The 1979 animated production looked like a 1970’s version of Narnia with the style of animation. I didn’t care much for the way the Pevensies were drawn.  The creators took too many liberties in their modernization of Narnia.  The movie made for television didn’t look like an old fashioned fairy tale even in the part of the story that took place in Narnia. I think it is important that both The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and The Magician’s Nephew at least have a vintage look with the parts that take place in Narnia which have a medieval quality. Didn’t C. S. Lewis admire old things like classic literature? The BBC version and Walden films succeeded at least partially in having something that looked like a medieval fairy tale.  I hope that Greta Gerwig will do something similar with the Narnia portion of the story even if she uses the 1950’s timeline.  Then at least part of the movie will appear as it is described in the book.  But I am beginning to have my doubts about any portion of her film actually looking like authentic Narnia. Hopefully the places in Narnia in her film will have some resemblance to the book.

Posted by: @col-klink

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." 

I'm not entirely sure that's the case, when you consider that Lewis's timeline (written after he'd completed the books) places the events of MN in 1900, with Digory as a 12-year-old boy (born in 1888), whereas the events of LWW are set in 1940 (around the time when most of the wartime evacuations of children occurred). That makes Digory only 52 in 1940, which is really not consistent with LWW's description of him as a "very old man". Just one of many inconsistencies and problems with that timeline!!

I have heard it argued that maybe 52 just seems "very old" to young children, but I can't see that as a valid excuse. The descriptions of the Professor as having "shaggy white hair which grew over most of his face as well as his head", and of him muttering things like "what do they teach them at these schools?", seem to paint a picture of someone much older than his early 50s. So to me, that suggests Lewis really wasn't counting very precisely when he decided to set the book about the Professor's childhood in 1900. He was quite possibly thinking of the world of his own childhood and wanting to write about that, since that era obviously meant a lot to him. Whereas if he'd thought more carefully about the Professor's age in LWW — more likely in his 70s at least, or his 80s — he would probably have placed the events of MN somewhere around 1880 or 1870. That could have been done without any major changes to the story, but then it wouldn't have been the era he was born into... and we really don't know why he made the decisions about the period setting that he did make, anyway.

Posted by: @narnian78

The 1979 animated production looked like a 1970’s version of Narnia with the style of animation. I didn’t care much for the way the Pevensies were drawn.  The creators took too many liberties in their modernization of Narnia.  The movie made for television didn’t look like an old fashioned fairy tale even in the part of the story that took place in Narnia. I think it is important that both The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and The Magician’s Nephew at least have a vintage look with the parts that take place in Narnia which have a medieval quality.

It's true the 1979 animation of LWW doesn't have a "vintage" look (well, it does these days, actually... a vintage late 1970s look! ), but I will say this for it: it is otherwise really faithful to the original story, other than only a couple of minor changes (starting with Lucy's return through the wardrobe and telling her adventure in flashback, and leaving out Father Christmas). Which is why I can watch it and enjoy it for what it is, whereas I still cannot sit through the 2005 film of LWW — accurate to the period yet not accurate to the overall feeling of the story — without screaming. (And no, I'm not exaggerating there. ) 

@courtenay 

The Walden movies aren’t perfect, but I think they offer something of the books even though the story adaptation isn’t always great. The 2005 film has some departures from the original story such  as the Pevensies being chased onto ice by the wolves. But on the whole it isn’t that bad, and I see no reason to dislike the film completely.  It follows the timeline of the original book and the acting by the cast is quite good.  Prince Caspian has some issues with having a young adult playing a child’s role (Ben Barnes) and it has extensive battle scenes not in the book.  I actually disliked it when I first saw it, but now it doesn’t seem all that bad. Dawn Treader has been criticized much, but it is closer to the book than many critics would have us believe. The ship was beautifully designed. I think all three of the films offer some realism for Narnia and are fairly accurate in appearance for the time setting. The plot was changed too much in the second and third movies (e.g, lengthy battle scenes and the Green Mist).  To judge the three movies fairly you would have to watch all three of them at least once.  I wouldn’t quit after the first one.

Posted by: @narnian78

The 2005 film has some departures from the original story such  as the Pevensies being chased onto ice by the wolves. But on the whole it isn’t that bad and I see no reason to dislike the film completely.

And I do, just as you see reasons to dislike the 1979 animation completely and I don't... it's best summed up in the old saying, "There's no accounting for taste."  

Posted by: @narnian78

To judge them fairly you would have to watch all three of them at least once, I wouldn’t quit after the first one.

Which is why I deliberately don't make judgments about the later two films (except occasionally to refer to what others have said about them), precisely because I haven't seen them and I have no desire whatsoever to see them after how disappointing I found the first one. But we are getting way off the topic of reasons for the time period change in the upcoming adaptation of The Magician's Nephew here. 

That’s a really thoughtful take — and I agree, part of what makes Narnia feel so timeless is that medieval, storybook quality Lewis infused into his world. The older adaptations, even with their limitations, tried to preserve that sense of wonder rooted in classic imagery. The 1979 version definitely had that distinct 70s animation vibe, which can feel out of step with the tone of the books.

I’m also curious to see what Greta Gerwig does visually. She’s great at building atmosphere and emotion, but capturing that “old soul” of Narnia — the mix of ancient magic, quiet beauty, and moral gravity — is no easy task. If she manages to blend that vintage, medieval charm with modern storytelling, it could be something really special.

What is so special about the 1950’s?  I could understand using that decade for a movie about the television series Happy Days because that was time it was set.  But I don’t understand why the time should be used for Narnia. It seems so out of place. I don’t know if Lewis was thinking of Dickens at all when he wrote The Magician’s Nephew.  The time period was the late Victorian period after Dickens had passed away, but there were still a lot of things that probably were left from that time such as using horses for transportation.  The automobile had just been invented. but it was not in wide use. And there were not yet advances in medicine, which meant that Digory’s mother couldn’t have access to modern medical care, some of which was available in the 1950’s.  Her illness was such an important part of the story.  I wonder if Greta Gerwig will give it the significance it has in the book.  And most importantly, I wonder if Aslan will be given the respect he deserves.

Posted by: @narnian78

What is so special about the 1950’s?  I could understand using that decade for a movie about the television series Happy Days because that was time it was set.  But I don’t understand why the time should be used for Narnia. It seems so out of place.

I'm still leaning towards the theory that's come up a couple of times in this discussion: it's very possible that the choice of the 1950s setting for The Magician's Nephew is not because Greta Gerwig sees something particularly special about the 1950s, but because her broader intention is to set the this-world scenes of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and the rest of the Chronicles in the present or near-present day.

That will be the inescapable effect of having MN set in 1955. LWW has to come some decades after that — 40 years according to that not-always-trustworthy "official" timeline, but it could easily be longer, especially if they want Digory to be a genuinely old man when we re-encounter him as the Professor. So regardless of what other effects the 1955 setting for MN may have on that particular story, the long-range result is that the setting (on Earth) for LWW and all the subsequent stories will have to be any time from circa 1995 up to the mid-2020s.

We don't know what the reasoning behind this is, or what implications it will have on the way the rest of the Chronicles are told. It may not affect the way Narnia itself is portrayed, but it will certainly affect how the characters from our world are portrayed. And it IS what's going to happen — provided this Netflix series gets beyond the first instalment — so all we can do is brace ourselves for it and see how it turns out.

@courtenay 

I don’t like the idea of having The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe set in the present day.   That may be the reason she is placing The Magician’s Nephew at a later time, although it is not known for certain.  If that is what Greta Gerwig is planning then that adaptation will not be in agreement with Lewis’s timeline. I don’t think attempts to modernize Narnia are showing respect for the author C. S. Lewis.  It doesn’t seem like either adaptation would be set in the same time as the books.  But since a second film may be at least several years in the future perhaps it is too soon to speculate. I am not very optimistic that the project will be faithful to the book. 

@narnian78 I don't like the idea either — we had a discussion here on NarniaWeb some time ago about people's thoughts on a new adaptation of LWW being set in the present day (the premise being that the book's setting of 1940 was the recent past for the original readers when it was first published in 1950), and almost nobody was in favour of it.

However, it IS what's going to happen with any sequels to the upcoming adaptation of MN. Since MN is to be set in 1955, the earliest LWW, as its sequel, can be set is 1995. That's not exactly the present day, since it's (only just) before most of the major technological advances that would really have an impact on the child characters from our world and how they think and communicate. In 1995 (when I was in my early teens), the internet was in its infancy, social media hadn't yet been invented, and mobile phones were around but they weren't yet very common, and they were just phones, not mini computers. But that's still a very different world from the one that the children in Lewis's books inhabit before and after their visits to Narnia.

There's also the possibility that the setting of LWW and subsequent instalments may be moved into the 21st century, perhaps even into the current decade, with the speculation that the COVID pandemic of 2020-21 may be used as the excuse for the Pevensie children to be "isolated" at the Professor's house. (As I explained in an earlier post in this thread, that is extremely unlikely unless they happened to be there already at the time the lockdown was declared in the UK — and as this is all within very recent memory, the film-makers would not get away with making it historically inaccurate.)

Again, we do not know what effects all this will have on the actual stories and the way they're told on screen. We don't yet even know exactly what MN-set-in-1955 is going to be like. But if that adaptation is to have sequels — and we do know Greta Gerwig has been commissioned to make at least two Narnia movies for Netflix, so that means at least one sequel — then the setting of them in the present day or the recent past is unavoidable.

And no, obviously these are not going to be highly faithful to what C.S. Lewis wrote. That ship has sailed, as someone else here said recently in another thread — we've already established that with the changes to MN that we're aware of. Very few genuinely devoted fans of Narnia seem to be comfortable with all this. But as far as anyone can see, that's what we're getting. We can only wait to see what the results are like.

@narnian78 What is so special about the 1950’s?

I understand that 1955 was when the Magician's Nephew was published. The first of the Narnian chronicles series in chronological order, it tells of how Narnia came to be, as well as the end of Charn. One of this book's main themes is that there is a right way to do things, and a wrong way as well. We see in the Hall of statues how good rulers deteriorated into ruthless tyrants, and how Jadis destroyed her country irredeemably just to get her own way. 

1955 was a decade after the end of WW2, a horrible war which engulfed us in opposition to Hitler's Nazi regime, and in which my own father served fighting the irresistible Japanese onslaught on Timor and Papua New Guinea, bombing Darwin in the process. That war finished finally on 15th August, USA having bombed Nagasaki & Hiroshima to bring about the ending of that war. The devastating consequences on those cities also influenced how the Cold War between USSR & USA was conducted, and when China saw its future in Communism, we also had the Korean War (plus endless repeats of M.A.S.H.) 

In 1955, according to Wikipedia, the following happened - and this is only in January, mind:

• January 3 – José Ramón Guizado becomes president of Panama.
• January 17 – USS Nautilus, the first nuclear-powered submarine, puts to sea for the first time, from Groton, Connecticut.
• January 18–20 – Battle of Yijiangshan Islands: The Chinese Communist People's Liberation Army seizes the islands from the Republic of China (Taiwan).
• January 22 – In the United States, The Pentagon announces a plan to develop intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), armed with nuclear weapons.
• January 23 – The Sutton Coldfield rail crash kills 17, near Birmingham, England.
• January 25 – The Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union announces the end of the war between the USSR and Germany, which began during World War II in 1941.
• January 28 – The United States Congress authorizes President Dwight D. Eisenhower to use force to protect Taiwan from the People's Republic of China.

Sounds nice & peaceful, doesn't it?    Though I have not kept the hyperlinks, I bolded the bits for an ongoing problem, still with us in 2025, 70 years afterwards, even though the USSR finished in 1992, to be replaced by Putin's Russia. And as those who predict "the end of the world" might tell us, the much-feared Armageddon seems to be still around the corner, if not the long expected "Rapture", when "the trump shall resound and the Lord shall descend", according to Horatio Spafford's hymn.

1955 was a year, when the end of the world might seem just all too nigh, when we dreamed of how history could have been different, and when Jadis' "Deplorable Word" or some nuclear equivalent, seemed only too likely. That was when I first heard of Narnia, a land of ice & snow, caught up in what could have been a foretold nuclear winter, only broken by Aslan & his self-sacrifice to save Edmund from the consequences of his treachery. A land that could be reached only through a wardrobe, filled with fur coats, which, at first, I thought were cakes. But it was also the year when we all had measles, mumps & other nasties, but when the Salk vaccine for polio, was developed in USA. It was before Australia got television at all, and it was only black & white, until we finally got colour television in 1975. It was also when widespread flooding in rural NSW, not only in the Hunter region to the north of Sydney was a major problem. 

I can understand why a change of time frame might be adopted, for the filming of MN, when the attitudes prior to 1900, when C.S. Lewis was about two years old, himself, might seem a trifle too self-satisfied, like Uncle Andrew, two centuries ago. But even in 1955, such attitudes did remain, & still in the present. Lewis made Digory, ten years older than himself, but to call that boy an elderly man, his facial features obscured by white whiskers, at the age of 52, by 1939 or 1940, shows how time was so relative to C.S. Lewis, himself, born 29/11/1898 who passed away when he was only 64 years of age on 22/11/1963, and when his wife was only 45 when she passed away, a mere 4 years after their 1956 nuptials, when the Last Battle was published on 4th September. Not even my husband on his 90th birthday last Friday looks anywhere as whiskery as Lewis suggested for his professor in LWW, though he is undeniably elderly.

And since that change is to be the case, all we can do is hope for the best. 

@waggawerewolf27 

The Magician’s Nephew may have been published in 1955, but the time setting in the book was the late Victorian period. C. S.  Lewis went through a detailed description of that time period with even having his characters talk and act like that time (e.g. Aunt Letty and Uncle Andrew).  To make them act like people from the 1950’s would modernize their character too much. It would make the people seem out of place. So the time period meant a lot to Lewis and the filmmakers should respect that too. Even though some important events happened in the 1950’s that isn’t enough of a reason to change the time setting. There is no need to create a different time period when the one in the book serves the story so well.  I think the old saying applies here (and I have mentioned this before), “If it isn’t broken don’t fix it”.  It doesn’t make any sense to me why anyone would want to change it.

@narnian78  To make them act like people from the 1950’s would modernize their character too much.

Maybe to you, but not to me, when people in the 1950's were more often than not, people like C.S. Lewis, himself, born in 1898, two years younger than my grandmother & her elder sisters, plus their mother, who died in October in 1955. In an era when it was a disgrace to be divorced, when despite women working hard in factories plus elsewhere during both World Wars, married women were supposed to stay at home, children or no children, & when most people still went to church, regularly. And when people gave snobbishness short shrift, whilst still flattered at receiving medals & other well-earned accolades. I was trying to explain just what a nerve-wracking "end of the world" scenario it was in the 1950's, before 22/11/1963, when C.S. Lewis passed away, himself, the same day that John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the then president, was assassinated, a year after the 13-day October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, the closest we ever came to a complete nuclear war since 15/8/1945. The changes that you say put a stamp on the modern era so inescapably mainly happened after that particular 1963 date, such as the Civil Rights Movement in USA, and the rise of the Common Market in Europe, when I guess that you & most Narnia Webbers were born, & when I'm old enough to be a grandmother.   

Yes, 1900's was the beginning of a new century, & in Australia, a new country as well. But those alive at the time were also feeling at the end of an epoch, with the Old Queen obviously dying, just like happened again in both 1952 & 2022. And also, a century earlier, when in the wake of the American Revolution of 1776, 3 other revolutions were convulsing that world irretrievably, in particular, the French Revolution & the ensuing Batavian Revolution of 1795. 

If the BBC or Walden Media had made The Magician’s Nephew it might have been something more accurate to the original book. It is difficult to say what would have happened to the time setting.  I don’t think Douglas Gresham would have approved of changing the time, but since he can no longer be involved in making films about Narnia we have to trust the work to other people.  I am not sure that Greta Gerwig and the others involved care that much about accuracy, but I hope they will show more of a desire to preserve what is in the book. The time setting may not be the only thing that is changed, although now it is too early to know for certain what will be done. Even if the movie doesn’t win any awards it needs to be something respectable. It doesn’t sound like anything that I would want permanently in my collection, although I am somewhat curious to see what it will be like. Unfortunately it looks like the new film will be more of Greta Gerwig’s Narnia than the world created by C. S. Lewis. 

@narnian78 The 1979 animated production looked like a 1970’s version of Narnia with the style of animation. I didn’t care much for the way the Pevensies were drawn.  The creators took too many liberties in their modernization of Narnia.

I watched this production last night, and I rather enjoyed it when I hadn't seen it for a while. The style of clothes the Pevensies wore, didn't look at all out of place for the 1940's & 1950's except that boys wore short pants until they were in their teens, until the 1960's when we became more relaxed & started to wear jeans or slacks all the time.  Whilst girls' hemlines went to their knees until in the 1970's, mini dresses were the fashion. The original first edition of LWW had Susan & Lucy frolicking with Aslan on the front cover. Lucy wore the sort of blue dress tied up at the back with a sash, which I remember wearing, myself, even when in a girls' home, & which went out of fashion for even little girls by the 1960's. Whilst Susan wore a skirt & pullover (or jumper, sweater or whatever you might call it) as befits a girl of about 10. In the final chase after the White Stag, the adult Pevensies wore garb befitting the reign of Yorkist English king Edward IV (1461-1470, then 1471-1483, when he died). That would be late Medieval, prior to the Tudor Renaissance period. 

I thought the battle scenes animation was a bit stilted to what we have become used to in these 21st century times. The old professor looked as ancient as C.S. Lewis suggested in LWW, though hairy, bearded professors, wearing tweed jackets with leather patches on the elbow & even high school teachers tend to dress in stereotypical fashion, not only in literature. (My younger brother-in-law said he grew a beard to emphasize his authority as a teacher ).  There were deleted scenes of how the Pevensies passed their Narnian time as kings & queens, with Susan becoming Susan the Valiant whilst Lucy became Lucy the Wise, which is not how they are supposed be depicted. The movie started with Lucy coming out of the wardrobe for the 1st time, so there wasn't any need for any explanation of what era it was or why the children were staying with the Professor. On the DVD cover, it was titled "From the Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe". It looked like the other six books could have been done in similar fashion, but the producers never got around to it. The copyright on my DVD was 2005, when Madman, the company that produced it, did reproduce other such older movies for public amusement. 

 @narnian78 If the BBC or Walden Media had made The Magician’s Nephew it might have been something more accurate to the original book. It is difficult to say what would have happened to the time setting.

Well, maybe. But once BBC filmed The Silver Chair, they couldn't go back to film Barbara Kellerman as Jadis in Charn, when they had just been filming her as "The Lady of the Green Kirtle". Whilst Mark Gordon was all for filming Magician's Nephew, to take advantage of having Tilda Swinton as Jadis, rather than The Silver Chair, to take advantage of having Will Poulter as Eustace, the box-office return was also another consideration, with both potential films hanging around on IMDb for ages as being in pre-production. But Will Poulter grew too old, whilst Tilda Swinton didn't want to play a younger Jadis, I understand.  It is a pity, because between 2011 & 2021, I think a Walden Magician's Nephew, in particular, might well have been better received then, before the pandemic & the death of Queen Elizabeth II, which seems like an age away, with all these protests in UK & here in Australia, as well as elsewhere. 

On the other hand, what other alterations would Walden have made? 

@waggawerewolf27 

I think Walden probably would have kept the time setting in The Magician’s Nephew since it was the same as in the books in the three films. Although the story adaptation wasn’t perfect in the three films the filmmakers did a pretty good job on the movies’ appearance. The part of the story that took place in our world would have looked like Victorian England.  Probably another actress would have to play Jadis because it was at least several years after the making of Dawn Treader.  Assuming that Dawn Treader did well enough at the box office (much better than it actually did) another film could have been made on the same budget. I think Walden would have made a film that at least looked like the original book. I don’t think many alterations to the story were necessary since the plot of the book was very adaptable. It had been done once before with Focus on the Family Radio Theatre. I think the story probably could have been adapted for a movie version as well.