Posted by: @coracle

Posted by: @icarus

From the looks of it, New Zealand does have IMAX screens... And proper full-frame 70mm projection IMAX screens at that.

It's anyone has interested, someone has compiled a handy list of all the proper IMAX format screens for each continent:

https://imax.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_IMAX_venues

There are of course plenty of other IMAX branded, digital format screens available elsewhere as well.

Very interesting. It is just possible that I could visit someone who lives near the second one listed for New Zealand, and see the film. It would involve flying and taking two trains.

 

Could be (and hopefully will be) well worth doing!  I know I'm already thinking of either driving or travelling by train to watch the film in Melbourne when it comes out. 🤗 

One of the advantages of living in Southern California. I have 3 IMAX theaters within a half hour drive of my home. And the ones in LA aren't prohibitively far either, as it happens. I think my oldest daughter will be old enough to go see it with me if it looks worth seeing. She'll be 10 at that point, so, we'll see. 

I'm perplexed what is meant when they say that Gerwig has a new approach to the source material, and not entirely in a good way. Hopefully it is an exaggeration. My optimist side hopes it only means she's doing Magician's Nephew and they just mean that it's a new take on Narnia that we haven't seen before - since LWW is so familiar to everyone. As a general rule, filmmakers having a new take on a story that isn't broke isn't a positive development. 

Posted by: @justin

I'm perplexed what is meant when they say that Gerwig has a new approach to the source material, and not entirely in a good way. Hopefully it is an exaggeration. 

I guess I would look at it this way - even if she were doing LWW, would you really want to see her follow the exact same approach as Walden Media did?

I mean, l probably like those movies a little bit better than the average NarniaWebber, but I think the general consensus seems to be that they are fairly average movies which rely far too much on conventional blockbuster storytelling, and don't really capture a lot of the special qualities that make CS Lewis' work interesting and fun.

Perhaps that's veering off into a whole other debate about the legacy of the Walden films, but I think if most of us here were to think about it, we are probably all after a new, better approach to adapting the source material than we've seen before.

@icarus Well, I don't want to put the Walden Narnia movies on some kind of pedestal, but I feel like in many ways, they took my ideal approach to adapting the books (for the first time anyway.) A combination of live action and photorealistic CGI. (Nothing cartoony or artsy or weird.) PG ratings. No combining the stories of two or more books into one. (Apparently, they considered this a couple of times but never actually did it.) No musical numbers. An approach to the production design which combined whimsy with an impression of realism. And they kept the titles of the books and didn't replace them with just "Narnia."  

I'm pretty sure a new filmmaker's idea of something different is not going to be like-that-but-more-faithful-to-the-source material. Their idea is going to be something different from the things I mentioned as my ideal. 

I could also talk about things from the Narnia movies I consider great, but I feel like you just wouldn't understand it. Sorry if that sounds rude or condescending. It's just that it's impossible for someone who loves a movie to make someone who considers it mediocre understand. (Perhaps it's an exaggeration to say I totally love any of the Narnia movies. But I love large sections of them.) For example, you recently described the music for the opening credits of the first Narnia movie as distracting or bad. That's one of my favorite parts of the soundtrack.  

FWIW, I don't watch every movie that comes out so I'm not as bored with the formula of the average blockbuster as someone who does. Also....I don't really care if the general public isn't enthusiastic about the old Narnia movies. The general public loves plenty of movies I don't love, and I love plenty of movies they don't love. That's just how it is. 

That doesn't mean I think Netflix shouldn't adapt the books that have already been adapted for the big screen though. I mean, I'd like them (or somebody) to adapt the ones that haven't been adapted yet and I feel like it'd be weird to see a series that didn't have LWW, PC or VDT. I know some people want the Netflix series to be a continuation of the Waden Media one but, as you say, I don't think they're going to take the same approach, and it'd just feel incoherent. 

@col-klink that's not a problem at all. Just to clarify though, I actually do like the first two Walden films on the whole... I even think PC is the significantly better film of the two (controversial as that may be!). They are both highly serviceable, technically very competent pieces of big-screen filmmaking. If anything, I'm always somewhat surprised that Andrew Adamson didn't go on to have a more successful career directing similar sorts of big-budget high-action genre pieces for either Marvel or DC... Especially given how well writers Markus & McFeely took to the Marvel format (huge fan of all their Marvel films with the Russo Brothers).

So yeah , I have no huge problems with the first two Walden films on the whole, but I'd still struggle to put them much above a solid 7/10, and I get the impression that the prevailing opinion from most of the prominent NarniaWebbers is to score them much much lower.

I would therefore assume that the majority of people, even those who are lukewarm or vaguely positive about the Walden films, would probably be keen on a new approach, rather than sticking with the previous formula.... I think this was the question posited on one of the most recent podcasts, and I think they all went with the "roll the dice on something new" option. 

@icarus Well, for my part, I'm sorry if it sounded like I was mad at you. I guess I've been melancholy lately because it feels like there was a chance Walden Media could make my ideal cinematic adaptation of all seven Narnia books back in the 2000s and it didn't work out. (Something I forgot to mention was that they were telling the stories, more or less, in publication order.) What little we've been hearing about Netflix keeps reminding me that any new adaptation of the series is going to have to have some gimmick to distinguish it from what came before, which means I'll never see a non-gimmicky adaptation of The Silver Chair, The Horse and his Boy, The Magician's Nephew or The Last Battle. 

It's possible, maybe even likely, I'll love the gimmick when I hear about it but while the producers keep saying the director/screenwriter has an awesome vision, which is great, they're not saying anything specific about what's so great about it. Since I don't have any good ideas for gimmicks of my own, I'm having a hard time getting as pumped up as I'd like to be. 

Posted by: @col-klink

@icarus Well, for my part, I'm sorry if it sounded like I was mad at you. I guess I've been melancholy lately because it feels like there was a chance Walden Media could make my ideal cinematic adaptation of all seven Narnia books back in the 2000s and it didn't work out. (Something I forgot to mention was that they were telling the stories, more or less, in publication order.) What little we've been hearing about Netflix keeps reminding me that any new adaptation of the series is going to have to have some gimmick to distinguish it from what came before, which means I'll never see a non-gimmicky adaptation of The Silver Chair, The Horse and his Boy, The Magician's Nephew or The Last Battle. 

It's possible, maybe even likely, I'll love the gimmick when I hear about it but while the producers keep saying the director/screenwriter has an awesome vision, which is great, they're not saying anything specific about what's so great about it. Since I don't have any good ideas for gimmicks of my own, I'm having a hard time getting as pumped up as I'd like to be. 

For me, it depends. If Walden had made all seven like they did LWW, I'd be okay with that. It wasn't a perfect adaptation, but I can't see any Hollywood production doing any better, tbh. Prince Caspian was acceptable to me albeit with significant changes to a difficult, non-linear story. Voyage was always going to be a hard book to adapt, but imo they ruined it so badly that if that one set the standard for future adaptations, I had zero interest in them. Netflix may be worse, it is too early to tell.

Certainly, Gerwig is the most talented filmmaker to make a Narnia movie to date, but whether her approach will be good, bad, or something in between, I don't think anyone knows yet. Her version of Little Women wasn't awful, although it wasn't my favorite adaptation of the source material, but it was solid enough for me to give her a chance with Narnia.

But all that said, I don't consider Walden's adaptations untouchable, as some fans seem to, so I have zero problem with a new version coming out. My hope is that they would be better, but it seems to me that Hollywood's recent history with book adaptations of late has been mediocre to bad, so I'm not overly optimistic, but I remain hopeful. 

Posted by: @icarus

Posted by: @justin

I'm perplexed what is meant when they say that Gerwig has a new approach to the source material, and not entirely in a good way. Hopefully it is an exaggeration. 

I guess I would look at it this way - even if she were doing LWW, would you really want to see her follow the exact same approach as Walden Media did?

I mean, l probably like those movies a little bit better than the average NarniaWebber, but I think the general consensus seems to be that they are fairly average movies which rely far too much on conventional blockbuster storytelling, and don't really capture a lot of the special qualities that make CS Lewis' work interesting and fun.

Perhaps that's veering off into a whole other debate about the legacy of the Walden films, but I think if most of us here were to think about it, we are probably all after a new, better approach to adapting the source material than we've seen before.

I think my issue is less with them taking a new approach from Walden - since they ranged from pretty good (LWW) to awful (VDT), imo - but more that I wonder if that's really what was meant by the statement. To me, a "new approach" suggests making significant changes to the original to modernize it (I.e. clean up the things they find offensive or outdated, and make it more "inclusive"). I realize that opinions vary, but my ideal adaptation of most books is either a close and faithful adaptation of the book, or one that makes necessary changes to adapt it to a new medium, while retaining the themes of the original as far as it is possible. That said, for casual fans, or people who aren't overly into Narnia, the hope would probably be entirely opposite of mine. That's what concerns me, because I suspect Netflix will be more interested in that crowd than people like me. 

Posted by: @icarus

You are of course entitled to your own opinion on the matter, but i might suggest that either maybe you aren't watching enough recent movies? or perhaps you haven't watched enough old movies?

Film making has always been an incredibly broad spectrum of different tastes, values, and moral positions.... and it has always resulted in movies of incredibly varying quality and success. To say that all modern films are one way, and all old films are another way just doesn't really stand up to scrutiny.

Apologies if that sounds too rude or condescending, i just think its important to make sure we aren't reaching for excessive hyperbole, when in reality things are much more complex and nuanced.

It is fine. It is, of course, not all movies are bad now, but i honestly haven't watched a movie i really liked in years and years. I don't watch a lot of movies now because they are so much about death and suffering in a way i do not like. There is this celebration of drug use and sexuality that i do not like. There is so much anti hero stuff that i can like, but sometimes they cross the line into the hero tortures and hurts people or destroys his family in a way i do not like.

I agree that in really old movies people talked in a way or behaved in a way that i find off putting because we don't talk like that now, but i do think there was more of this is the good guy and this is the bad guy. The good guy protects people from the bad guy. Were all old movies good, no, of course not, but i would be hard put to find a movie that i thought was really great now.

In my opinion, there are a lot of long slow, boring movies out there that have a few interesting scenes that touch on the nature of humanity in some way i like, but real narrative building and character building has really been lost. I think there are three things that i want in a movie, the plot or narrative to be interesting, the world building to be consistent and deep, and the characters to grow from a boy to a man, or from a afraid to unafraid, or from an idiot to a good person who does the right thing, i want character growth.

Now movies are just not doing those things for me, they might have a few scenes that touch those things, but they don't build the story properly, they don't open and close their parenthesis in the right order, or are just a series of random events, they will even close out plots that they never opened and you won't even know where that came from.

What i find interesting about discussing shows and movies are talking plot, character, and world building and nit picking those details and how they work together. The world building and the character are the most important if those are deep enough and meaningful enough then the difference in the plot is not that important. I don't want to go too far down into the rabbit hole of this or that present day movie, so i will leave it at you are right, i was to over the top in all the movies of the past being better, but in my opinion, movies made now are not good. They have good scenes or one tiny plot that actually works with 50 around it that are not working, and i just don't think that is changing in the next six months for this director and especially for netflix who has made nothing great except documentaries which is just a different thing.

Posted by: @decarus

I don't watch a lot of movies now because they are so much about death and suffering in a way i do not like. There is this celebration of drug use and sexuality that i do not like. There is so much anti hero stuff that i can like, but sometimes they cross the line into the hero tortures and hurts people or destroys his family in a way i do not like.

You see, to me, those qualities sound much more like you are describing the biggest movies of the 1970s and early 80s  - films such as: A Clockwork Orange (1971) The Godfather (1972), Godfather Part II (1974), One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest (1975), Taxi Driver (1976), The Deer Hunter (1978), Scarface (1983), etc. All movies with gritty themes of death, drugs, sex and violence.. and all massive critical and commercial hits of the era.

By contrast, in the modern era of films, which is most heavily typified by the dominance of Superhero films at the worldwide box-office, you see a much greater abundance of traditional Hero vs Villain dynamics... even in the "darker" Superhero takes, the balance between Good and Evil is much more clearly defined, and in much broader strokes, than in previous decades.