The Chronicles of Narnia
 

I read these books as a kid.... I'm sure I've read the whole set through 5-6 times. Well, apparently a movie of the first book "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" is going to be made with a lot of production $$$ put into it.

Is anyone else excited by this? It's going to be produced by Walden Media and distributed by Disney... how do you think those two companies will treat the story? I'm hoping it won't purposefully be skewed towards a very young crowd. The books were certainly intended to be accessilbe to a young audience, but there are lots of philosophical and theological statements in the books that may not fit right into a traditional kids movie.

I think that kids movies these days don't give kids enough credit, or at least assume that if everything isn't on a 3rd grade level it'll be turn off for them. So, this worries me that the movies will be "dumbed down"... but I can't wait to see how it all turns out.

Just my guess, would be delighted if I was wrong but not holding my breath - far too simplistically with most of the not very subtle references to Christianity removed or mostly downplayed that seem to be incredibly offensive in this PC/idiotic phrases era.

didn't they make some pretty low budget movies based off of the series before?

anyways, one of my favorite book series, though i've only read it once and that was in 4th grade. still, good stuff.

I'm excited, but also kind of...nervous? I guess that's the right word... I tend to be way over-critical when my favorite books get turned into movies. Here's hoping they at least stick to the story...

My thoughts exactly. But Lord of the Rings came out alright, so I'm a little more hopeful then usual. :)

If Disney has anything to say about it, it will be ruined. The story will be dumbed-down and any semi-obvious Christian reference will be slashed to bits.

great series of books, back in Middle school i would use them for book reports because i had read all of them a couple of times and the teachers loved the series

haha, i'm just as guilty!

yeah, i'm hoping lewis' estate has a some leverage on the production. since walden media is, after all, a company that has strong ties to books... maybe they'll have respect for the source material.

without the allegorical elements included, i just don't see the story standing on its own very well. but, onodrim has given me some hope... the lord of the rings did indeed turn out better than i had thought possible.

i'm like some of you, i get defensive when movies are made of books i love... somehow i'm worried that if i see a bad movie, the books will forever be tainted in my mind. i know it shouldn't make a big difference... oh well.

Yeah, I know for a fact that they already made a movie version of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. But I don't know if they ever did any of the other books. It kinda sucks that they only seem to want to make THAT book into a movie. That was never even close to my favorite book. But oh well, with a big budget and all, maybe this version will be good. I'm excited to see.

And I wish that they would make it into an entire movie series, instead of just this one adaptation.

yeah, there is both a cartoon and live action version of TLtWatW out there, the live action one is more pervasive. i've also seen a live action adaptation of "the silver chair" and a movie roughly based on the second and third books combined.

they were made-for-tv episodes produced nearly 15 years ago for british television. the acting is decent, script is good... but it sufferes from a low production budget. probably as good as you're going to get with the resources they had... but stories this ambitious require much more to get it right.

check'em out... they might be on everyonce in a while, sounds like a job for tivo if i've ever heard one.

hmmm...I was kind of hoping, since the movie title is "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe," that all the books would be made...otherwise, why put the "the chronicles" in the title? Maybe they were just being thorough...but I'd love to see The Dawn Treader or the Silver Chair in movie form.

I believe I read somewhere that Nicole Kidman will be in it.

I have The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe on VHS from that series. It was produced by the BBC, and to be honest with you... I hated it.

I don't know why, but it was very dull. I actually remember the cartoon version of it, and looking back it was better.

The production for the BBC version saw any creature that flew as a cartoon. Even Aslan (sp?) was disappointing to me. I'm hoping that if this new film comes to see the dawn of light, that it's done in the correct way.

I'm pretty sure all of the chronicles were made into a series by the BBC. I remember seeing them all on tv when I was younger. They had a kind of melancholy feeling to them and were very subdued.

I don't remember seeing all 7 of them as BBC... I know that, as said above, the first three or four were... but I'm fairly certain "The Horse and His Boy"
"The Magician's Nephew"
and "The Last Battle" haven't been made yet...

ewwwww this automatically turns me off to this movie. I have an illogical hatred of that woman.

So far, imdb only has one cast member listed...Tilda Swinton as the White Witch. She looks rather White Witch-ish, imo :) Anyway, I guess the rumor had Kidman playing the Witch, so...nope.

I am so leary about this. They are good, classic novels that I love to read still, but it scares me to see anyone try and put them into a movie.

My main concern is the CG- this story is definitley going to need it, and CG can either make or break a movie.

Im pretty worried about this and His Dark Materials being made into movies. I think they are going to dumb down both for the young audiences even though both series have serious aspects and appeal to the older crowd as well.

Isn't The Magician's Nephew the first book in the series? I know that the older editions have The LWW as 1st, but I have MN in a scholastic edition (;)) and it has a nice big 1 on the spine. Also, it makes more sense, plotwise.

I'm hoping they don't screw it up. I recently reread them (first time since I was, like, six) and I didn't even see the Christian end coming. Then I realized why I was so confused the first time I read them.

The story of Uncle Diggory and Aunt Polly (?? it has been at least four months since I read that last) is the earliest in the storyline as it is set in the 1880's when they first met and freed the white witch from her devasted dying world. That was book 6 if I recall correctly in the sequence of how they were written though.
My personal favourites are Voyage of the Dawn Treader (Reepicheep is such a great character), The Silver Chair, and The Last Battle.

*the above post may and probably does contain spelling or other small errors in names, etc as I do not feel pedantic enough right now to fix them via google or other means*

I just listened to the score for the tv series the other night at work.

I just really hope they don't ruin this series of books. I loved them as a kid and I would hate to see hollywood butcher them.

Yeah, that's what I meant.

Robbery is OK in movies.
Killing people is Ok in movies.
Having sex is OK in movies.
Rape happens in movies all the time.
Why do we get squeamish when God is mentioned?

There was a television series of the Narnia stories.. They went through all the books except the first one.. The magician's nephew??

They were played on YTV. They were pretty good, campy but good

This must be the same ones that I saw.. they were all british children and it had a very BBC feel to it

Do they have a director for this movie yet? I didn't read through all the posts so i'm sorry if it was already stated.

hey, i know this thread has been idle for a while... but in the immortal words of jeffrey lebowski "some new shit has come to light man"

brian cox has been chosen to voice aslan.

aintitcoolnews.com just posted a short video of the production process here

that looks AWESOME!

One of my all time favorites as a child.

I wonder if Peter Jackson could do them justice?

I really have not read them in so long. Maybe it is time to revisit these classics.

Maybe get my kids interested in them. I don't know if they would have the same affect on them. As they had on me....

After all.. they do have Harry Potter now. Maybe Narnia would be boring to them now????

Narnia was one of my favorite series of books when I was a kid. I highly recommend the low budget BBC live action series and the cartoons, horrid acting, yet endlessly entertaining.

I really didnt like those books when I read them, so I doubt I'll enjoy any move thats an adaptation of them.

I hate veild Christian references, but that just added to my dislike, its not the sole cause of it.

I never read the books, but there was a BBC mini-series of them which i loved when i was a kid.
But im sure that hollywood will once again rape my childhood memories...

The trailer has just been released.

http://movies.channel.aol.com/franch...f_narnia_movie

All I have to say is "wow."

Yeah, the trailer is very promising. It seems like they're being faithful to the story which is good to see.

I'm excited, I loved the books as a kid. But I have to say, I am skeptical about whether or not it will live up the cinematic gem that was the BBC series.

I just watched a special on Chronicles of Narnia on encore. They stole their theme from the 'Children of Dune' miniseries that aired on the Sci Fi channel a year and a half ago. I'm still going to see the movie, but stollen scores are really distracting, espically for me. I guess John Williams was busy with Scary Potter.

I'm looking forward to it! Saw a preview the other day that looked pretty appealing. I read the books when I was a kid too. When I first found out about the film, I was super skeptical. Pretty sure it will be worth it though.

You can't stand stolen scores but like John Williams? *Is confused*

This movie and any that should follow have great potential. I hope this isn't just a movie for Disney to make some money on and then drop completely. If they put any effort into this it should be good, but I guess I'll just have to wait and see.

looks like a fairly interesting movie, even in the era of "epic burnout" mentioned in another thread. just for the heck of it, here is what cs lewis thought about adaptations of his work.
i wonder how he would feel about the new version...hard to really say unless i had seen it. movies have made some progess since he made this statement, although he seems pretty convinced.

I'm awaiting any judgement and comment until I can actually see it... but the trailers do have me quite excited.

*Hopes Disney does not screw this up*

I'm so happy Nicole Kidman is not the white witch. That whore can ruin any movie.

just saw it.

decent flick. having not read the books, i went in pretty blind. however the creativity of the world created was a pleasant surprise. i liked some of the ideas of the fantasy, but some things were kinda unwittingly funny. went too far in some parts, didn't go deep enough in others.

worth seeing.

I liked it a lot, really good movie. More of a family flick though. Think of it as the entry point for you children, preparing them for when they watch LOTR. In a lot of parts of the movie you have to keep in mind it is intended for the whole family, like some of the jokes. The only real problem(s) I had with the movie was:

Spoiler: I read on yahoo, before I went to see the movie, about how the book had all these allusions to Christianity and that Asland (sp?) was meant to be Jesus. I read the book when I was in sixth grade and I did not notice it, and its not like our teacher was going to tell us. I just wish I could have seen the movie without knowing that, because when I was watching it I kept waiting for the references. Either way, it did not really bother me at all. I really liked the way it was done. I actually like the character of Jesus, always have. It is not like it hasn't been done before, I just don't think its been this obvious before.

Almost forgot, there was one or two scenes where I swear they must have been running out of their budget. It was a part with the wolves and with some giants at the end, just looked bad.


Anyway, awesome movie, check it out.

Saw it yesterday.

I was a big fan of the books as a kid (20+ years ago) and although I haven't read them in quite some time (15 or so years) they are still ingrained in my psyche. That being said, I think they did quite a good job, and I don't think there is much they could have done that would have made it much better. As I was watching it though, I did begin to doubt that it had the "flash-bang" to win over the majority of the ADD youth of today, since it is more of a "story" rather than a series of action sequences spliced together.

And as with any book-->movie translation, one could nitpick if one chose to, such as Spoiler: IMO Aslan should have been physically bigger, since there was supposed to be no mistaking him for an average lion. And I also felt that the Aslan death scene should have been more brutal, but with the Disney moniker, that was never gonna happen. But since those things didn't ruin the movie for me, It's not a big deal.

One thing I thought they did really well was make talking animals that didn't look retarded.

Overall, I'd give it a 8.5 out of 10

The movie was excellent, even when compared to the novel. The only problem I had with it was that it felt rushed, but that is typical when dealing with book to movie translations, mainly because in a book so much of the detail that is taken for granted in a movie has to be described to you. The old "picture is worth a thousand words" thing I suppose. But overall, excellent movie, and I hope they continue with the series.

I to have the whole series Chronicles of Narnia permenantly engrained in my childhood memories. From when I was too young to read and my parents reading it to me, to the final books that I could read to myself.

When the movie started, all I could think to myself that it was that these memories I have are now coming to life. I thought the movie was beautiful. I too was afraid when the disney sign came up at the beginning (I didn't go to the movie knowing this). But I was pleasanly surprised. For sure it is a family movie. But I thought they brought the more brutal parts of the story out as well.

C.S. Lewis's son gave it a nod, that gave me a good feeling about it,.

I just got back. I thought it was pretty good. It's certainly no LOTR, but still...pretty decent flick.

Spoiler: My complaints are mostly to do with the writing. There just didn't seem to be a 'flow' to the movie. It just sort of hopscotched from one event to the other...Ed and the Queen---Back to Peter and Santa---back to the wolves----and back to the queen. There were a few instances where the transition from major scene to major scene were spectacular (the wind through the trees back to Peter's camp) and other times when you just didn't know what the hell was going on (Oh, that's Tumnus...he's with the witch, right...?).

I like that they drew a lot of the dialogue straight from the source, much like Bowen, Walsh and co. did for LOTR. The problem, however, is that the dialogue seemed a bit stilted in parts. It didn't seem natural at all. The bits with Tumnus and the little girl were good. The bits with Aslan and the Queen were good, but the rest...not so much. It seemed like the writers just made a list of all the great bits of dialogue from the books and then didn't bother to work with it...just left it as it was all disjointed.

Beautiful movie though. I was really impressed with the effects, especially around the big battle sequence. Although, Xiangsu is right, the giants looked waaaay off. :D


Edit: Now 100% correct...thanks, mrklixx!

(Whispered)Psssst.......Guthmund.....It's "Tumnus". :D

I had to go back and look it up just to make sure.... :lol:

Sure enough...Tumnus...son of a monkey.

Maybe I should pay more attention before I go spouting off, eh? That or get my eyes checked... :p

Saw it the other day, pretty decent size crowd for a monday matinee. I only remember the cartoon and parts of the bbc/pbs version, so I pretty much went in blind without any expectations. Much like Locke7, i was also pleasantly surprised considering Disney's involvement. Tilda Swinton was alot darker than I thought she'd be, which is of course a good thing. My only complaint is how flat some of the acting came across. I really only enjoyed Edmund, who came off as such a whiny cigarrette bugger (again, a good thing.) The other kids looked kinda robotic/numb. And I swear I could not tell if Lucy was going to laugh or cry. Other than that, it's a great family movie, with enough story for the parents and enough cute/prettyness for the kids.