I remember buying “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” on Audible when I was so young I had to use my dad’s account. That was around 25 years ago. Since then, I’ve listened to all seven books, read all seven books, and reread all seven books to my kids. I love C.S. Lewis’ world. As a J.R.R. Tolkien superfan, I also appreciate the more relaxed nature that Lewis brings to fantasy compared to Professor Tolkien’s fantastical rigor. When you step back and take it all in, Narnia is a wild blend of pure fun mixed with intense, deeper meaning.
But saying “The Chronicles of Narnia” is fun doesn’t mean you can adapt it however you want. On the contrary, there are certain liberties that the Disney movies (yes, the last one was made by Fox, but Disney owns Fox now anyway) took that were flat out wrong, and they changed the entire feel of the story. I’ve previously pointed out a lot of the nitty-gritty things the movies get wrong about the novel series — things like keeping Eustace as a dragon for way too long or overly involving Tilda Swinton’s White Witch across all three movies. Those kinds of things are to be expected. But there’s one area where the trilogy of films from the early 2000s really went astray: exponentially opting for more drama and less substance.
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Disney’s Narnia movies get progressively more melodramatic
An ensemble of protagonists in Prince Caspian – Disney+
I’ll be honest: “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” is a really good adaptation. There are a few nitpicky things that a fan of the books can pick on, but I’m a glass-half-full kind of guy, and I’m aware that any jump from page to screen is going to come with a little change. Overall, the movie is good, and it follows the book closely. Unfortunately, that isn’t true for the two films that follow. These progressively wander further from Lewis’ narrative — and a lot of the change is driven by drama.
The melodramatic chinks in the armor start in the first film. The bombing of London, for instance, is only mentioned in the books. In the movies, it’s the opening scene, and Edmund (Skandar Keynes) and Peter (William Moseley) are almost killed. The dramatic scene where the four Pevensies are being chased by wolves on cracking river ice was also invented for the movie.
“Prince Caspian’s” penchant for over-the-top storytelling is worse. We get completely new storylines around a supposed romance between Susan (Anna Popplewell) and Caspian (Ben Barnes), and the wild attack on King Miraz’s (Sergio Catellitto) castle is added in for some extracurricular battlefield flair.
Things really go south in “The Voyage of the Dawn Treader,” where the original book story — which plays out a lot like a positive, adventurous version of the Odyssey — is completely reorganized, culminating in a confusing ending with a sea serpent and some kind of sentient darkness. I’m not surprised that this is where things bottomed out. By the time the credits for “Dawn Treader” roll, the movies are so far afield that any book fan feels lost (and maybe a little betrayed) — and anyone without that knowledge is just confused.
Greta Gerwig and Netflix’s Narnia movie could reset things
Lucy by the lamp post in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe – Disney+
Here’s the good news: We’re getting a Narnia reboot this year. And if Netflix and director Greta Gerwig play their cards right, they could give this franchise another chance to stick to the story that keeps millions of people coming back to Narnia over and over again. I’m unsure if that will really be the case, though. The news we’ve been getting for over a year now is kind of all over the place.
On the one hand, Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos went on record specifically saying the director respects the source material and that the Gerwig version of Narnia will be “rooted in faith.” That, to me, is non-negotiable. If you’re going to adapt C.S. Lewis’s stories, you can’t get lost in the weeds with the drama at the expense of the moral message. Those values are too deeply woven into the Narnia story and its Christian imagery to sideline it. If you do that, you’re stripping out the meat and potatoes, and all that’s left is some empty decoration.
We’re also getting stories like how studio execs were butting heads with Greta Gerwig over Narnia’s release in theaters — specifically, an IMAX release. That sounds great, but I hope it’s not a sign that they’re focusing on grandeur over substance again. Narnia is fun. It’s big. It’s exciting. But it’s also a series that is grounded in faith, hope, and love. It is encouraging and thought-provoking. It resonates with people of faith and, really, anyone with a moral compass. If Gerwig’s reboot can capture that aspect better than the previous trilogy, I think that’s what could really reflect that Deeper Magic from Before the Dawn of Time and make this something truly special.
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