Hello everyone! 🙂

Welcome to ‘Bradley’s Basement’ blog and I’m Tim Bradley!

This was a film adaptation I was looking forward to seeing since it was first announced back in 2023, I believe. I hoped that this would be an exciting and thrilling adaptation of the first chronological story in ‘The Chronicles of Narnia’ called ‘The Magician’s Nephew’.

But in the past couple of months we’ve had, there have been…well, controversial creative decisions made about the upcoming adaptation by writer/director Greta Gerwig, who previously helmed the 2019 film adaptation of ‘Little Women’ and the 2023 film ‘Barbie’.

We’ll get onto what those controversial creative decisions have been about, but suffice to say, I was hoping for this to be more in the direction of ‘Little Women’ as opposed to ‘Barbie’. And the latest trailer we’ve had for the film frankly doesn’t quite help matters. 😐

First things first, let’s check out the trailer.

Okay, so, first of all, the visual look for the movie looks really impressive. I’m sure it’ll look very grand when seeing the Wood between the Woods, the desolated kingdom of Charn as well as Narnia being sung into existence by Aslan from reading the original novel itself.

The cast looks impressive, including the two main leads – David McKenna as Digory and Beatrice Campbell as Polly. I’m looking forward to seeing Carey Mulligan as Flora Kirke, Digory’s mother as well as Daniel Craig as Andrew Ketterley, the titular magician. 🙂

Emma Mackey looks visually stunning as Jadis, the last Queen of Charn who would later become the White Witch. It’s interesting to find that Ciarán Hinds is the voice of the elder Digory Kirke, who is presumably narrating events of the film from its beginning to its end.

With all this said, I’m not entirely happy with the film being set in what looks like the 1940s. This is especially as the original ‘Magician’s Nephew’ story took place in 1900 – 40 years before ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’ happens in 1940. 😐 This is a problem.

If ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’ is to be the next instalment in this ‘Narnia’ film series set up by Greta Gerwig, it means the story will take place in the 1980s. Meaning this isn’t really a faithful adaptation of ‘The Magician’s Nephew’ once we see it on screen.

It’s a shame that, as I was really looking forward to seeing ‘The Magician’s Nephew’ when it comes out in February 2027. Maybe my mind might change on that regarding how the story is told, despite it being set in the 1940s. But still, I can’t help but feel disappointed.

Additionally, this is the first time that ‘The Magician’s Nephew’ has been adapted for the screen. It’s been adapted for audio and stage certainly, but never for film nor TV before. I was hoping that Greta Gerwig would provide a faithful adaptation with not too many changes.

There’s also the issue concerning Aslan being voiced by Meryl Streep instead of a male actor like Ronald Pickup and Liam Neeson in previous versions of ‘The Chronicles of Narnia’. 😐 I’ve had doubts about this not matching to the depiction of Aslan by C.S. Lewis.

From seeing the trailer, it seems Aslan is a male lion and not a lioness, despite it being Meryl Streep being the voice of Aslan. Who knows? Maybe I’ll be surprised in how Aslan is voiced by Meryl Streep. Perhaps the voice will be distorted to sound male, I don’t know.

Initially, I wasn’t planning on seeing the film after hearing the controversies concerning the creative choices made in terms of it being an adaptation of the original book. But from seeing the trailer, I might be persuaded. Whether it’s at the cinema or via Netflix, I’m not sure.

Despite that, I’m glad I’ve been able to share my thoughts on ‘Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew’ for now via the trailer. I’d like to think it’ll be an impressive adaptation of the original book by C.S. Lewis and maybe it’ll be satisfying. 🙂 We’ll just have to wait and see.

Thanks for reading!

Bye for now!

Tim 🙂