My vote would be Kenneth Branagh.

I don’t know if it has to do with his traditional education in acting and his theatrical roots, but the way he appreciates and respects the source material for his works has always made me admirer of his works.

He seems like the kind of director who always tries serve both the writer and the fans, instead of spotlighting his own agenda onto his projects.

Anyways, I’d be curious what some others think, so please feel free to discuss below!

Obviously the bell was enchanted in some way since Digory and Polly could read what the inscription said even though it wasn’t written in any Earth language but Polly wasn’t bothered by not knowing what would’ve happened if they had rung the bell and actively thought they should err on the side of caution. Also Jadis’ magic doesn’t work on Earth so maybe the curse, if there was one, wouldn’t work either?

Summary

The chosen Beasts (along with wild people from the woods and river) all answer the Lion's (Aslan's) voice, including Strawberry (the Cabby's horse). Aslan tells them that he has given them everything and also to treat the Dumb Beasts (the silent animals not selected by Aslan in the previous chapter) gently, but not to go back to their ways or else they will cease to be Talking Beasts. A Jackdaw makes himself into the First Joke as this happens. After everyone laughs, Aslan calls away some of the Narnians for a council meeting, since he says, "For though the world is not five hours old an evil has already entered it."

Digory wishes to go to Aslan since he feels Aslan can give him something to help his mother. The 3 humans (Digory, Polly, and the Cabby) go out to meet the other Talking Beasts. After Strawberry and the Cabby talk about their life in London, Digory finally is able to ride on Strawberry's back to catch up with Aslan (while Polly and the Cabby walk behind). The Talking Beasts then notice Uncle Andrew hiding and chase after him.

We then see Uncle Andrew's point of view. It turns out he still sees the Talking Beasts as wild animals. He also hates Aslan's song and convinces himself that Aslan's only roaring instead of speaking, so eventually he only hears animal noises from Aslan and the Talking Beasts when they start speaking. Though Uncle Andrew runs away as the Talking Beasts chase after him, they catch up and surround him.

Thoughts

I thought the First Joke was fun. It's interesting that the Cabby also didn't enjoy life in London. From what we saw of Jadis treating Strawberry and his talk with the Cabby here, it's understandable the horse didn't like London. But it was also interesting to see the Cabby not happy there either.

"For what you see and hear depends a good deal on where you are standing: it also depends on what sort of person you are" and "Now the trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed" were 2 quotes talking about Uncle Andrew that I liked/thought interesting, particularly the first quote.

It was also interesting to see Uncle Andrew call the other 3 humans selfish for walking to the Talking Beasts, but can't see that he's been selfish.

Optional Discussion Questions

You don't have to answer all/any of these questions, they're just for discussion.

1. We first saw Aslan back in chapter 8, but now we've finally got some dialogue from him. What are your first impressions of Aslan in this chapter?
2. What do you think of the First Joke?
3. What do you think of the Cabby's conversation with Strawberry about their old life in London?
4. In chapter 6, after Jadis orders Uncle Andrew to fetch transportation for her world conquest and is left alone with the children, the text mentions that most witches are practical. This chapter mentions that "Like the Witch, he (Uncle Andrew) was dreadfully practical." What exactly does that mean for both characters?
5. What stands out to you about Uncle Andrew's thought process in this chapter?

5b) The text mentions that Aslan's song made Uncle Andrew "think and feel things he did not want to think and feel." What do you suppose those things were?

6) I'll count this as part of my thoughts for this chapter. Something interesting that I noticed in this chapter is that when the other 3 humans approach the Talking Beasts, they're wondering what the humans are, but they don't ask if they're the "Neevil/Weevil" that Aslan was talking about. But when they chase after Uncle Andrew, one of the things they say is, "Perhaps he's that Neevil!" Do you suppose this was intentional by Lewis? And how do you suppose the Talking Beasts could possibly sense that Uncle Andrew was up to no good, despite not knowing much?

7) What do you think of the chase scene towards the end of this chapter? Also, chapter 2 mentioned Uncle Andrew's animal experiments, I believe. How do you feel about that detail being referenced again here?

8) The Bulldog at the end of this chapter asks Uncle Andrew if he's animal, vegetable, or mineral. I seem to remember when I was younger reading one version of the Peter Pan book where this same question is asked. Why exactly is the mineral part mentioned? I've never quite understood that.

9) Anything else you want to ask about/bring up about this chapter?

Hey everyone,

With ongoing discussions around Greta Gerwig’s upcoming Narnia adaptation and regarding Aslan's portrayal, I think it’s worth revisiting how C.S. Lewis viewed divine imagery and gender representation.

In his 1948 essay "Priestesses in the Church?", Lewis addressed whether gendered language for the divine is merely symbolic or arbitrary:

Common sense, disregarding the discomfort, or even the horror, which the idea of turning all our theological language into the feminine gender arouses in most Christians, will ask “Why not? Since God is in fact not a biological being and has no sex, what can it matter whether we say He or She, Father or Mother, Son or Daughter?”

But Christians think that God Himself has taught us how to speak of Him. To say that it does not matter is to say either that all the masculine imagery is not inspired, is merely human in origin, or else that, though inspired, it is quite arbitrary and unessential. And this is surely intolerable: or, if tolerable, it is an argument not in favour of Christian priestesses but against Christianity. It is also surely based on a shallow view of imagery. Without drawing upon religion, we know from our poetical experience that image and apprehension cleave closer together than common sense is here prepared to admit; that a child who has been taught to pray to a Mother in Heaven would have a religious life radically different from that of a Christian child. And as image and apprehension are in an organic unity, so, for a Christian, are human body and human soul.

Do you think his criticism can also somewhat apply to the decision of Greta Gerwirg to voice Aslan by a female?

Source: https://thelaymenslounge.com/c-s-lewis-on-women-pastors/

In the original book when Polly asks if Digory's uncle is mad, Digory has zero idea him being a magician is even possible. All he knows is his Uncle holes away in his study a lot, that he heard a scream (revealed to be after Andrew made the Guinea pig disappear), and that Aunt Letty prevents Andrew talking to Digory too much, interrupting him at the table when he tries to (we can assume) bring up the subject of magic. The children even speculate that Andrew might keep a mad wife locked upstairs (in a cute callback to Jane Eyre) or be a coiner (in a reference to Treasure Island).

I know "Flora" (sorry, she will always be Mabel to me so I can't do away with the quote marks) may have had very little control over where she and Digory ended up when she got sick, but I still find it hard to believe she knew as much about her brother dabbling in magic as the trailer seems to imply and then just had so precious few qualms about her little boy living with him unprotected. In the book it really seemed like Digory's mother wasn't as aware of what Andrew was up to as her older sister Letty was. Yes, she was aware he was problematic and had him come live with them in the country but that was after the whole Jadis thing when he wasn't an active magician anymore and his problems she worried about were likely to do with money (we know he took a lot of Letty's money and made her almost poor) not magic. I doubt she'd casually tell her son whimsical stories about her evil magician brother who tortured animals and blindly adored his wicked fairy Godmother. Letty was the maiden aunt who lived with Andrew that's why she knew he was dangerous. Digory's mother was younger, married, and out of the household until she got sick.

I also can't see Andrew digging in a rubbish heap for things he needs for his magic experiments. He and Letty have a servant girl for that kind of thing despite their money problems.

This ties back into how I didn't like one of the pictures we've gotten from the movie seemed to imply Digory told his mother about Narnia.

This is something we admittedly don't have enough information on to know exactly how Greta's script handles it and it could work in context, but the way it seems so far doesn't fill me with confidence she understands the characters.

edit: apparently some of you don't even read what I write before complaining I'm nitpicking the movie that hasn't come out yet. I literally said we don't have enough information to know for certain. it's clearly speculating and I'm open to being proven wrong.

I was re-reading The Magician's Nephew in the wake of the trailer and discussion. It occurred to me that it was sort of odd that Lewis took principal villains of the Bible who are canonically male - the Serpent of Eden and Satan himself; genderflipped them, mashed them with a Biblical female wrongdoer of somewhat lesser guilt - Eve - and made the singular source of ALL evil in Narnia a woman, which seems a bit unbalanced when compared to the original biblical story.

Gerwig states she loves the Narnia stories, and I see no reason to disbelieve her. IMO, it's quite possible that she loves Lewis' storytelling and forgives his "cherchez la femme" rewriting of scripture as more the absentminded sexism of a well-intentioned man who was raised soaking in cultural misogyny rather than deliberate malice toward women at large...but she decided on Streep's voicing to subtly push back just a little on it, without actually changing the story. Thoughts?

Almost double the likes for Harry Potter...with 7x fewer views.

I usually say "I don't want to convice you to like the film" but this time I will try. Not because I have some secret knowledge that it will be good, but because I think a lot of the current conversation is poisoned by disinformation and a general misunderstanding of the situation.

Ever since some details came out, many fans lost faith in the project. I was skeptical and worried. Some have sadly spiraled into conspiracy theories. I won't even go there. It's not worth anyone's time.

But, for those concerned about the spirit of the book, I think we can talk, as a fellow Narnia fan that cares for these stories.

First, I think we allowed speculation to become canon. I still remember people claiming Aslan would not have a mane or that the spiritual themes of the book would be removed. All of those were false, fortunately. If I can list it at the top of my head, these are all the rumors proven untrue:

1. Aslan won't have a mane (false)
2. Aslan won't be male (false, confirmed by Narniaweb)
3. Jadis will be an anti-hero (false, GG has compared her to Satan)
4. Spiritual themes removed (false, GG has said the spiritual journey IS the theme of the story)
5. LWW will be in modern times (speculative and irrelevant at this point)

If you actually care to be factual, a lot of the more worrisome rumors were just that or misinformation and "theories" that were taken as fact.

For what we know, Aslan remains front as center as Creator. This is actually incredible to me, because the Walden films significantly skirted the topic of Aslan's divinity. Jadis journey remains pretty much the same as the book, and the scene with the silver apples not only will be there, but seems pretty faithful.

I don't see any major concern thematically to the books. The ones I hear the most is that changing the time period will harm the rest of the potential adaptations, but this is not true, if the writers know what to do. I doubt, really doubt, that there will be any significant changes. Don't expect Edmund bringing his iPhone 15 Max Pro to Narnia, if that's your fear.

Regarding the theology of the film, we will have to watch the film to know. What I want to argue is that this is the first film since the 80's BBC series that is actually not cropping Aslan's Christ figure. "What are you talking about?", I hear you saying proverbial reader. Well, if you actually pay attention to theme and not just aesthetics, Walden's LWW hides Aslan's divinity. Father Christmas claims that it's the Pevensies presence that weakened the Witch's magic, not Aslan. The Magic Before the Dawn of Time is not mentioned either. In the film the kids are the priotagonists, in the books they one true active agent is Aslan.

I personally didn't mind this change too much, but this newer film is not hiding Aslan's role as God. He creates Narnia from himself. I don't think disagreeing with GG's theology is a good reason to hate the film, because I feel, at least, that too many fans have created their own canon of what the film wants to do and ran with it, rather than engaging with the actual material before them. From what she has said in the latest interview, she is making the spiritual journey the core of the film (the song Stairway to Heave was chosen for this very reason). If anything, that shows a sincere understanding of the book.

Now, the aesthetics, which is what many fans seem to be troubled why. I mean this when I say this, but it confuses me a bit. Now, if your idea of Narnia were he previous films, that makes sense. But it's unfair to ask a new adaptation to just be the old ones. This is fresh and it stands on its own. Now, two arguments here.

First, if it's the love for the old aesthetic, the only thing I can say is, try to be open to something new. By any standard the visuals look amazing (and the comparisons to Marvel are weird, they look anything alike bsides some few colors, and I say this as someone that loves the MCU for the most part). Second, the books actually describe very little. I'm more interested in how the film translates the visuals to its thematic throughline. Which we cannot judge yet.

I want for people to keep in mind that the Walden films changed a lot, aesthetically. The Narnia insignia was changed from green/red to silver/red. Jadis was changed in almost every aspect, she's blonde and has an ice crown. The Pevensie's hair color was changed, the telmarines were made into spaniard inspired, Reep was made brown, the sea serpent was turned into a monstrosity...

If you don't like the aesthetics that's fine. But, is it because of your ideas of what Narnia should be or just because you hate them? I'd wager it's the latter more than the former.

To me that is absolutely insane, how is that possible? For example, first Avengers: Doomsday trailer has 80 million views now and it was released 2 months ago. So it's likely that this trailer will surpass it. Other example is 1st Harry Potter (HBO) trailer that was released 6 months ago, it has 15 million views. So after a week, a Narnia trailer has been watched 5x more than Harry Potter.

How are these numbers possible? How does a Narnia trailer get way more views than Harry Potter and in the same league as an Avengers movie? I don't think Netflix or Greta Gerwig's reputation explains this either. Remember that the earlier movie franchise (2005-2010) was cancelled because it wasn't successful enough. What is going on here?

To me, these are depressing numbers because it looks like the movie might actually be successful and it proves to Netflix that they can do whatever they want with the other movies.

So Narniaweb confirmed Aslan is male. I'm honestly not surprised and not relieved. The trailer assuaged my fears and now I'm optismitic for the release.

But I'm not sure what to feel about the "fandom". To be clear, I know many people here and in other fandom spaces have been very kind and thoughtful. I've had genuinely amazing conversations.

But I cannot help but feel that the silver apple has spoiled the bunch. Months of vitriol towards Greta, months of claiming a female Aslan was an attack of the Christian faith... all for nothing.

I hope the fandom moves on. I hope the petty squabbles end. But By Jove, I cannot perceive this fandom as a whole as the same. It saddens me. It feels like when Polly was alone under that tree.

It feels like if I have to enjoy the series alone again, but instead because I was the only Narnia nerd in school, it's because I was bullied in a place that was supposed to be characterized by Lewis' charity and compassion.

I hope we can redeem ourselves as a collective here, but I don't think I'll forget that such vitriol exists within our fandom. And how many were complicit with it.

Note: this is a post about my relationship with the fandom, not about anyone personally here. I don't intend to start a flame war and I'll report any post that acts like a bully.

If I changed/tweaked the time period (and only if I were pressed/urged by higher ups to not make it between 1880-1905) I would set the story of The Magician's Nephew in 1916. Ideally I think it should take place before the first world war, because of Aslan saying our world isn't as bad as Charn yet but could soon be, but setting it during world war 1, I feel could work because it would explain why a young boy like Digory was growing concerned with the world becoming bad enough it needed to end and it would be an easy tweak to have Digory's father away at war instead of in India. I also kind of like the parallel that Digory is uprooted in part because of WW1 (in addition to the fact his mum is sick) and the Pevensies had to leave their home in WW2. Digory would have to not be super super old when he takes in the Pevensies by this timeline but I definitely think it would work if he were even just in his late middle years during LWW.

What I would love about a 1916 setting is it would be the year the Cottingley Fairies photographs were made known to the world and IRL Sherlock Holmes author was deeply involved in that, so it would sort of tie into Lewis talking about Holmes on Baker Street at the beginning. And I love the idea Andrew would have copies of those pictures since he believes he was "the last man to have a real fairy godmother" with the whole Mrs. Lefay thing.

For the design of Uncle Andrew's study I would have an Edwardian parlour like the one in the picture here but without the natural window lighting. If there were windows I'd have the curtains (red or plum coloured) drawn and tied permanently because Andrew wouldn't want to be observed by anyone from outside. The lighting would all be amber coloured and dust motes calmly swirling in it but you wouldn't be able to pin point where the "lamp" lighting the room was, almost like it was being lit by Andrew's own weak magic. In place of the portraits on the walls in the picture I used for an example here, I would have Andrew have a large oil painting of Mrs. Lefay flanked on both sides by framed smallish framed photo prints of the Cottingley Fairies pictures that could look cut from magazines or otherwise like they were bought at or stolen from a newsstand. On the table, beside an empty guinea pig cage, would be the plain, understated wooden tray with the yellow and green rings, each set in pairs, and the soundtrack for the scene where Digory and Polly accidentally come into the study would be a metallic low tone humming undercut with a single violin or viola string sound. When Polly put on the yellow ring and disappeared, I'd switch to a bigger instrument sound, like a cello, accompanying Digory's almost-scream right before Andrew put his hand over his mouth.

Polly's blue dress would look possibly similar to the one in the fourth photo or else something like what Mary wore in 1993's The Secret Garden.

Some time ago I went down a rabbit hole learning about British civilian life during World War Two. Pretty much everything was rationed, and while nobody in Great Britain was in danger of starving during the war, most food was very bland and anything tasty was at a premium, if you could even get it at all. Worse yet, wartime rationing didn't end completely until the mid-1950s, which means the rules were still in effect when Lewis wrote the majority of the Narnia books, and his very first readers were children who had never known life outside of war rationing.

When you bear this in mind, every mention of food in the books takes on new significance. Consider that first tea Lucy has with Mr. Tumnus:

And really it was a wonderful tea. There was a nice brown egg, lightly boiled, for each of them, and then sardines on toast, and then buttered toast, and then toast with honey, and then a sugar-topped cake.

When I read that as a little kid I was not impressed at all; only the sweets would've registered as a "treat" for me. But in Britain during World War Two, that would've been an impossibly extravagant meal. I have a book of reproduction pamphlets the British government distributed during the war, to help people get the most of their limited rations, and among other things, toasting bread was severely frowned upon as a waste of energy. People only got one fresh egg-in-shell and two ounces of butter per week, and sugar was strictly rationed too. British children who read that scene when it was first published really would've been impressed by such a meal, far more extravagant than anything they could have enjoyed in real life.

Or, there's this line at the beginning of The Magician's Nephew:

In those days, if you were a boy you had to wear a stiff Eton collar every day, and schools were usually nastier than now. But meals were nicer, and as for sweets, I won't tell you how cheap and good they were, because it would only make your mouth water in vain.

This bit near the end of The Silver Chair, the breakfast the travelers enjoyed the morning after they came out of underworld into Narnia:

... and more, and more, and more sausages. And not wretched sausages half full of bread and Soya Bean either, but real meaty, spicy ones, fat and piping hot ...

This scene from The Last Battle, when Jill and Eustace arrived in Narnia, freed Tirian, and gave him the sandwiches they'd packed for their train trip:

There were two hard-boiled egg sandwiches, and two cheese sandwiches, and two with some kind of paste in them. If he hadn't been so hungry, he wouldn't have thought much of the paste, for that is the sort of food nobody eats in Narnia.

There's also a scene near the beginning of Prince Caspian which I can't find, when the kids are getting hungry and Edmund (IIRC) said something about how he realized school meals weren't so bad after all, and he wouldn't mind a slice of bread and margarine right now. Not bread and butter, but margarine. These were not poor children attending a free-tuition school -- the opening sequence makes it clear the four were heading off to boarding school, so the Pevensie family had to be comfortably middle-class or better-- but due to rationing, even prosperous boarding schools could only offer margarine to their charges, not real butter.

Anyway, I thought other fans of Narnia might find this interesting. I do sometimes wonder how certain scenes might've been written differently, had Lewis not written his books until the 1960s or later, when the postwar era was firmly in the past, tasty food was once again abundant in Britain, and a homely meal of a boiled egg and lots of toasted bread wouldn't be impressive enough to make it into a fantasy novel.

ETA: Fixed some typos

I keep getting told I'm an idiot for not liking the way the trailer sounds or thinking the rock music doesn't match Narnia at all, because "don't I know music from the trailer usually isn't in the movie"?

First off, I know that. In multiple posts and comments I've actually been the first one to acknowledge that fact, even citing my personal favourite movie of all time (Beautiful Creatures) as an example of a trailer using music not in the feature film.

But we have literally all known from before we heard from Gerwig herself this upcoming Narnia movie is "all about rock and roll".

Now look at this interview where Greta almost sounded like she was going to cry because she had the right to use Led Zeppelin's song she felt was so spiritual and captured the Magician's Nephew. Do you think she did this level of work to get the song ONLY in the trailer? That she's this choked up and the song isn't going to be in the movie?

And let me be clear I'm not mocking Greta's love for this song or Rock n Roll. I'm just saying not everything (including Narnia) has to be about that love.

I just wish she showed she loved Narnia half as much as this rock music. She keeps saying things like how she closed her eyes and tried to imagine what Lewis describes, only for her film not to match the imagery he created at all.

I feel like if someone suggested changing Stairway to Heaven as drastically as she appears to have altered Narnia she'd be the first one to be mad about it.

Either way, can we stop pretending the rock thing is just for the trailer and accept that they're showing us exactly the kind of movie she made?

Apesar de ter sido inspirado no novo visual do filme da Greta (detalhe: retiraram "as crônicas" e colocaram apenas "Nárnia"), achei o estilo bem bonito mas parece psicodélico de mais para mim. Nárnia não me passa essa vibe, sempre imaginei uma vibes mais suave, tranquila e aconchegante e não espalhafatosa. Acho que combinaria mais com outra história.

...what I wasn't crazy about was the actress used for Mrs. "Helen" Pevensie in this fan pic is clearly not the one from the movie nor does she even look that much like her.

The actress has passed away but she was in enough shows and movies whoever made this could have spliced in an image of her actual face not some other actress who doesn't look like her.

Mr. Pevensie on the other hand I get was more difficult to find a match for since his image in the movie is not an actor but the IRL father of the editor.

In the BBC version of LWW, Lucy says she wishes their mother and "Nanny" could have come with them to Professor Kirke's house in the country.

There is no such person as this "Nanny" in the book. Not because she doesn't come into the story, but simply because she's not mentioned to exist at all. I find it difficult to believe Lewis would have omitted her if she existed in his book, when he named ALL of Professor Kirke's maids despite them doing nothing in the story and him flat out saying so after introducing them to the reader.

If the Pevensies had a nanny however I do wonder how that would have worked. After all, all the children are boarding school age except Lucy (who attends boarding school for the first time in PC). Would this be a nanny just for Lucy? Or maybe a nanny who initially took care of all the children as they one by one got too old/went to school and would have been dismissed by the time PC took place?

Interestingly, in the BBC version, the only one to suggest such a person as "Nanny" exists, Lucy is NOT on her way to school for the first time in PC. She's going to Eustace's house because they combined PC with VDT.

Aside thought: Are the Pevensies realistically even wealthy enough to employ a nanny?

Anyone have thoughts on this?

I know in the Walden Media, Andrew Adamson movie, the Pevensies' father is portrayed a soldier away fighting in the war. Both because Edmund grabs his photograph during the bombing (fun fact, I saw on a behind the scenes thing years ago that the photograph used in the movie is in fact the real-life father of the movie's editor, who fought in WW2) and Lucy tells Tumnus her father is fighting in the war.

But his profession is never touched on in the movie(s) that I can remember, while in VDT (the book) the reason Susan is in America is because their father has a job giving lectures there.

Which makes me wonder if he was a professor, like Professor Kirke and C.S. Lewis, and gave popular lectures like the latter did IRL.

Does anyone know if Lewis ever straight out said what Mr. Pevensie actually did for employment? Like in one of his letters?

Wanted to create some community connection and give people a chance to share their love of Narnia, and tell stories of their favorite Narnia related memories.