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Greta Gerwig’s Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew trailer raises questions about C. S. Lewis’s Christian vision and the faithfulness of the new Netflix adaptation. Here are my initial impressions and concerns.

After much anticipation and controversy, Netflix has released the first trailer for its new adaptation of Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew, directed by Greta Gerwig and with a reported budget of $280 million USD. 

At the time of writing, the trailer had attracted more than 40 million views and done little to allay Narnia fans’ concerns about Gerwig’s significant departures from the beloved source material.

Indeed, the trailer appears to have incurred the wrath of Narnia fans.

As of Friday 16 October, it had a view-to-like ratio of just 0.20% on YouTube (representing the percentage of those who watched the film and also chose to like it) and had received nearly 50,000 dislikes to just 81,000 likes, suggesting that viewers are disproportionately both refraining from liking the video and actively disliking it.

Here are my initial impressions and reflections.

Who Am I to Comment? A Few Caveats

But first, a few caveats and disclaimers.

Firstly, I am no expert. There are many fans of the book series and Lewis’s oeuvre more broadly who know much more about Lewis than I do.

That said, as someone who has conducted more than one substantial research project on C. S. Lewis’s life, writings, and intellectual development, and is currently conducting a major master’s-level dissertation on him, I am in a position to claim some familiarity with Lewis’s way of thinking.

I am an intellectual historian by training, not a film critic or a literary scholar. Accordingly, my comments may be more inclined to reflect my interest in historical and intellectual context, rather than the artistic or creative (or even literary) considerations that are front of mind for others.

Secondly, while I read Narnia as a child (and at least once more in more recent times), I do not claim intimate familiarity with the Narniad. Most of my exposure to the Chronicles came through Focus on the Family Radio Theatre’s spectacular dramatised audio adaptation, which (given my impressions of this new trailer) may remain the only decent adaptation of the entire series.

Thirdly, and this is important to point out given the understandably heightened feeling associated with this adaptation, I will fiercely avoid impugning intentions and be as conservative as I can in my interpretations. 

It is very easy to extrapolate unfairly from assumptions about ill-intent, the political climate within Hollywood, or from Gerwig’s worldview and even some of her (and others’) comments about the film and its development.

Yet, while we may ultimately be justified in our suspicions, I think it is better to refrain from such extrapolation and speculation until we know what the final product looks like.

My final caveat is that we really do only know that much. We have seen several images of the film, we now have an initial trailer, and a number of factual and contextual details (casting, reflections by the production staff and Gerwig, etc.) have been established. 

It really isn’t much to go on. We will have to wait until the film is released next year before we can pass final judgement.

Is Accuracy in Adaptation Really Important?

This leads into an important question that has been asked (rhetorically) by many defenders of the film: does it really matter what the author’s intentions were in writing the book? Isn’t a book (especially a classic) bigger than the person who wrote it? Doesn’t it take on a life of its own? Can’t the readers make of it what they want to? Who are we to judge?

I think there is something to this question.

It is impossible to guarantee that what a reader “gets” out of a story — what she imagines or takes away from it, or how it impacts her — is the same for everyone.

We each experience this when we re-read a great work of literature. We get something new, something different, hopefully something more, out of every reading.

This is partly the nature of literature: it speaks to the core of our human experience, so there can be layers of meaning and application that can be drawn from a story.

But it is also the case that we change, grow, and mature as individuals.

For example, when I first read The Last Battle, I was very unimpressed by it. That was not a reflection on the book — rather, it was a reflection on me.

As the 18th-century German physicist and satirist Georg Christoph Lichtenberg commented:

“When a book and a head collide and a hollow sound is heard, must it always have come from the book?”

When, as a young adult, I re-read The Last Battle for the first time in perhaps ten years, it brought me to tears. I discovered in it what I had entirely missed on my first reading.

This is not to say that the process of reading is completely subjective. It is simply to recognise that there is a subjective element to it.

Any film adaptation of The Magician’s Nephew, then, has to reckon with the fact that everyone has a slightly different image in mind when he thinks of Charn, for example, or the Tree of Protection, or the Garden of Youth. Accordingly, because film is a visual medium, it is impossible to adapt a story in a way that will satisfy everyone.

Yet this is all the more reason, I think, to follow the source material as closely as possible — and especially to pay diligent attention to the author’s intentions for the story. Because, ultimately, what do all readers of the Chronicles of Narnia have in common? They all read the same seven books, written by the same man.

When a filmmaker sees their task as translating or communicating the spirit of a work as its author intended it, audiences notice.

Arguably, the 2005 adaptation of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe achieved this — and the critical response and financial success of the film reflect that.

Andrew Adamson’s adaptation made $745 million USD at the box office. And, while it received positive critical reviews, the two Narnia sequels (both of which wandered from the source material to greater or lesser degrees) “failed to recapture the magic with tepid reactions and declines in revenue”, despite big budgets.

Similarly, Peter Jackson’s cinematic masterpiece The Lord of the Rings (2001–3) and the eight Harry Potter films set benchmarks for literary adaptations. While they were artistically stunning, and took a certain amount of liberty with the source material, the production teams made every effort to capture the imaginative and thematic essence (with close reference to the author’s intentions) of the original story as articulated in the books.

While an adaptation will never satisfy everyone (indeed, some make the case that any film adaptation is fraught for this reason), the only way to speak to such a wide audience is to diligently recreate the story as best as one can. 

Unfortunately, there are many hints that what we have with Gerwig’s adaptation is an expression of her reading of the classic story, an approach that reduces the story to an expression of her artistic sentiment, rather than a careful, respectful adaptation of an all-time classic work of fantasy.

Indeed, isn’t this what makes a work of literature a classic? — at least in part its ability to transcend its own context and speak profound truths to wider audiences?

When it is instead reduced to the artistic whims (or, worse still, the political agenda) of one individual, what is classic about the story is lost.

With that said, what does the new trailer suggest?

First Impressions: The Good News

While others have done careful, frame-by-frame analyses of the new trailer to assess its faithfulness to the book (I recommend you watch the above video from the channel “Into the Wardrobe” if that is what you are after), I will here make just a few remarks about my overall impressions.

There were several positive takeaways.

Firstly, the trailer (mostly) appears to be quite impressive. It strikes me as having had much more artistic care — and much more passion — poured into it than something like Amazon’s ill-fated and ill-rated The Rings of Power, which has always felt artistically flat and soulless.

Secondly, I am actually quite keen on the casting. I think Emma Mackey is perfectly suited to the role of Jadis and the White Witch. Daniel Craig makes a decent Uncle Andrew. Ciarán Hinds appears to be set to play the elderly Diggory (who *spoilers* will end up being the Professor in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe).

In this trailer, we don’t get any sense of how Kobna Holdbrook-Smith performs as Frank, the London cabby who becomes the first King of Narnia, although I don’t see any reason he will not perform admirably. Similarly, I have no complaints about the two child actors from what I have seen.

Thirdly, I am not yet super unhappy about the representation of Aslan — although we have not yet heard him speak. I agree with other critics that the “cosmic star dust” representation of Aslan may be problematic, although the children’s “awed” reaction in the trailer was extremely well executed.

I am happy to withhold judgement on Meryl Streep’s voicing of Aslan. I have written previously with my thoughts on the “big three” controversial changes, including the Streep casting and some plausible (although, I admit, unlikely) reasons for a more feminine (although not female) representation of Aslan in The Magician’s Nephew (although not in the Chronicles as a whole).

In that article, I drew heavily on Michael Ward’s scholarship linking the seven books of Narnia to the seven medieval “heavens”, which Lewis wrote about extensively in his academic work (including books like The Discarded Image).

If it is true that Gerwig “read or re-read everything Lewis wrote” as she claims to have done (although I have my doubts¹), then she may be familiar with his scholarship in medieval cosmology and may have incorporated aspects of this into the film.

As an aside, Gerwig (hilariously) also claims to have “tried” to “read everything he [Lewis] read” — a project doomed to fail in light of Lewis’s voracious reading habits, which prompted one Oxbridge historian to remark:

“Lewis seemed not only to have read everything but to have remembered it as well; if one quoted — say — an obscure bit of Calvin, as likely as not he would continue or complete the quotation. He was the best-read man I have ever met, almost too well read.”

Indeed, in preparation for his monumental work of scholarship English Literature in the Sixteenth Century (Excluding Drama), Lewis attempted to read “every book” written during the sixteenth century and available in the University of Oxford’s massive Bodleian library. 

Gerwig was unlikely to achieve what likely no scholar of Lewis has ever achieved.

Fourthly, I was somewhat reassured by the fact that the most visually and artistically unorthodox sequences appear to be confined to Charn — the dystopian wasteland from which Jadis originates. 

While Lewis envisioned Charn as a quasi-medieval dystopia with its own rich, Game-of-Thrones-esque history of kings, queens, betrayal, and conflict, Gerwig has designed it like something out of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It has a distinctly modern, techno, even disco vibe about it.

Although this is a sore loss — especially considering the lost opportunity for spinoffs exploring the history of Charn — there is at least one plausible (although, again, unlikely) reason for this change: Lewis was deeply suspicion of aspects of modern technological, industrial, and scientific civilisation.

It is plausible, given the special hatred Lewis (and, for that matter, his friend J. R. R. Tolkien) harboured for many features of the “modern” world, that he would have approved of a redesign that represented the dystopian wasteland of Charn as the epitome of what he saw as distinctly modern — technologically sophisticated, but vulgar, morally shallow, and glitzy.

Is this what Gerwig is doing: redesigning Charn as a modern dystopia rather than a medieval wasteland?

I highly doubt it.

Is it a plausibly defensible reimagining of Charn in light of Lewis’s thought?

I think so.

Finally, Gerwig does show that she has some understanding of Lewis’s life and centrality to the story, and we know that she has embedded some of this within her adaptation.

Firstly, we see that she uses C. S. Lewis’s mother’s name, Flora, for Diggory’s mother. Like Diggory’s mother, Lewis’s mother (Florence Augusta Lewis, 1862–1908) was struck down with a serious disease while he was young. Unlike Diggory’s mother, Flora did not recover. Naming Diggory’s mother Flora is a nice way to respect Lewis’s connection with the story.

Secondly, and much more superficially, the pub The Eagle and Child makes an appearance in the trailer. Although much about its appearance in the film is historically mistaken — the actual Eagle and Child (or “The Bird and Baby” as Lewis and friends used to call it) is not on a corner and is situated in Oxford, not London — it does acknowledge the significance of Lewis’s friends, the Inklings, to the development of Narnia.

That said, some fans have interpreted these minor artistic decisions as tidbits thrown in an attempt to pacify loyal fans, while Gerwig persists in her wholesale bastardisation of the beloved story.

Why I Am Still Very Sceptical

All that said, I remain very sceptical about this project. I’ll give a few quick reasons.

My two biggest concerns about the story concern the 50-year future shift of the timeline and Gerwig’s choice to start with The Magician’s Nephew (especially its implications for the historical Second World War context of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, which featured so prominently in the 2005 adaptation).

You can read more about my reasoning here.

Some additional things to note from my impressions of the trailer.

Firstly, I really don’t get the sense that the Christian “supposal” that Lewis intended Narnia to be has carried into this adaptation. It feels much more like business-as-usual, although certainly not generic, Hollywood entertainment. Just another cool story, rather than a profound Christian myth.

Secondly, the trailer leads me to believe that we are going to see crucially important plot points and character changes that will undermine some of the most central themes of the story.

Thirdly, I don’t like the visuals as applied to Narnia (they are impressive in and of themselves, but just don’t feel “Narnia-esque”). I get the sense that many changes have been made thoughtlessly and simply for the sake of change.

As Lewis famously wrote in Mere Christianity:

“Progress means not just changing, but changing for the better,” and I am not convinced that Gerwig’s changes are changes for the better.

Fourthly, while I understand that Gerwig needed to differentiate her adaptation from the hugely popular 2005 one by Walden Media and Disney, I feel as though she has gone too hard on the differentiation — not only visually (colour grading, logo design, etc.), but in terms of the overall feel of the film (especially soundtrack, but also acting style and so forth).

As a consequence, I believe that this film will inevitably date in a way that Adamson’s has not.

It is tempting to ask, what would Lewis have thought of this adaptation? (Although I don’t think that this should be the ultimate measure of whether it is good or not.)

It is important to note that Lewis was not precious about his books or his stories. Indeed, he once replied to a young reader of Narnia who wrote to him about whether Susan would ever make it to Narnia:

“I could not write that story myself. Not that I have no hope of Susan’s ever getting to Aslan’s country, but because I have a feeling that the story of her journey would be longer and more like a grown-up novel than I wanted to write. But I may be mistaken. Why not try it yourself?” (C. S. Lewis to Pauline Bannister, 19 February 1960)

The next year, he wrote to a boy who wanted further Narnia books:

“Yours is one of the nicest letters I have had about the Narnian books, and it was very good of you to write it. But I’m afraid there will be no more of these stories. But why don’t you try writing some Narnian tales? I began to write when I was about your age, and it was the greatest fun. Do try!” (C. S. Lewis to Jonathan Muehl, 29 March 1961)

Clearly, Lewis was not opposed to the idea of fan fiction.

Yet I suspect that for many of the reasons we’ve discussed above, he would have been appalled by Gerwig’s adaptation (at least, what we have seen of it so far). Whether it be the “vulgarity” of the rock soundtrack, the visuals, or the morally ambiguous place that characters like Uncle Andrew and Jadis inhabit in the story, I suspect that Lewis would have found the medium completely unsuited to the essence of spirit of the story.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I will not be holding my breath waiting for the release of The Magician’s Nephew. Indeed, I have not yet made up my mind as to whether I will go to see it or not.

Watching the trailer gave me some hope that this adaptation will not be as appalling as some have expected it to be. In fact, from a filmmaking standpoint, it may be genuinely stunning. 

Yet I am not yet sure that that is necessarily a good thing.

An entertaining, high-production-value film that pillages and misrepresents a classic like The Chronicles of Narnia could be much more damaging than simply another poor adaptation.

Ultimately, I suspect that Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew will find its audience. Like what I am led to believe was the case with both The Odyssey (2026) and The Rings of Power, those who most loved the films appear to be the people who care (or know) least about the story. 

I have already noticed that those who have responded most positively to this newly-released trailer almost always preface their reaction with “I’ve never read the Narnia books” or “I don’t really know what this is about”.

In light of that fact, of course they enjoy the impressive visuals, the soundtrack, the star-studded cast. Such people have nothing at stake and accordingly are taken by the entertainment that the new production offers. 

Those who care nothing for Lewis and have no stake in his Christian mythology make laud The Magician’s Nephew as a brilliant cinematic success — complete with a more intriguing and original storyline than we are used to, ironically courtesy of Lewis himself.

Yet I suspect that it will be those of us who care about the stories — and the message, the beauty, the goodness, and the truth that they represent — who will be disappointed by this adaptation.

1. Besides having written more than thirty books (including the monumental English Literature, which runs to nearly 700 pages), Lewis wrote hundreds of essays, poems, and shorter works, and tens of thousands of letters (thousands of which survive and are published in the 4,000-page, 3-volume Collected Letters edited by Walter Hooper). Indeed, Walter Hooper’s bibliography of Lewis’s works runs to 83 pages.

Image taken from the thumbnail of the Netflix trailer on YouTube.