The Slow Death of The Chronicles of Narnia Franchise

[Applause] captain midnight [Applause] this video is brought to you by curiosity street in the early 2000s disney was looking at a trend they had no part of and they weren't happy two franchises had sprung up around them harry potter and the lord of the rings and both were proving to be huge hits at the box office with one even winning an incredible amount of oscars including best picture neither of course was their franchise they wanted in on the fantasy wave and they wanted the name that could go toe-to-toe with those beloved books when they did it in the mid-90s the studio had been trying to get an adaptation of c.s lewis's the lie and the witch and the wardrobe off the ground it didn't end up working out though and when the rights had lapsed they had been scooped up by walden media who was fast establishing itself as a major player in the world of children's entertainment disney approached walden media more than happy to spend some serious money on the project and with that the chronicles of narnia film franchise was born are you a form yes it's easy to see why disney assumed the cs lewis series would make for the perfect fantasy film franchise these seven novels published in the 1950s were still beloved around the world and before harry potter came along was easily the most well-known children's fantasy series they contained just about everything the family-friendly disney would want in a project like this evil witches talking animals and a far more pg feel than the darker lord of the rings and when it came to the first movie an adaptation of easily the most famous narnia book their plans seemed to have worked perfectly the film directed by shrek and shrek 2 director andrew adamson was not exactly subtle about its influences most of the film was shot in new zealand kind of the go-to location for fantasy after peter jackson used his home country to film lord of the rings they also decided to expand on the battle scenes as much as possible making them much more prominent than they were in the novel this isn't to say they weren't faithful to the book though though the dialogue was often updated to be more accessible to modern kids the film stays largely true to cs lewis's novel watching it now i think it loses some of the wonder and mystery of the books and the performances from the child actors can be a little stiff and bland at times but overall it's a really solid version of the story and audiences were clearly on board as the movie opened to 107 million dollars worldwide making it disney's biggest opening weekend ever at the time it felt like narnia was now on even footing with the other big fantasy franchises massive hit movie tie-in video games tons of merchandise the franchise it seemed was here to stay but this is kind of where the other shoe dropped and to discuss why i think i have to talk a little bit more about the books themselves like i said on paper they were perfect novels to adapt in practice though maybe not so much where harry potter follows the same group of characters as they age and continue to go to school together and lord of the rings follows one large cast in a long sprawling adventure narnia just doesn't really like that cs lewis didn't reuse the same cast every novel he weaves characters in and out of narnia's stories at very different ages too a character might be a teenager in one novel and an old man in the next and while many of his characters have personality especially the whimsical residents of narnia it's clear he's a lot less interested in telling a coming-of-age stories like many modern ya novels are and is far more interested in narnia itself and especially in the christian allegories he crafts using it as a backdrop something that's very clear in the lion the witch in the wardrobe and only becomes more important by the final book the last battle this obviously worked well for lewis it was the story he wanted to tell and it resonated with millions of people so i don't mean this as a criticism of the novels but i don't think it's a series that lends itself to blockbuster filmmaking as much as it might appear at first glance instead of checking in with the same cast every film to adapt this series would require dropping lead characters and bringing them back movies later it could be done sure but you're fighting an uphill battle luckily for disney the novel prince caspian includes all the kids from the previous book making it a more traditional sequel but it's here we start to see the filmmakers begin to grapple with some aspects of adapting lewis when i look back on the lion the witch in the wardrobe one of the most memorable elements of it is edmund's betrayal edmund isn't perfect he's angry with his siblings and a bit selfish so he sells out the rest of the kids for some candy it's really clear that this is cs lewis building out his christian allegory with edmund standing in for judas to aslan's jesus christ and it works from that perspective but it was also so important to the film version because it actually gives the pevensy kids some emotional conflict edmund not being perfect and getting in spats with his siblings makes them feel a little bit more human in the prince caspian book though this is mostly gone the kids no longer have much in the way of internal conflict so the film really has to go about giving them some it sets up this rivalry between peter and caspian that feels completely tacked on to the story as well as a mild romance between susan and caspian those elements aren't bad exactly they just don't have that much impact on the actual narrative itself and prince caspian is kind of a downer novel it's cs lewis writing a children's book about something he finds important keeping your faith even when things are difficult and god seems farther away than ever that's clearly the aspect of the story that lewis cares about the movie doesn't totally shy away from that but it's still trying to be an entertaining ya action movie first and foremost and because of that feels the need to graft on some more traditional personal conflict for its leads and i totally get the impulse honestly after their first novel the pevancy kids are pretty boring characters they really try to change that in the film but because these additions have almost no impact on the actual plot they don't really do much and to many people in the audience prince caspian just came off as a slightly darker retread of the film before it maybe because of this or because the marketing seemed to completely center around caspian and not the characters that audiences would remember from the previous film the movie massively underperformed at the box office to be fair it also wasn't helped by the release date which was in the middle of summer instead of the christmas season where the first movie did so well in the end it grossed just under 420 million worldwide far below the previous film's 745 million at the time disney told the press that they were still very happy with the movie's performance after all it still was one of the highest grossing films of 2008 a year packed with hits like iron man the dark knight and the fourth indiana jones film but behind the scenes disney wasn't exactly thrilled on christmas of 2008 a day likely chosen to attract a bit less attention for the embarrassing story disney announced that they would be dropping the narnia series and had no interest in distributing another film the planned third movie voyage of the dawn shredder was put on ice that is until a few months later when fox swooped in and decided that they would make dawn shredder though at a reduced budget compared to the first two films the movie that resulted from this is perfectly watchable as a kid don treader was one of my favorite narnia books but i'd never gotten around to watching the film until this week and honestly i think it's a nice well-directed little movie but once again it's kind of constrained by the fact that it had to be a blockbuster movie at all the book plays out very episodically more like a series of smaller adventures at sea lewis was heavily inspired by the irish folk tales that he loved as a kid when writing it and he drew a lot from them making for a really charming whimsical book but the movie wants to lay a blockbuster movie framework on top of that story so it comes up with this very fetch quest in a video game style plot to tie everything together i understand why they did it but it makes the movie feel pretty by the numbers especially compared to the source material there's also the fact that the actors who play lucy and edmund are kind of worse here than they were in at least the first film they're not outright terrible or anything but never great either especially skander keynes who plays edmund he retired from acting directly after this film and i understand why it just feels like his heart wasn't really in it anymore the new kid will poulter's eustis is actually very well cast though as the pair's annoying cousin eustis is one of the better kid characters in the books i think thanks largely to the fact that he has an actual character arc going from the whiniest kid imaginable to a real hero i think i prefer don shredder to prince caspian but honestly neither one quite managed to rise to the level of the first film let alone the books they're based on dawn treader performed okay for fox about at the level of prince caspian which they were much more happy with since it had a lower budget they started planning the silver chair immediately with a major overhaul fox wanted to position the next film as a reboot with a new cast and a new director so they brought in joe johnston the solid journeyman director behind movies like the rocketeer and the first captain america film fox had every intention of making this the fresh start the series needed the problem was maybe unsurprisingly the source material itself the silver chair is a really really weird place to start a reboot of the series because it's a pretty direct follow-up to dawn shredder and contains the culmination of caspian story it was also a darker sadder book than those that came before a pretty awkward fit to relaunch what fox saw as a family series scripts were written and rewritten and the movie stalled out in development hell with the writers apparently stuck with the impossible task of adapting the book faithfully and making it an accessible reboot at the same time eventually they gave up in 2018 it was reported that netflix was developing a narnia series but we haven't heard almost anything about it since i'm sure the franchise will return in some form but when viewed now it's hard not to see the 2000 series as a failed experiment disney's attempt to reverse engineer a harry potter of their own using source material that stubbornly refused to be that kind of story i have a lot of fond memories of that first movie and even the ps2 game that was based on it but overall the series is missing that sense of wonder that the novels always had feeling a bit more generic than films based on something as weird and unique as those books should unlike some other failed franchises it didn't crash and burn with completely awful movies it just never quite measured up and when the fantasy boom of the 2000s was finally over it ended up being left by the wayside much like the aragon and golden compass film franchises despite that first film being such a huge hit the narnia books never went away but so far the attempts to turn them into 21st century studio ip kind of have so one of the biggest inspirations for cs lewis behind the narnia series was the beauty of nature which is something the documentaries on curiosity stream have plenty of this week i watched the magic of the wild a nature documentary that's all about the natural beauty of national parks it's a super relaxing watch too so i definitely recommend checking it out that's not all though on my streaming service nebula i have two exclusive videos covering the title sequences of cheers and rick and morty in the working title series there's a ton of stuff on there each bomber guy has covered true detective nandov movies has covered one punch man there's a great video on the 90s batman cartoon you combine that with curiosity streams documentaries on science nature history and more and you have a really great deal you can get all this for 14.79 not for a month for an entire year that's a 26 discount so get the deal now by going to curiositystream.com captainmidnight that's curiositystream.com captainmidnight here's a special tip for the fellas and girls who have not already joined captain midnight's new 1940 flight patrol you'd better hurry up and join at once because there's a big adventure ahead the thing to do now is to get started because we're going to have not only barrels of fun but loads of free gifts and prizes too

Channel: captainmidnight

Views: 3,529,716

Keywords: The Chronicles of Narnia, The Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe, Prince Caspian, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Narnia, Disney, Captain Midnight, captainmidnight, Netflix, Fox, Aslan, The White Witch, Peter, Lucy, Edmund, Review, Soundtrack, battle, trailer, The Silver Chair

Id: gGTGRANjy6I

Length: 13min 7sec (787 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 05 2021