Friday, April 22, 2011

Narnia Is Doomed, One Way or Another


Just in time for Good Friday -- and the doomed-animals narratives of Earth Day -- it's: my thoughts about the future of the Narnia movies:

All I want out of the mediocre Narnia films (three down so far, out of seven) is to see the apocalyptic and ape-oriented Last Battle get produced.  Though it was written seventh, the logical thing to do, plainly, would have been to release the film version of it fifth -- enabling them to complete the main arc of the series without interruption (the already-released Wardrobe, Caspian, and Treader, followed by Silver Chair and Last Battle).  Then, if the franchise still has any gas left after that, you go on to do the rather expendable prequel The Magician's Nephew and the tangential tale The Horse and His Boy.  Don't risk having the series end before, well, the end.  

Instead, they're reportedly doing Nephew next, if anything (maybe because it's cheaper).  Any way you slice it, aesthetically or logically or novel-publishing-wise, Silver Chair should be next, i.e., fourth (and surely they should ask Silverchair to do an end credits song), not Nephew.  

But as long as we get to the apocalypse eventually, I'll be happy.  And with the current plan, we do get to see Tilda Swinton's character one more time much sooner (quite prominently in Nephew, actually).

2 comments:

Todd Seavey said...

On another fantasy front, on Facebook, Daniel Radosh posted:

I was feeling bad for Emma Watson when I read [a NY Daily News piece saying] she dropped out of Brown because she couldn't take her classmates heckling her when she answered questions. Then I got to this part: "The most popular choice was 'Three points for Gryffindor!'" And I laughed very loud.

Todd Seavey said...

Watson now emphatically denies this happened and says she loves Brown, comments a fellow Brown alum on Facebook (my page is linked in my name here). If I spot her near my Campus Dance table at Reunion on May 27, then, she'll presumably be smiling. (She may spend her impending third year elsewhere, though.)