Au contraire, among other things, the inadvertent revision of whatever Latin I remember, is precisely what made Harry Potter so enjoyable for me. All those things people were getting upset about, I could understand, and see for what they are, you see?

I voted no change. Sadly, most people will think Narnia as a childdish version of LotR. Most movies today must be fast-paced with teen-friendly action scenes to gain popularity. Current Narnia films lacks of it. PC had it and I loved the movie, but the pace was too slow for your "standard teen-age audience". I haven't watched Harry Potter movies but I believe those movies are more "teen-friendly" with more action and faster paced. That's why it is so popular.

I wouldn't agree. Harry Potter is more popular due to the simple fact that half of the planet has read the books, adores the characters, and goes to see the movies for that reason. Think of them as a much larger version of the Narnia fandom. Yeah, there are non-readers who go to see the movies in droves, but from what I can tell, those are the people too lazy to read the books.

Excellent discussion! I love it. It certainly makes me think.

Movie Aristotle, I agree that child-friendly and childish don't mean the same thing but the VDT movie was childish, the book was not.

Agreed. I hope I didn't leave the impression that I was responding to your post specifically, just the tone of the posts in general.

Simply, they are two different films. Their success can't be reflected by one another anymore than you could pair the success of a Spiderman film with a Batman one.

Excellent example. Very convincing.

You mightn't like it very much, but it also put into perspective for me a post-war era when we could get caned or detention for not eating everything we were served, regardless of whether we liked it or not, or even if our hunger would have been satisfied with a smaller helping.

How insightful. This makes sense.

I would rank the books in the following order from brightest to darkest, in tone:

1. VDT
2. HHB
3.LWW
4. PC
5.MN
6.SC
7. LB

Anhun, I agree with everything in your post, including this ranking of lightest to darkest and especially the difference between a dark film and a mature film.

glumPuddle, I apologize, I missed your rebuttal argument from a while back. Thanks for clarifying. My thoughts:

Let me put it this way: If LotR or HP had not come out, Walden would still be trying to get LWW made.

An awful lot of conjecture there don’t you think? You may be right, but I don’t see any evidence to support your conclusion.

The reason they were ultimately green-lit was because of the opportunity to cash-in.

Isn’t that ultimately the reason every movie is greenlit? Even Potter and LotR were greenlit with a possible return for the studio in mind.

But either way, it was a similar situation with Walden, a company that actively goes around looking for popular books to adapt.

It’s certainly true that Walden looks for popular books to adapt, but think of it this way: Does any studio go around looking for unpopular books to adapt? Potter & LotR were both popular books, you know.

(Sidenote: I would also take everything the Movie Companion says with a grain of salt since it's just a piece of marketing)

Point taken. But that doesn’t necessarily negate its veracity. Behind-the-scenes videos are pieces of marketing, but that doesn’t mean that the marketers are deceiving you when they tell you how they built the sets or set up a certain shot.

I think they decided they wanted to make LWW long before they had any ideas what they would do with it.

Ah. I think I'm beginning to understand your point.

It's really going to take something for people in the general public to appreciate the Narnia series, both book and film, especially young teens and under, unlike Harry Potter in my humble opinion now that I think about it.

Harry Potter(Forgive me if I say something wrong; I've never really been a huge fan of the books.) to me has many factors making it a success. First, it is a more recently published series, so of course word about the series would get around much faster than the Narnia books ever did since they were released over 50 years ago.

Second, the books are set in this day and age, or around. I think the generation of HP fans can relate very well to the characters in this day and age. I believe that this was similar with the generation from when Narnia was released though.

Also, the books are long and have many intense battles and adventures. Children these days can't go for subtlety in plot. I do honestly think the Narnia books have as many battles and adventures as the Harry Potter series, it's just that you have to use the little information Lewis gave about the battles and use your imagination.

Now that is all about the HP and Narnia books. Let's go on to the films.

Harry Potter and Narnia's first films were well marketed each. They are both well known books and both did very well at the box office. After that, the franchises went in different directions. Harry Potter went up and kept performing well, and in some cases did better and better. It has now ended as one of the highest grossing franchises. Narnia, however, went down, and is currently ended at a not so good point. Why?

There were many points to this, including unhappy fans, bad release dates, poor marketing, and among other things. But one thing I think was a contributing factor was lack of interest in modern children.

I am a young teenager, and many of my classmates don't even know what Narnia is, and if they do, they only know about the first film. And if they do know that the Narnia series is actually books as well, they give out looks of confusion as to why an adult staff member likes reading books "for little kids". And many of these students are big Harry Potter fans.

In conclusion: There are many things that could have caused both series to have high points and low points, but in my opinion, unless there is a way to get modern teen and child readers to fall for Narnia in a post-HP film world, interest in Narnia will drop lower and lower.

Quick interjection: I'm not sure about book sales, but as far as movie box office is concerned the only Harry Potter film that did better than the first one was the last one.

I know this because I just did an analysis for this thread here:
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2331&start=1152

But it didn't sell more tickets then the first one right? Which is really the most important thing when comparing box office results.