So I'm not getting great vibes from The Magician's Nephew movie right now, but I'm still interested in the movie of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe that will (presumably) follow. Which is weird since a few months ago, I would have said Greta Gerwig would be better at directing an MN movie than an LWW one. (That was mainly because one of the most powerful parts of her Little Women movie was about a family watching helplessly as a member died, which is also part of The Magician's Nephew. To be fair, that part of her first Narnia movie could still be good.) Here are my reasons.
- There have been more adaptations of LWW than MN and IMO only a couple of them have been really good. (I won't say which ones I consider good and which bad since that would derail this discussion.) Even if Netflix's LWW movie is really bad, I'll be more desensitized to it than I am to a bad MN adaptation. Recently, on a Patreon exclusive video, Impending Doom talked about a dreadful stage adaptation of LWW he'd seen (it was NOT the Logos Theatre one) and instead of being outraged, I just felt like laughing about it. I'm not sure I can do that with a bad MN movie.
- This may seem to contradict my first point, but I feel like I have more adaptations to fall back on with LWW. I may consider very few of them to be good but at least they all keep the book's time period (except for the 1979 cartoon) and have Aslan voiced by a male actor. Maybe if Netflix's LWW movie turns out really bad, it'll make me appreciate those other adaptations more. If the MN movie turns out really bad...well, I guess it might make me appreciate the BBC radio drama, which I dislike, more. I already appreciate the FOTF radio drama.
- Fantasia and I debated this in another thread (sorry, I can't remember which one) but I feel there are more period trappings in MN than in LWW. The setting for the "our world" parts of the latter is an ancient mansion, deep in the country. That feels just as exotic and outside of time nowadays as it did in the 40s or 50s. The movie just needs some excuse to get the Pevensies there.
- Because I've really liked so few LWW adaptations, I can't help but wonder if there's some quality in the text itself that works better as a book, so I can (begrudgingly) understand an adaptation making big changes to it. There haven't been enough bad adaptations of MN for me to consider that possibility.
Of course, all those points are contentious, and I don't expect anyone to agree with all of them. But is there anyone who's not feeling good about the MN movie but still holds out hope for the LWW movie for their own reasons?
For better or worse-for who knows what may unfold from a chrysalis?-hope was left behind.
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In terms of what I think is your main point, I agree that the greater abundance of LWW adaptations in general does raise ones tolerance for adaptation changes.
LWW is probably not quite at the same level just yet as, say, Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol, whereby audiences would probably demand a fresh twist on the original material by now, but I think that's merely a matter of enough time passing.
That said, I don't think there is enough good cause to give up hope on MN entirely, given that almost every detail we know so far about the project are aesthetic ones.
It's a common refrain on the forum to hear people implore the filmmakers.to look beneath the surface of the book and to get it's inherent themes and messages and characters right, therefore I think it's a tad premature to.lambast them for changing superficial details that pertain merely to aesthetics ... Just yet.
@icarus I've tried but I just can't imagine a good adaptation of The Magician's Nephew making frequent use of pop music. It just does not compute. 
For better or worse-for who knows what may unfold from a chrysalis?-hope was left behind.
-The God Beneath the Sea by Leon Garfield & Edward Blishen check out my blog!
Topic starter
Posted : November 17, 2025 1:09 pm
DavidD liked
@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.
Judging from what we have seen so far in the production of MN, it could well be that what @narnian78 has said elsewhere, about this old 1979 LWW production, & which I have quoted here, would also be true for yet another production of LWW, if it is truly the second film Greta Gerwig is contracted to do.
@col-klink So I'm not getting great vibes from The Magician's Nephew movie right now, but I'm still interested in the movie of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe that will (presumably) follow.
And that would be doubled in a similar view of LWW, especially if it is the aesthetics that bother people. The aesthetics is one thing that Walden did get right with its 2004 filming of LWW, especially on Lucy's first entry into Narnia, which still gives me goosebumps just remembering it. Yes, Walden & Disney did spend heaps on that production, even having a well-attended display in Sydney's Powerhouse Museum, afterwards, to admire their rendition of the White Witch, especially.
I agree with you that it doesn't compute to use pop music for Magician's Nephew, and I hope that should not be the case. But when MN is similarly an American production, like I thought the 1979 LWW production was, I can't see them using Rule Britannia or anything like it, either, however applicable it might be, especially in the original 1900's London scenes. 
It would annoy far too many people like nobody's business, in my opinion, just from reading the news from the past 5 years. 
This post was modified 3 weeks ago 6 times by waggawerewolf27