Hi all,

I am pretty sure there has been threads like this one in the past, but I cannot find an exact match (or one near enough that it doesn't feel like I'm derailing the conversation off onto a tangent).

I keep saying repeatedly that "I want a faithful adaption of the books" - I think I like this phrase because it is vague, malleable and can mean whatever I want it to mean; I do not really define it.  But if that is what I am saying, it is not really fair for any film maker to be expected to create anything with that expectation - in fact, it is basically impossible for them to do so.

I personally find the 1979 Cartoon Adaption of the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, the 1988-1990 BBC adaptions and the 2005 Waldon adaption of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe to be faithful adaptions of the books.  I struggle more with the 2008 Prince Caspian, as it took significant liberties with character arcs and motivations and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader likewise had significant changes.  I cannot bring myself to say that these two are 'unfaithful adaptions' as the film makers did clearly try to largely follow the books, but I cannot bring myself to say that they are 'faithful adaptions' either.

I remember in 2005, having a conversation with someone who loves books, but is not such a big fan of movies.  That person was very critical of both the Peter Jackson 'The Lord of the Rings' trilogy and of the 2005 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe' for not being faithful to the source material.  I was surprised because I thought these were examples of movies where the film makers had gone to much trouble to ensure they respected the source material.  Talking further with that person, my impression was that they did not understand that in order to adapt a novel to film, you have to move from one media (narrative text) where certain artistic techniques work really well to a different media where other techniques work better.

Even the fact that 'a film script is usually written in double-space large font such that a page of script takes about one minute to read at a leisurely pace and maps to about one minute of screen time in the finished film as opposed to a novel, where a single page can contain twice as much text' made no impression on them.  My point was that to make a carbon copy of 60 pages of a novel would require a 2 hour film and that it is not realistic to take the 170 pages of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and expect a carbon copy of it to fit in a children's movie runtime.

To me, this seems extreme - and a movie does not need to be identical to the book to be faithful.  But what is required for it to be faithful?

I have heard people criticize the BBC adaptions as being too wooden and hitting the 'word-for-word' adaption, but lacking the heart of the original stories.  I have heard people criticize the Waldon The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe for not matching the 'feeling' of the book - which surprised me as it very much 'feels' like the book to me (I thought they nailed it).  So what is it that we really want from a Narnia film adaptation?

Recently, I felt somewhat frustrated with how the new adaption of The Magician's Nephew looks like it won't be faithful and entertained myself by taking Pauline Baynes art and using AI to animate it.  I think this was my little rebellion of "if they won't do a faithful adaption, then I'll make a pathetic little trailer of what I want, myself!"  But having worked on it, I discovered that what I was really dreaming of was a kind of "video book".  I.e. We have dramatized audio books, where a narrator reads the text with actors sometimes speaking the roles of individual characters to give a semi-audio play feeling to it.  I was imagining in my head a similar sort of thing, but with video added in to the audio.  (I was thinking of something like the children's shows: "Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends" where Ring Starr reads the books and acts the characters dialog for them, or "Peppa Pig" where the narrator essentially tells the story, except when characters speak their lines.  While I like watching Peppa Pig and Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends with my son, in practice, this would be basically a carbon copy of the book and not an adaption at all.  And I don't actually think I would find such an adaption inspired or enjoyable.

It also raised the question of "Why do I think a Narnian movie rendered in the artistic style of Pauline Baynes would be more likely to be a faithful adaptation?"  When I was wondering this, I came across this video about how Peter Jackson used the artwork of Alan Lee and John Howe for the design of the look of Middle Earth. It details why these Tolkien artists were essential for acceptance amongst the fans of a Middle Earth Adaption: The Artwork That Imagined Middle Earth.  I think the creator of this video makes a really good point.  I remember in 1992, seeing all the Tolkien Centenary books, with "Tolkien's World" - a collection of artwork inspired by The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and the illustrated Alan Lee edition of The Lord of the Rings.  Artwork inspired by Middle Earth was everywhere in bookstores for the next decade.  When I saw the Lord of the Rings movies, I thought "Wow!  That looks exactly how I always imagined it!"  The creator of the video points out, that for fans who had drenched themselves in all the artwork, we were always imagining Middle Earth the way that Alan Lee and John Howe had imagined it.  Hence, when we saw a movie where they were two of the main designers, of course it felt 'authentic'.  Do I like the idea of seeing Pauline Baynes art animated simply because I have trained myself to associate Narnia with the look she put in the illustrations on those pages of the books I read?

So I am now wondering, "What is it exactly that I actually want?" How far is too far when adapting?  And what do you think characterizes a good adaption?

I am not sure I have any answers to these questions (except I know what is too much when I see it).  I am curious though as to what others think?  What do you think makes a good Narnian adaption to film?