Okay, finally read the news article on the front page and I have little to add on the subject of Polly being an orphan (which, I'm not thoroughly convinced of at this point. Who's she living with then? ) than what I already posted previously.

But I do want to say, in the most polite and respectful way possible, if that's the kind of lines we're going to get in the movie, I don't think Narnia is going to be up for a Best Screenplay Oscar any time soon....

@Impending Doom: First thought is I’m uncomfortable with the idea.

The Magician’s Nephewis uniquely Digory’s story—he’s the clear-cut main character, hence the book’s title.Hispersonal journey is the heart of the book. If Polly is also given a tragic backstory, I worry it could shift some of the emotional weight away from Digory’s arc.

I couldn't agree more. It is true that in the story we see nothing of Polly's family, but then, why should anyone, really? Dads in those bygone days normally were the breadwinners, and often worked long hours, before coming home in the evening. We know why Digory's father, like many others at that time, was not there, when he was in India, in the interminable wars in that region, embroiling not only Great Britain, itself, but also Russia, Iran, China, etc., not to mention the French & Portuguese. 

All we know is that Polly, that year, was unable to go to the seaside, like her family had been doing, & so was unable to spend time with people she normally holidayed with. And that when she returned home from her adventure with Digory she was sent to her room after a meal without dessert, for coming home late & getting her clothes dirty. When doing laundry in those days was such a major chore, girls, especially, weren't allowed to get their clothes dirty, if possible, since it was difficult to get those clothes clean again. 

Ha-Joon Chang in his 2008 23 things they didn't tell you about Capitalism said: "The washing machine has changed the world more than the internet has". And he was right, when the washing machine not only freed up mainly women's time but also removed the need to employ maids to do such household drudgery. If Polly had been an orphan, she wouldn't be available to be playing with Digory, anyway & most likely, even if she were allowed to play with Digory that first time, she'd be sentenced to be in the laundry, with or without the maid's supervision, being told to catch up with the clothes washing. 

Posted by: @fantasia

But I do want to say, in the most polite and respectful way possible, if that's the kind of lines we're going to get in the movie, I don't think Narnia is going to be up for a Best Screenplay Oscar any time soon....

Well, it beats the leaked audition pages for The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Anyone remember those?  

@col-klink, fair point! Those were..... so awful.

Posted by: @col-klink

But having her entire family be dead sounds like overkill. That line in the audition scene strikes me as weirdly over the top.

Agreed. I wouldn’t want them to kill off Polly’s entire family just to force her into a vulnerable place. That would feel like an unnecessarily dramatic addition that has been done before. Polly is already an interesting character without needing a tragic backstory to make her compelling.

Posted by: @ajpevensie

Event 3: She is adopted and there is no back story about her family.

 

I almost see this more as Jill's background rather than Polly but that's for another thread/time 😉 

Posted by: @coracle

I read her comment as a throwaway line: it doesn't even make sense that 'everyone she knows is dead', because how could she know them? If she only refers to the male line, she is probably exaggerating to say everyone is dead, or maybe she's just been arguing with her mother (over why they're not going to the seaside?) and pretends she is dead too.

I like this theory—it makes sense as an exaggeration, especially if Polly is frustrated with her mother in the moments before when we're introduced to her. It’s plausible and wouldn’t technically break canon, and I can see Gerwig being interested in playing up that mother/daughter dynamic a little. I'll keep an open mind, but I’d rather the focus not shift too much towards Polly’s mother.

Given that Gerwig has sons of her own and even named the audition character after one of them, I don’t think there’s much risk of Digory being completely sidelined here.

I'm 99% sure this was just a placeholder scene to get a feel for how the actors would perform in this kind of situation. Given that Magician's Nephew is available for anyone to read, I wonder if they changed it up for auditions just to see how these young actors handle a fresh script, while at the same time preserving something of the feel of Digory and Polly's first meeting. 

After reading through the script, I am inclined to think the "everyone I know is dead" is more of a throwaway line especially how she follows it up with "nothing to miss" in the following line.  I'm not inclined to think so much that this is an indication that Greta will portray Polly as an orphan but rather getting to see a range of emotions from both children.  One of the scenes from the book that comes chiefly to my mind as I thought about this topic, was Polly's range of emotions in Charn particularly after Digory grabs her wrist and strikes the bell.  Both characters have understandable emotional outbursts at different points in the story - this audition script may just be a way of assessing that range of emotions - as @icarus put it a "thematic balancing act".

I'm also inclined to agree to an extent with @coracle here:

Posted by: @coracle

And if Frannie in the audition script is standing in for Polly, I read her comment as a throwaway line: it doesn't even make sense that 'everyone she knows is dead', because how could she know them? If she only refers to the male line, she is probably exaggerating to say everyone is dead, or maybe she's just been arguing with her mother (over why they're not going to the seaside?) and pretends she is dead too.

It may be well be a case of exaggerating in the script, to see a range of emotions or after she's been arguing with her mother...

That said - I am open to the possibility of the orphan scenario.  And I do think it could work, depending on how it was done - but at this stage, I'm hoping not.

I think I'm in agreement with most of you, that it wouldn't be the worst thing if Polly is some form of an orphan, especially if it's developed to portray empathy and extra emotional depth.  Just so long as they don't do the same thing then with Jill (or anyone else, really - like the Pevensie children).  It seems to me that Jill's plight is far worse if she is NOT an orphan, and her family are simply indifferent to her well-being.

If you read children's literature from the period, it was not uncommon for parents to be dim, shadowy presences, rarely seen in the story.  Arthur Ransome's Swallows and Amazons is a good example (both the initial book, and the rest of the series), where adults are seen maybe once a week, for the purpose of replenishing groceries and desperate emergencies.  In The Picts and the Martyrs, an elderly great aunt thinks the nieces are neglected in their parents' absence, and comes to look after them, much to the dismay of her victims.  "Helicopter" parents were not admired; it simply was.not.done.  (There must have been some in those days, but look how Lewis views Eustace's parents.)

Enid Blyton's school and adventure stories reflect the same idea.  During the holidays, children might have been required to show up for some meals, tidy and polite, but for the rest of the time, they were pretty much left to their own devices.  Except when they were off camping or pony-trekking or other remote activities--no mealtime deadlines at all, with perhaps an occasional postcard or two to prove they still existed.

Whether this dialogue is reserved strictly for auditions or not, we shall have to wait and see.

Posted by: @coracle

It shows the romantically inclined that boys and girls can be friends without being romantic, and that in many ways their friendship develops like sibling interaction.

(it also shows directors that movies with boy-girl friendships can and should be played by child actors, instead of teenagers taking the roles and becoming boyfriend/girlfriend)

I actually agree. While it may be stereotype especially in the Hollywood industry for a boy and girl character who are that close had to be in love, well, real life isn’t like that. As a young woman myself, I have close friends who are guys, but wasn’t romantically involved. So a boy and a girl can be close friends, but who says they had to be in love? 

I would say that Digory and Polly could be like that close friends who stick by each other, regardless of the circumstances. Even with that incident at the Hall of Images in Charn, where Digory hurts Polly’s wrists before he strikes the bell, they actually make up for it. What better friendship than that? 

Posted by: @the-mad-poet-himself

Given that Magician's Nephew is available for anyone to read, I wonder if they changed it up for auditions just to see how these young actors handle a fresh script

 

Definitely agree!  I could imagine kids practising the lines from the first chapter in the book, and thinking this would help them get cast. But this script makes them work at nuance and emotion.

@aileth If you read children's literature from the period, it was not uncommon for parents to be dim, shadowy presences, rarely seen in the story.  Arthur Ransome's Swallows and Amazons is a good example (both the initial book, and the rest of the series), where adults are seen maybe once a week, for the purpose of replenishing groceries and desperate emergencies.  In The Picts and the Martyrs, an elderly great aunt thinks the nieces are neglected in their parents' absence, and comes to look after them, much to the dismay of her victims.  "Helicopter" parents were not admired; it simply was.not.done.  (There must have been some in those days but look how Lewis views Eustace's parents.)

Those children, often from middle class backgrounds, were generally on holidays from boarding schools, which they went to as young as 9 years of age, orphan or not, though orphanages could be worse. I think that is what C.S.Lewis' age was when he was sent to boarding school, when his mother died. When at home they had to be seen & not heard, especially if visitors were there, and to be seen as tidy and well-kept as the Princess of Wales' three children are always seen in public today. No, I don't believe that Polly should be an orphan when her mother very smartly sends her to her own room for having got her clothes dirty and being late for lunch. Probably gives Polly a right royal telling off, for her activities down the park with that Kirke boy, as the book also suggests.

Polly's mother isn't being unkind, when as I've already pointed out, if Polly was genuinely an orphan, she'd be in much more trouble, & forced to wash her own clothes. Besides, it would make Polly's mum more relatable as a person, if having learned about Digory's Mother's plight from Polly, (a good reason why they might have gone to the park by the way) she was the neighbour who kindly brought the grapes around to Aunt Letty. 

@coracle: But this script makes them work at nuance and emotion.

Oh okay! If that is what this idea is all about.

I put off reading the whole scene for a while because I didn't want too many spoilers. But I knew I was going to give in to the Green Mist eventually. The various comments people made about audition scene scripts like this not reflecting the final movies encouraged me. 

Having read the whole thing, I'm a bit surprised the main thing people have been discussing is Polly losing her family. Like I wrote earlier, I don't like that idea per se but I'm not freaking out about it. If I were to freak out about anything, it's that it sounds like they're changing how Digory and Polly find the rings. This script makes it sound like they find them lying on the pavement when they first meet. It never occurred to me that that's a change someone would even consider making. I just think that the scene in The Magician's Nephew is so cinematic as it is. The kids crawling through the dark passages with their candles. The strange humming from the rings. Uncle Andrew popping up and scaring them. Why would anyone want to change that? 

But I'm not freaking out (well, not much ) because of what everyone is saying about these audition scenes not being great indicators of the final versions.

I used to be skeptical that Greta Gerwig's Little Women would tell us much about how she'd adapt Narnia since LW seems like the stereotypical kind of book she'd like, and Narnia doesn't. But since she made comments about growing up reading and loving the books just like she did with Little Women, I've been considering the possibility more. And something I really like about Gerwig's LW is that it has a good mix of dialogue from the book and original stuff. (Fun Fact: If you read the screenplay online, you'll see that there are actually a handful of instances where the dialogue was going to be closer to the book, but they had to change it to make it easier for the actors to sound natural.) I'd love it if her Magician's Nephew was like that too, so I was disappointed to read this scene and find it was all original. But, again, it sounds like these kinds of audition scenes aren't reflective of the real scripts.

In fact...are we absolutely certain that Gerwig, an award-winning screenwriter, wrote this? I trust Narniaweb as a source but to me, this really feels like Gerwig or somebody else gave auditioning actors a scenario to improvise and some broad character outlines and then transcribed the result. The random detail about Isadore's great-grandfather and Frannie randomly revealing that her whole family is dead only to dismiss them just as quickly really feel like actors coming up with their characters on the spot. 

If there's anything from this little scene made it to the final film, I'm guessing it'll be this exchange.

FRANNIE:I don’t have any friends, I won’t tell.

ISADORE:I don’t have any friends either.

FRANNIE:You do now.

That may not be the best writing, but I can imagine it being in a script by a respectable writer even if it probably wouldn't be the best part of that script. (The argument about Isadore being a girl's name is also good-that was my reaction to the name too -but since the name presumably won't be in the real movie, neither will those lines.) 

@col-klink some quick fire responses:

• I don't think anyone was freaking out about the orphan thing, it's just an interesting thing to discuss, and one of the few details that one might assume would have a realistic chance of translating over to the real movie.
• I don't think he is holding the rings in his hand, partly because touching them would cause you to teleport... I guess he could just have one ring, but that wouldn't really track with the line about seeing a world inside it.
• Zero chance this scene was improvised based on the source.
• Highly probable that GG wrote it based on the fact that she used her own son's name, and made a joke about it. Seems improbable that she would let anyone else do that 

Posted by: @icarus

Highly probable that GG wrote it based on the fact that she used her own son's name, and made a joke about it. Seems improbable that she would let anyone else do that 

Cool! I knew she had a son and possibly some other kids, but I didn't remember any names. (I'm the kind of person who doesn't bother much about celebrities' personal lives.) That definitely makes this little scene feel writerlier and more fun and less random. 

Should I edit out the part of my post where I mentioned that I laughed at a joke about the name Isadore? I'd been assuming that Gerwig chose that as a placeholder name because it's sort of quirky and old fashioned and has three syllables like Digory. If I knew it was the name of a real person, I probably would have left that part out. 

Huh, this is all very interesting! Some great theories to mull over. If this is really Polly's character (just with a placeholder name), then it's a shift from the book. One of the things I liked about The Magician’s Nephew was how balanced their character dynamics are, but like most here, I think the addition will be cool to see.

Regardless, it’s always more exciting to hear actual story details, whether we like the changes or not, rather than just vague PR marketing talk 🤣