The New Netflix Narnia

I am a big fan of Narnia.  The name of this blog derives from a place in the Narnia series.  Many of my most favorite posts on my blog, my neatest ideas, were inspired by Narnia.

My children have a Yoto audiobook player, and every night they fight over who gets to pick the book: will it be Silver Chair, or Dawn Treader, or Last Battle?

In particular Magicians Nephew, I have overhead multiple times, read by Kenneth Branagh, who does an excellent job with the voices of especially Uncle Andrew and Aslan (and who would have made a far better cast for either role).

It's hard to have one favorite book, because they each offer something slightly different.  But one of my favorites is Magician's Nephew, for the reason that it offers the most science-fictional approach to the entire series.  This book tries to answer or explain questions about Narnia, and about travel to other worlds.  It gives us a mechanism of travel, and then presents a vast forest of parallel universes, leaving all of it an open question with the exceptions of our world, Narnia, and Charn.

I love the Magician's Nephew.  And so I really want to like the new Netflix adaptation.  By which I mean, I want the adaptation to be a loving and high-quality adaptation that I can see and enjoy.

Unlike so many others, especially on the internet, my goal isn't to trash adaptations for the sake of trashing things.  I don't get any kind of joy -- not even the joy of making fun of something -- from a bad adaptation of Narnia.

I love this book, and I want to at least enjoy the movie.

Having seen the trailer, let me start with some positives.

Firstly, the casting for Polly Plumber was well done.

Secondly, the visual effects look very interesting, and might do some justice to the creation scene.

Thirdly, I'll admit that Greta Gerwig is a talented director, even if she's the wrong director for this movie.

Fourthly, Meryl Streep is a talented actor, even if she is the wrong actor for this movie.

However, from the trailer, and from comments from the director, the impression I get is that Gerwig really wanted to make yet another film adaptation of His Dark Materials (the book series starting with Golden Compass), and got the rights to Narnia instead.

Which... is kind of fine.  I can't begrudge a director having preferences.  If she prefers the tone or themes or focus of His Dark Materials, she should direct a movie with the same tone and themes and focus as His Dark Materials.

But, and this is my only thing, but don't make a film based on His Dark Materials and then call it Narnia.

It's funny, you actually don't have to purchase the rights to any children's book franchise, at all.  You don't need to pick between rights to Narnia or rights to His Dark Materials.  You can still make a movie about things like magic talking animals, parallel worlds, flying horses, giantess witches, all of it.  None of that, on its own, is copyrightable.  That is all scene-a-fair for children's parallel world fantasy.  You can mix in the Magisterium and Scandinavian witches of HDM and the talking animals and magic rings of Magician's Nephew, and make a new and unique film about the dangers of parallel universe exploration, and not pay a single dime in adaptation rights.

Arguably, I might have enjoyed a generic story about children on a science fantasy quest through parallel universes hunted by an evil witch from a ruined world, ending in a flight on a winged horse.

But when you tell me that your story isn't a generic story, but is in fact Magician's Nephew, then that's what I should get when I open the box.  And I don't think that's what is inside this box.

And the trailer itself bears commenting.  I like Led Zeppelin.  I like Chronicles of Narnia.  I do not like them mixed together.  When you put Stairway to Heaven playing over the scene of Strawberry (newly named Fledge, the father of all flying horses) taking off into the sky, you're asking me to connect Fledge and Led Zeppelin's Icarus mascot.

It's worth point out, maybe, why there is a flying horse in Magician's Nephew.  It began as a normal horse in London, pulling a horse-drawn taxi cab.  Through the events of the story, Strawberry and his driver Frank end up, to their surprise, in Narnia.  Strawberry gains the ability to talk, which is how we learn that Strawberry is also not terribly bright.  Aslan gives the children a quest, which requires they travel very far.  Realizing they won't complete their quest, Aslan asks Strawberry if he would wish to be a flying horse.  Strawberry really very greatly would like to be a flying horse.  So Aslan calls him Fledge, and he grows wings.  It's a fairly touching scene.  It has a completely different energy to Stairway to Heaven, and that kind of goes back to my point.  A movie with a scene of children riding a flying horse on a quest as Led Zeppelin blasts in the background could be really awesome.  A movie, a scene, some hypothetical movie and scene.  Make that movie!  But this movie is Magician's Nephew, and this scene is supposed to be a touching note about providence and grace.

Which also leads me to suspect, maybe the reason they chose Led Zeppelin as the music track, is that someone in the room saw the scene of Fledge taking off into the sky, and thought "Oh cool, it's like that Led Zeppelin angel", and suggested it, and then the suggestion was taken seriously.  And just being able to suspect that line of thought as an explanation for the trailer, by itself, tells me a lot about the quality of adaptation I could expect.

I love Magician's Nephew.  When they were making the original set of films, I so hoped they would adapt it.  Now there is an adaptation.  Though I would love if this were the kind of adaptation I could love, I have every reason to think that it won't be. I likely won't watch it.