Chronicles of Narnia - POLL

to be perfectly frank is not going to make much difference to people who have never encountered a talking bear before.

the last bear I talked to had hella attitude and wouldn't even bottom idk

a lot of it is wild shit given this guy is meant to be some kind of xtian: like unleashing bacchus and silenus and getting them to coax schoolgirls into taking half their clothes off

now that's the part of the novel where things get unwieldy

yeah the tree orgies were odd

hot entwives in your area

Prince Caspian is better than the Silver Chair, which is irritating and not very good

tbf Tom Baker is in The Silver Chair. Probably not in the book though.

Prince Caspian is better than the Silver Chair, which is irritating and not very good

― the absence of bikes (f. hazel), T

respectowiggle

i really like silver chair: puddleglum is a good character to have in a kid's book i think

anything would be a letdown after Dawn Treader though

dawn treader has too much aslan in it

courage, dear heart

the Emerald Witch plucking at her koto surrounded by clouds of incense = so metal

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wh55SzhLkmc

hoping there’s a metal band called bism

also mudfilth

I love fantasy books where people walk for ages (and maybe get lost). The best bits of Lord of the Rings are them walking.

Prince Caspian is better than the Silver Chair, which is irritating and not very good

― the absence of bikes (f. hazel), T

respectowiggle

This is 90% of why Fellowship is the best. It’s basically a travelogue of a long walk without a ton of other plot going on.

― The land of dreams and endless remorse (hardcore dilettante),

*cough* The Silver Chair: the trek through Ettinsmoor, etc.

in the silver chair it bothered me all out of proportion that scrubb didn't get to say hi to the elderly caspian

also: repectabiggle

amidst all the bad takes in this revive, and they're not few, the idea that fotr lacks plot is a real doozy

we have a good thread where we do in fairness surmise that it is a book about walking in the main so points for that

mark otm about why not listen to lucy, the portrayal of the character in the british tv tltwatw in the nineties was shockingly annoying and very accurate

we just finished the horse and his boy. Aslan saved the boy so the Aslantians would win the war years later. Main kid(s) always become rich at the end, in one world or another.

the bolt of Tash falls from above

― mookieproof, Wednesday, August 3, 2011 9:56 PM (twelve years ago)

the bolt of tash falls from above

― mookieproof, Wednesday, February 1, 2023 3:56 AM (eight months ago)

sorry for duplication, but i just wanted to point out that i was otm

amidst all the bad takes in this revive, and they're not few, the idea that fotr lacks plot is a real doozy

"Lack" implies it's the worse for it, though.

Silver Chair and Dawntreader are my absolute favourites. It makes me a little sad that KIDS TODAY don't read these books. I loved them so much. I still do. I don't care if CS Lewis was trying to indoctrinate me into Christianity by stealth. It's not like he did a very good job of it.

. It makes me a little sad that KIDS TODAY don't read these books.

They don't?

Cobbles and kettledrums!

i really like silver chair: puddleglum is a good character to have in a kid's book i think

They don't?

I might be extrapolating a bit from my own experience, but no, none of the younger readers in my orbit have ever mentioned the Narnia books. My sister-in-law, bless her, tried to get my niece interested in TLTWATW for my sake when she was the right age, but no, absolutely no interest. Which suggests to me that they're not on the radar of kids that age at all.

last battle is next and my son is psyched “because all the OGs will be there”

Come further up, come further in!

the Narnia boxed set is sold at Costco next to the Dogman and Wimpy Kids, so I'd guess they are still popular in the US.

I like Shasta (his highness, Corn) and Aravis in A Horse and His Boy more than the other kids. They risked more to earn their happy outcomes. I like Aslan the war-fixer less. Aslan is coolest when a mysterious and intimidating creator in Magician's nephew. He is always showing up in Horse Boy, scratching little kids. It feels like Narnia's own "when there was one set of footprints, that's when Aslan carried you".

the godly manifestation of corporal punishment

courage, dear heart

Aslan's constant meddling is a very pagan sort of behavior for a deity, I think Lewis ultimately wrote these books because he wanted kids to abandon Christianity when Jesus failed to get involved in their lives in any obvious way. Take up with ancient Greek gods, he is saying, there's fauns and talking animals and the gods are all up in your business all the time.

That…is a take

yeah, Bree says "he's probably not really a lion. he's beyond our understanding, a mystery." Then he is exactly a lion that turns people into donkeys for joeks.

Lewis had to have known he was setting Christianity up for failure in his child audience by having Aslan take such an active and explicit role in the Narnian protagonists' lives, I choose to believe it was intentional

lol. I feel the same about the ending of TLB. “Oh cool we’re in heaven…But we all died horribly in a train crash? What???”

what's weird about it?

The stuff with the doorframe was weird (and cool).

I guess the stuff of the real-Narnia-inside-the-real-Narnia is Lewis the amateur Platonist addressing ideal forms or some shit

Mostly a Netflix higher up interview here:

https://variety.com/2023/film/news/greta-gerwig-narnia-plans-netflix-1235785562/

But there is this:

Q I want to ask you about some upcoming films. You have Greta Gerwig adapting C.S. Lewis’ Narnia books. Why did you decide to make that deal? What about her as a filmmaker made you feel like that was a good fit with that material?

A Greta’s been a friend for a while. Her husband, Noah Baumbach, we’re close to, we’ve made I think three films. We’re starting another one. We have a big deal with them. If you don’t know her, she’s truly one of the greatest people, not an artist, but a human being. She’s just got this great soul. When we had 2019’s ‘Marriage Story’ and she had ‘Little Women,’ we all spent quite a bit of time on the awards trail together at dinners.

Gerwig grew up in a Christian background. The C.S. Lewis books are very much based in Christianity. And so we just started talking about it. And like I said earlier, we don’t have IP, so when we had the opportunity to license those books or the Roald Dahl Co. we’ve jumped at it, to have stories that people recognize and the ability to tell those stories. So it was just a great opportunity and I’m so thrilled that she’s working on it with us and I’m just thrilled to be in business with her. And she’s just an incredible talent.

Q Is she writing many of these adaptations? What is her commitment to this?

A Obviously, ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’ is kind of the preeminent one, but there’s such an interesting narrative form to the Narnia series if you read all of them. And so that’s what she’s working on now with producer Amy Pascal and trying to figure out how they can break the whole arc of all of it.

i would def sign up for a gerwig-directed 'the magician's nephew'

love gerwig and no shade but very funny to answer "What about her as a filmmaker made you feel like that was a good fit with that material?" with "she's really cool and I like to hang out with her"

Wild takes from hazel!

I’m an “read these in order of publication” hardliner, or at the very least read TMN second last (or even entirely last), stylistically it is written like a flashback, not an exposition.

TLB is the best-written of all of them, the most intensely plotted and sinister, Shift is one of my favourite characters. As a kid I didn’t pick up on the racism but that Susan stuff was really messed up

What is way worse than TLB tho is all the responses to it— specifically the final volume of His Dark Materials, which is way more fucked up and awful than anything Pullman was attempting to “correct”

I’m a “read these in order of publication” hardliner

thats right

It's interesting to see the Narnia books lose the context of mid-20th century British kid's literature, where it was almost required to write books where absolutely nothing happened... in comparison, Price Caspian is a nonstop rollercoaster

f.hazel i love you but that is complete nonsense

let's not pretend the canonical British children's book in 1950 isn't "child sent to country house during war and befriends ghost child, decides eccentric grandparent is all right after all, goes home"