Welcome to Narniaweb bardiafox7 ! Those are really good points! You're right; the dream does make Aslan forgiving Jill all the more beautiful.

I'm rereading SC and one thing that occurs to me as a likely change is the struggle on the cliff with Jill and Eustace. In the book, Eustace comes to save her, but she's so scared that she's lost control of her arms and legs and the struggle results in Eustace plunging over the cliff.

It reminds me a lot of how lifeguards say that sometimes a drowning person will appear to "fight" you when you're trying to save them: they're so desperate to keep their heads above water and survive that they grab onto anything, sometimes pushing their rescuer under water and endangering them both. The problem is, if you don't know this, you might think that the panicking drowning person was being a jerk, thinking only of saving themselves, when the reality is that they're in a primal survival mode. Jill seems to be in a similar state in the scene of the cliff, so I'm concerned that she'll come across as deliberately endangering Eustace when she was really just panicking.

I wouldn't be surprised if, instead, the filmmakers have a bit of the cliff give way with Jill standing on it and she falls down, only just holding on, and in the act of Eustace going to help her and helping her back up to safety, the faulty piece of cliff gives way completely under him. So it's still her fault that he fell because she was showing off and caused the whole problem, but there's no issue of Jill looking like a murderer. (Then again, though, I really do like that Eustace line about her trying to murder him. I love their bickering.)

I'm also a bit worried that, if this scene isn't done right, it might come across as humorous, especially if the fall happens very fast and suddenly... people falling off cliffs has been used for comic relief a bit too much. No Wilhelm screams, please.

I wouldn't be surprised if, instead, the filmmakers have a bit of the cliff give way with Jill standing on it and she falls down, only just holding on, and in the act of Eustace going to help her and helping her back up to safety, the faulty piece of cliff gives way completely under him. So it's still her fault that he fell because she was showing off and caused the whole problem,

That is something I can differently see the filmmakers doing, wanting to make that scene as exciting and thrilling as they possibly can, regardless of whether or not they are considered about some members of the audience misinterpreting Jill's panic as deliberately putting Eustace in danger.

I'm also a bit worried that, if this scene isn't done right, it might come across as humorous, especially if the fall happens very fast and suddenly... people falling off cliffs has been used for comic relief a bit too much.

Yeah that true, as someone who is afraid heights I personally don't really find anyone falling from a great height funny,(unless it's completely over-the-top) but I see you're point, the filmmakers will definitely have to take care to convey how terrifying it is for the characters.

No, I don't think Jill could say anything "scornfully"...

Ah, I actually meant before she looked over the cliff and saw how high it was. She was annoyed with Eustace when he jerked her back before she had a look over, and "when she saw how very white he had turned, she despised him." So I could imagine her saying something regrettable in that moment as she walks up to the edge of the cliff to show off.

Fair point. I'll have to reread the book. But unless the bullying at Experiment House had permeated everyone there to some degree, wouldn't common sense and human decency stop Jill from being too "scornful"? I could imagine her saying something like "leave me alone" or "I can look after myself", but not anything rude to Eustace, himself, however white he looked.

As for the dream sequence I don't know why we would have to see Aslan - just a voiceover and perhaps a toy lion might do mightn't it? Jill might not have seen much from her window, but it is always possible she might have noticed something that didn't feel quite right. And I'd imagine the puzzlement of having forgotten something important might well disturb her sleep. After all, she got into one of the E's in "under me".

I wonder how far these giants would have to go south to meet a talking stag. They don't have to struggle with the terrain quite as much as Jill, Eustace and Puddleglum. And though they had gone quite far north, they had to retrace their journey south by boat to get to the Queen of the Underworld's city, which didn't seem to be as far away.

It's important to see a bit of Jill before she goes to Narnia. One script I saw had her being bullied by being shut in a cupboard, bringing on claustrophobia.

Interesting. For me, SC is all about Jill having trust issues. I like the idea making a big deal out of the moment she has to choose to crawl through that tunnel. Setting it up a bit can only make it better.

Fair point. I'll have to reread the book. But unless the bullying at Experiment House had permeated everyone there to some degree, wouldn't common sense and human decency stop Jill from being too "scornful"? I could imagine her saying something like "leave me alone" or "I can look after myself", but not anything rude to Eustace, himself, however white he looked.

I see your point and I think you're right. I did notice when I was rereading SC this week that Jill did say something "scornfully" to Eustace when they were at Puddleglum's wigwam ('"Or wash either, I suppose," said Jill scornfully'), but they were just bickering there. I don't think she would be cruel in the face of someone so frightened, even if she was inwardly disgusted by that fear. (While regrettable, it's not exactly surprising that she might hate the sight of weakness after being at Experiment House, where weakness meant certain punishment from the bullies.) I think shaking him off brusquely and saying "I can look after myself" would be a much better fit for her character. *nod*

Eating talking stag: I watched the scene in the older version. First, what was a talking stag doing that far north? They traveled for days before reaching Harfang!

I've been mulling this over and a thought occurred to me... who's to say that the stag wasn't one of the questers sent to find Rilian? While they don't specifically mention Talking Animals as being among the questers, they do say "knights, centaurs, giants, and all sorts" went to look for him, and stag seems like he might be the questing type.

It's possible the filmmakers could have our trio encounter the stag and he could either give them some information or help them along their way somehow before they get split up again by some device. (Perhaps he has to lead away a band of the Ettinsmoor giants to save the others.)

Interestingly, we never really find out in the book what happened to those thirty or so champions who went looking for Rilian, although the fact that none of them ever returned in all of the time since his disappearance strongly indicates that they had met their deaths somehow. The filmmakers might be tempted to imply that most of them were killed by the giants of Harfang and illustrate this through the Talking Stag character, since it feels like a bit of a loose end.

It's possible the filmmakers could have our trio encounter the stag and he could either give them some information or help them along their way somehow before they get split up again by some device.

That could make sense, and it would make it all the worse when they found out they ate him. I've been doing some studying. The book says they traveled ten days to get from the marsh to the giant bridge, then several more days to get to Harfang. I really think there should be some explanation as to how the stag got there if they keep that scene.

Interestingly, we never really find out in the book what happened to those thirty or so champions who went looking for Rilian, although the fact that none of them ever returned in all of the time since his disappearance strongly indicates that they had met their deaths somehow.

When the children tell Puddleglum they have to look for a ruined city, he almost seems surprised. He says, "You wouldn't start from the fountain though." He previously said that all the others who searched for the lost prince started at the fountain and went North. Some might have been killed by Giants, but I always assumed they managed to find the outlet where LotGK took Rillian down and fell asleep in a sleepy, enchanted cave similar to the one Jill, Eustace and Puddleglum are marched through. Mullugutherum says "They are all beasts that have found their way down by chasms and caves….It is said that they will all wake at the end of the world."
There are also prisons in underworld since the gnomes mention keeping the travelers there until the queen returns. I wouldn't rule out the three and Rillian finding and rescuing them as they leave underworld.

I've been thinking lately about how the filmmakers may handle Caspian's resurrection, and I'm beginning to wonder if it's something that might be cut, I think it would be a real shame if it was it's one of my favorite parts of the book and it's such a powerful and emotional scene.

Because as far as the main narrative for Silver Chair is considered that scene is not that important, Caspian is a minor character in SC and since one of the main points of the scene in the book is to complete his arc that began in Dawn Treader of wanting to see owner world, and since that is something that wasn't set up in the Walden films( and thankfully it seem like they want to distance themselves from them) I'm a bit worried the filmmakers might cut it for fear that it would be confusing to a general audience.

Some might have been killed by Giants, but I always assumed they managed to find the outlet where LotGK took Rillian down and fell asleep in a sleepy, enchanted cave similar to the one Jill, Eustace and Puddleglum are marched through. Mullugutherum says "They are all beasts that have found their way down by chasms and caves….It is said that they will all wake at the end of the world."

That's interesting idea! They are always going on about "many fall down and few return to the sunlit lands." I had been considering the possibility of our trio glimpsing the remains of some of the questers (kind of like in The Incredibles when

There are also prisons in underworld since the gnomes mention keeping the travelers there until the queen returns. I wouldn't rule out the three and Rillian finding and rescuing them as they leave underworld.

In some ways I think this might make more sense than the enchanted sleep idea because it seems that throwing Overworlders into prison is standard operating procedure, at least based on what we see happen to Eustace, Puddleglum and Jill. What I'm not so sure about, though, is busting them out and bringing them along on the trek back to the surface. I feel like having a large party would detract from some of the eeriness of that scene, and then there's also the cost of animating centaurs, giants, et cetera.

I've been thinking lately about how the filmmakers may handle Caspian's resurrection, and I'm beginning to wonder if it's something that might be cut, I think it would be a real shame if it was it's one of my favorite parts of the book and it's such a powerful and emotional scene.

I've been thinking about that as well and I'm not sure what they're going to do with that. I feel like in many ways, it's very much a necessary part: it bridges between the somber scene of Caspian's death and the high spirits of the bullies' comeuppance in the final scene.

One thing that I can see being a problem, though, is that The Silver Chair is very much Jill's story, but a lot of the meaning in Caspian's resurrection and his reunion with Eustace goes back to the events of VDT. Seeing as it will have been several years since that film was released and we don't even know if any of the original cast will return, I'm not sure how well this will work from a storytelling standpoint.

I can think of a couple things they might be able to do to tie it in more closely with SC:

1. Have Eustace talk more about his adventures in VDT and his friendship with Caspian, making the audience curious about the person of Caspian so that his resurrection feels like some sort of long-awaited reveal.
2. Upon seeing Caspian die after his return to Narnia, Eustace turns away and says something to the effect of, "I can't believe he's dead... I never even got to talk to him again." And Jill looks stricken and realizes, "If I hadn't been showing off on the cliff and we'd come to Narnia together, you would have... and maybe Rilian would have come home sooner... but now he's gone, and it's—it's all over." And then they are whisked away to Aslan's Country where Caspian is resurrected and they discover that it is not the end of Caspian and only the beginning of new adventures for him, one of which includes the beating of the bullies. It's a relatively small change, but I think it could help include Jill in the emotional pull of the scene.

1. Have Eustace talk more about his adventures in VDT and his friendship with Caspian, making the audience curious about the person of Caspian so that his resurrection feels like some sort of long-awaited reveal.
2. Upon seeing Caspian die after his return to Narnia, Eustace turns away and says something to the effect of, "I can't believe he's dead... I never even got to talk to him again." And Jill looks stricken and realizes, "If I hadn't been showing off on the cliff and we'd come to Narnia together, you would have... and maybe Rilian would have come home sooner... but now he's gone, and it's—it's all over." And then they are whisked away to Aslan's Country where Caspian is resurrected and they discover that it is not the end of Caspian and only the beginning of new adventures for him, one of which includes the beating of the bullies. It's a relatively small change, but I think it could help include Jill in the emotional pull of the scene.

I think playing up the fact that Eustice and Caspian were good friend's could be a good solution, plus like you seid it would make his death have even more of an impact of Jill specially since the vary fist sign Aslan gave her was for Eustace to speak to Caspian.

I think the cliff scene, as it is in the book, might be too complex for the film. Jill goes close to the edge to prove she's not afraid, and then suddenly realizes she actually is afraid, then Scrubb tries to pull her back, but she's not thinking straight and accidentally makes him lose his balance... I feel like that's a complicated thing to convey without knowing her thoughts.

I think the cliff scene, as it is in the book, might be too complex for the film. Jill goes close to the edge to prove she's not afraid, and then suddenly realizes she actually is afraid, then Scrubb tries to pull her back, but she's not thinking straight and accidentally makes him lose his balance... I feel like that's a complicated thing to convey without knowing her thoughts.

That's what I'm concerned about as well. I went back and looked at the BBC version of this scene, and it just doesn't work at all. There's no time to establish that Eustace is doing something very brave (we don't even see the drop until after he falls), Jill comes across as acting like a moron instead of a show-off, and the whole thing transpires too quickly for it to have any real punch aside from "What just happened?" I think they're going to need to find a way to stretch it out to make it work. (Give Jill time to say that she's too scared to move, for instance.) I just hope that it's still clear that it's Jill's fault.

And speaking of the BBC version... I also re-watched the enchantment scene with the Lady of the Green Kirtle the other day, and I find myself wondering how they are going to translate this part of the book to the screen. The difficulty here is that the struggle is very much an internal one, and that's not easy to show in a film. In the BBC version, I don't get any sense at all that Jill had undertaken any Herculean struggle to say the name "Aslan," for instance.

One way I can see them approaching this is by interspersing the scene with flashbacks. We see this somewhat in the book—when Jill says she and Eustace come from another world and the LotGK asks her to explain, Lewis writes that a lot of images from her life back in England come darting into her brain. As time goes on and the enchantment gets thicker, the images could become hazier, more broken, more dream-like, less real. And when Jill is trying to remember Aslan, for example, she could remember the images of the stream in Aslan's Country, the toy horse beginning to transform in her dream at Harfang, and Eustace, soundlessly as if the volume is on mute, holding out his hands and calling out a name repeatedly behind the gym at Experiment House. We're then pulled out of Jill's mind's eye and see by the look on her face that she has remembered, and after a few moments' struggle, she manages to say Aslan's name.

While I think this could work, I do also worry about the flashbacks being jarring or pulling people out of the scene rather than helping to pull them in, so I don't know if it's the right path to take or not. It would require a very skilled editor.

Double-posting because it's been several days and this is another line of discussion....

Glumpuddle's posts in this thread about Jill's trust issues and the fact that her family is never mentioned, as well as waggawerewolf27's thoughts on when she finally learns to trust, have gotten me thinking... is it possible that the filmmakers will present Jill as being an orphan?

One thing that immediately comes to my mind as a benefit of doing this: it would easily connect Jill to the emotion of Rilian's loss and the glorious triumph of Caspian's resurrection. As I've mentioned before, it feels like those moments don't directly include Jill in their emotional pull, but if she is shown as having lost her own parents (perhaps during WW2), then you could imagine how seeing Rilian's own loss might affect her and the flame of hope that would rise in her heart when seeing Caspian's resurrection. No, reality is not all doom and gloom and brokenness as she had thought; joy and justice and wholeness await the faithful.

I would hope this would only be implied, though. Perhaps begin the movie showing her being driven to Experiment House with her cold, disinterested guardian and going through the dismal streets of war-torn London, averting her eyes from the remnants of a bombed-out home. When she arrives at Experiment House, show the other children saying their goodbyes to their parents and contrast it with her guardian's hasty, uncaring farewell. And when Caspian is lying in the stream, have Jill standing back the farthest, as though this strikes a chord in her and it's too painful to come nearer.

(By the time they get around to releasing this movie, I suppose I'll have already imagined the whole thing out myself. )

Can anyone think of any drawbacks to doing this, other than the usual "it's adding stuff" problem? Even though the way they began LWW was a departure from the book, I've always felt like it was largely an effective way to start the film.

Glumpuddle's posts in this thread about Jill's trust issues and the fact that her family is never mentioned, as well as waggawerewolf27's thoughts on when she finally learns to trust, have gotten me thinking... is it possible that the filmmakers will present Jill as being an orphan?

Actually that is what I'd expect to happen, and I'd already assumed how SC will be filmed, no matter by whom. Especially if Walden had gone on to produce SC, in particular, I would have expected them to continue with the war-time reality background that was used in the films they did produce. In those days children were often sent to boarding schools and like establishments if their families were in any sort of crisis, and what could be more of a crisis than losing even one parent, let alone two?

The trouble is, that some families are truly dysfunctional, and bullying other students might well reflect this sort of thing, when there are all sorts of reasons for children to be at boarding school. I am writing from personal knowledge, of attending such an establishment. I trust that my children had a much nicer start to school-life than what I did, since unlike them, I didn't get to go home at the end of the day, the week, or before the end of term. SC was published in 1953, the year of Queen Elizabeth's coronation, and also when I started school, having just had my fifth birthday. And though I don't remember being treated too badly, I can remember feeling horribly alone, especially as many of my fellow students had their brothers and sisters to turn to, who if older, would look out for them, to fight with and to share memories of school holidays with.

The book says that Jill knew Eustace from a previous term before the summer holidays and that at the time of the story it was well into the autumn term. But I do agree that a bit of background, such as the violence of the London Blitz, with houses being bombed, or even fleeing refugees from other places involved in conflict, would not go amiss to explain how she got to be at Experiment House, in particular.

From my own RL experience, I'd expect my first sight of Jill would be when a stern supervisor of some sort, on a train platform, reading her name off a list, directs her and other children to a bus, or onto a line of students, to take them to Experiment House. And having arrived at Experiment House, I would expect Jill to have seen others, maybe like Eustace, being shoved off a diving board, fully clothed, books and all, and that she, herself, experienced being shut up in a cupboard, possibly the one she had been assigned to, which someone else had been using, regardless of any rules. Or maybe she was jeered at by those sorts who, having been there a while, felt they were superior to more recent arrivals, especially if welfare or charity had something to do with her presence at the school.

It might even suggest why Jill had so many problems with remembering. I've heard that people with painful memories tend to try to suppress them, finding it more useful to concentrate on the present moment.

is it possible that the filmmakers will present Jill as being an orphan?

I've honestly never considered them maker her an orphan, on paper I don't think would have any problem with it if they went the route. I do kind of like you idea of it maybe giving her more of an emotional connection to Caspian's death and resurrection.

I would hope this would only be implied, though. Perhaps begin the movie showing her being driven to Experiment House with her cold, disinterested guardian and going through the dismal streets of war-torn London, averting her eyes from the remnants of a bombed-out home. When she arrives at Experiment House, show the other children saying their goodbyes to their parents and contrast it with her guardian's hasty, uncaring farewell. And when Caspian is lying in the stream, have Jill standing back the farthest, as though this strikes a chord in her and it's too painful to come nearer.

I like the idea of starting the movie with Jill arriving at Experiment House that what I've been thinking they might do, but If they did make her an orphan opening the film like that with her see other children say goodbye to there parants, one potential drawback is that it could be hitting the audience of the head with the fact that she is an orphan but that would have more to do with the director then the idea, as long as it was done with subtlety I think it could work.

One idea I had of how they might open the film is to start with her arriving at the school and then have short sort of a montage of the bullies tormenting her that spans a few days or so, show thing getting progressively worse and worse for her until she can't take it anymore and go's behind the gym to have her cry, they could also briefly show some of the incidents mention in the book where Eustace stood up to the bullies.