After Amy Pascal's "Rock N Roll" quote, the 1950s time shift, and Mark Ronson coming on board as the composer (not to mention Jadis's disco inspired dress), this really shouldn't have been that surprising or shocking... and yet this absolutely floored me.

Still not in a "this is definitely going to be terrible" way, but in a "woah, this is either going to be absolutely spectacular or a total mess" sort of way.

Weird though that both of the bands cited as points of comparison are from the late 1960s and early 1970s (not the 1950s). Given that they presumably could have picked any decade they wanted when changing it, why not match the setting to the music?

It seems so out of place to have rock music in a Narnia movie.  It's not that I dislike rock music by itself, but it is something that will not work with the medieval atmosphere of a fairy tale.  Of course the music may have been too modern in the Walden films, but at least it was quite listenable and didn't go completely against the medieval style of the books.  I  don't think C. S. Lewis would have approved, but that doesn't concern Greta Gerwig very much. I will most likely not be buying any soundtracks of Greta Gerwig's Narnia films, and I am not sure if I even want to see them.

It’s one thing if music is implemented into the London scenes, but the idea of contemporary songs in Narnia itself seems like a such an immersion breaker…

But I don’t want to get too carried away with Gelfond’s comments. He comes across as one of those “how do you do, fellow kids” types, desperately trying to be relevant with what he thinks his IMAX audience wants. 

Well, this confirms that this won't be at all a "traditional" adaptation like the 2005 The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe movie was, and instead be something with a more bold (and potentially polarizing) artistic stamp from the director.

While I'm somewhat sad we won't ever get a regular version of The Magician's Nephew, I am curious to see Gerwig's vision play out.  It could be very faithful with Lewis's themes, but with a more modern edge, or it could be a total deconstruction of what Narnia is.

Right now I'm thinking this will be the best Narnia film and the worst adaption, but it will be hard to say for sure until I actually see it.

Posted by: @ghost93

Right now I'm thinking this will be the best Narnia film and the worst adaption

I don't even like rock music as its own thing, so I'm not even expecting that much now. 

I honestly am not too sure what to make of it.  Whilst "unbelievably contemporary" music and rock & roll of the Pink Floyd and The Doors variety is not something I would generally associate with Narnia, I can see some "contemporary" music (of the era) potentially being used in a 1950s setting of our world in the film - although I'm not sure how it would work in a Narnia setting.  That said, Gelfond's comments read to me how @impending-doom understood the comments - he appears to just be trying to promote it to the type of audience he thinks would like it.

One further thing, I would say about this comment - with the mentioning of Pink Floyd and The Doors, it makes me think that for the kids of today, these bands were what many of their grandparents were listening to - which reminds me of the line at the beginning of MN, "this is a story about something that happened long ago when your grandfather was a child."

What a mish-mash... '50s setting, but opting for '60s and '70s music? And I don't know how any of it will work in the Other Worlds and Narnia itself!

Potentially the score could be really atmospheric... But in no way of a traditional Narnia sense. I wasn't keen on one quote almost sounding like they are only thinking of IMAX goers for the music. I hope that isn't the sole reasoning for the choice! 

i am prepared to go into this aware that it'll be a more 'out there' adaptation. I really want to give it a chance.

Yeah... like most others here, I'll still give this a go — I need to see what it's like — but the overall attitude of the filmmakers really does seem to be "Wooohooooo, let's make this version of Narnia as outlandishly DIFFERENT as we possibly can!!" Which... considering this fantasy series is a classic of 75+ years' standing, this episode of it hasn't been adapted for the screen before, and the entire series is borderline sacred (I mean that literally) to quite a lot of fans — well, I'm not sure what kind of audience they're aiming to please with this adaptation, honestly.

And as for "unbelievably contemporary"... er, um... as people have already pointed out, Pink Floyd and The Doors are not "contemporary" with the 1950s setting of this adaptation. But they're not "contemporary" for today's audience either. They're not even "contemporary" for me, as a Narnia fan who was born in the early 1980s — those bands were old hat when I was a kid! Let alone for the generation who should be a big part of the target audience, i.e. those who are kids right now, born in the 2010s or even '20s. I wonder what they're going to make of this movie, especially if they've already read the books or seen previous adaptations of Narnia?

No, honestly, all I can say is, I do need to see this film at least once, if only to find out what on earth they are actually doing with Narnia — or to Narnia — and then, if I don't like it, at least I'll never need to watch it again.

(And as I've said before, if it REALLY bombs... well, I'll feel sorry for Greta Gerwig — I don't think she's at all a bad person, just perhaps a bit misguided — but if this adaptation fails so spectacularly that Netflix drops the rest of the series, well, hopefully that may open the way for some more orthodox adaptations in future. And it would be a salutary lesson to future filmmakers on the perils of messing with the classics. ) 

Posted by: @courtenay

Yeah... like most others here, I'll still give this a go — I need to see what it's like — but the overall attitude of the filmmakers really does seem to be "Wooohooooo, let's make this version of Narnia as outlandishly DIFFERENT as we possibly can!!"

To be fair, it’s worth pointing out that Rich Gelfond isn’t creatively involved in this film at all. He’s not a producer, not an executive on the project — nothing. His job is to raise enthusiasm (and stock prices) for his technology company, and those prices jumped about 8% after the presentation.

If we’re putting ourselves in his shoes, he was speaking to a business crowd whose only awareness of Narnia is probably some vague idea of it being a fantasy bedtime story for children. In that context, it makes sense that he’d try to frame the project in a way that gets them excited.

The problem is that he’s a 70-year-old executive who is, as respectfully as I can put it, a bit out of touch and doesn’t really know what actually gets audiences excited 🙄 

Posted by: @impending-doom

The problem is that he’s a 70-year-old executive who is, as respectfully as I can put it, a bit out of touch and doesn’t really know what actually gets audiences excited 🙄 

Yes, as I was saying, it is rather a while since large numbers of people got really excited about The Doors and Pink Floyd. Now if he'd thrown The Beatles into the mix, that would possibly have got the biggest reaction of all...  

Like...I CAN see a vision where more modern or rock inspired music weirdly fits the atmosphere, it's just not at all something I would have expected. It's been a long time since I've seen it, but didn't the 80s fantasy movie "Legend" with Tom Cruise and Tim Curry have more modern music?  Maybe Gerwig's Narnia music will be something like that.

Would the musical Les Misérables be considered a rock opera? Because I love the music from it and I'm trying to salvage this Magician's Nephew movie for me.  

Would the word, "contemporary" be just another way of saying, that the music for Magician's Nephew is not simply derivative of someone else's music from the past, but rather it is completely original for a change? I just hope I will enjoy it as much as I enjoyed Enya's music in the 2000's, which chimed in so much with the Lord of the Rings movies. 

As @col-klink has said, and I agree with her, entirely, the musical, Les Misérables, could not be considered a rock opera. But the music from that 2012 show was miles different from an earlier, 1935 filming of Victor Hugo's book, which contained one particular scene, in which Marius links arms with three other men, singing a revolutionary song of some sort, the music of which I've never forgotten entirely. Every now and then, that particular piece of music still rises in my brain, unbidden, & gives me earworms for a while. Does Judy Garland's song, Somewhere, over the Rainbow, still resonate in many people's memory?  

Posted by: @waggawerewolf27

Does Judy Garland's song, Somewhere, over the Rainbow, still resonate in many people's memory?  

It certainly does. That song was orchestral and beautiful. It fit within the context of the movie and became symbolic of the movie.

But what, oh what, are they doing with Narnia?! When I first saw the IMAX CEO quote, I was so disgusted by it that I didn't even bother to follow up on it for nearly 24 hours. As of now, it is so easy to see that this movie is going in the wrong direction when considering faithfulness of adaptation. A female voice for Aslan, a time shift in the setting, a costume on Jadis that looks like it is straight out of a '60s television sci-fi, and now a rock soundtrack that seems instrumental to the movie in some way, but not diegetic to the new setting.

Between the gogo boots and the Pink Floyd reference, one wonders if Gerwig is making a successor to Barbie rather than a faithful adaptation of Narnia. 

-Scratch that. This isn't "your grandmother's Narnia." We know that now. So, forget everything you were expecting for this adaptation, kids. We're going to get what Gerwig wants to make, whether we like it or not. The main questions now are if it will be true enough to the themes of the story to placate Narnia fans, and if it will be successful enough to even make a dent in the public consciousness. I wonder if general audiences will take one look at the trailer and say "*Yawn* It looks like they're trying too hard [to be catchy, edgy, etc]," before doomscrolling past it to the next TikTok.

If Gerwig was working on an inspired rock-opera version of Narnia, I could see that being fun as a concept album or an off-Broadway play, but as the first cinematic adaptation of The Magician's Nephew and the start of a brand new Narnia franchise,  this seems like a serious misstep.

Can someone remind me of how we got here? Whatever happened to an NCU (Narnia Cinematic Universe) with both "movies and shows," indicating a large, unified, fantasy world sprawling across multiple projects? Are they no longer doing that, or did no one consider fidelity to the books an essential criterion for such a unified vision? Sheesh. The Lewis Estate should have let Walden make The Magician's Nephew next. As disappointed as I would have been with Walden delaying The Silver Chair for a few years, at least it would have been reasonable to believe that all seven books would be filmed within the decade and in a way that was coherent to Adamson's vision, which at least had passable aesthetics of the setting. Walden's Dawn Treader had its eccentricities, but adaptation-wise, it looks like Holes compared to the unfaithfulness of the Netflix project.