send-up of any specific society in our world, it shows how forward-thinking the Chronicles actually are. Especially with the contrast with Narnia, where — when it's ruled as it should be, as we're assured it is for most of its history — an incredible diversity of sentient peoples live in peace and freedom, normally with no ambitions to harm or exploit others, and where anyone or anything that changes that (or tries to) is always understood as wrong and needs to be set right.

But we're going way off topic here, so I will leave off now!