@fantasia Thanks for the response. It sounds like you're more worried about plot implications and I'm more worried about iconic imagery. Both The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and The Magician's Nephew have iconic imagery in the "this world" sections of the plots, but MN has more that depends upon time period IMO. 

BTW, why would it drive you crazy if they made Digory a relative of the Pevensies? That change doesn't sound so crazy to me by Hollywood standards.  

Sorry, just reposting this, as there was a glitch as it was going through the first time, and now I've read your new post, @fantasia, it's a response to your points as well. (I've been having laptop troubles as well as website problems lately and I always save a copy of what I write here before posting!) 

@col-klink Must say I agree there. LWW has already been adapted twice (1967 and 1979) with an updated time period setting and it didn't have any major effect on the story itself. The entire concept that LWW depends on the WW2 setting is an interpretation cooked up by more recent adaptations and fans of the same.

How can we tell? Take the book itself, remove the one reference to the war in the second sentence, and if you read the rest with no knowledge of the period it's set in, what evidence do you have that it's a wartime setting? Absolutely none. It could be just about any decade in the 20th century, except maybe the 1990s. We really are not given enough details of the outside world, beyond the Professor's old house, to anchor it in any exact time period. 

Whereas in MN, Lewis invests a LOT more in the this-world setting. He makes a big deal of it in the first paragraph — locating the time period precisely by name-dropping Sherlock Holmes and the Bastables (from Edith Nesbit's The Treasure Seekers) — and going on to describe all sorts of little details throughout the chapters that are set in London. Things like how "everyone had lots of servants in those days", or the fancy clothes Uncle Andrew dresses up in when he's trying to impress Jadis, or all the excitement of the street scene with the smashed hansom cab and the "damaged" policeman and Uncle Andrew's top hat getting jammed over his head and all the various local Londoners calling out their opinions of Jadis and of the whole situation... Basically, you get the impression that Lewis is remembering snippets from his own childhood (though that was in Belfast, not London, but many of the details of clothes and social customs and so on would have been similar) and that he's having a huge amount of fun bringing these scenes to life as part of this story.

So no, I don't agree that the time period change will affect LWW (and the subsequent stories) more than it does MN. Quite the opposite, simply because Lewis makes a far greater deal of the specific period setting in MN (London, 1900) than he does in any of the other books at all. Changing that period setting for MN will definitely have an impact on the atmosphere of much of the first half of the story. Whether that will make it an interesting and compelling new "take" on the story, or else just ruin it entirely, remains to be seen. 

Posted by: @col-klink

It sounds like you're more worried about plot implications and I'm more worried about iconic imagery.

Yes on both points. You and @Courtenay both, and that's fine. I know I'm very much in the minority. But I think further discussion should probably move back to the 1950s thread.  

Posted by: @courtenay

I've been having laptop troubles as well as website problems lately and I always save a copy of what I write here before posting!

But to continue the off-topic conversation on this thread  I want to respond to this. The latest round to the big news has increased visitors to the forum, which has increased the load on the server. And the server isn't handling it well, as you've clearly noticed. The powers-that-be are going to try a fix sometime this week or weekend and when that happens the forum will suddenly change to read-only mode as they move it to a bigger and better server. HOPEFULLY everything will go well, but in the meantime you're wise to save your posts. 

I was wondering if some people would watch all three Walden films in order to evaluate them. Or would it be the same thing as contributing your money towards something that you may disagree with such as funding Greta Gerwig’s movies when you don’t like what she is doing with Narnia?  It is true that a few dollars won’t make much difference, but you may feel a little hypocritical supporting her movies. Actually, I don’t see why someone would want to quit after watching the first Walden film since all three of the films have something of the books’ spirit in them to make them worthwhile watching.  It is true that they are far from perfect, but they may turn out to be more faithful adaptations than what Greta Gerwig is planning.