#narnia30days

[theboredandkindaweirdhisotrian]

30 Day Narnia Challenge #2

Day 2: Favorite movie?

The 2005 The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe adaptation has been one of my all time favorite movies ever, and when it comes to Narnia movies, it's almost a tie with Prince Caspian (which was my choice when I did this challenge back in 2016) and obivously they're both very well done. Most importantly, I appreciate how the filmmakers started the process of making both of them in spirit of trying to make a good film with a good story that's faithful to Lewis and in that aspect they succeeded (more or less - I'm looking at you, PC the movie!). In adition to that, they both have stunning videography, locations, costumes, props, the casting are all on point and the music really ties together films that will stand the test of time.

But since I wrote what makes it my favourite in my previous visit to this challenge, I would like to draw your attention to some other adaptations that may deserve your attention if you're a hardcore Narnia fan.

The Foucus on the Famliy Radio Theater did a marvellous audio adaptation of all the books, complete with good voice acting (multiple actors read multiple roles) and immersive background sound effects and music. If you're not into just a read-aloud audiobook, give this a chance!

The BBC miniseries adapted one mini-series LWW, did a single season PC with VDT where PC gets like 2 episodes and VDT is the rest and a miniseries adaptation of SC - the only screen adaptation of SC. Due to a much smaller budget than the Walden/Disney films, this one features a lot of very obvious puppetry, some way over the top costumes for Talking animals and some very awkward greenscreen. If you're there for the story, it might be fun for you, but if you're one of those people that cannot stand anything that isn't thouroughly done over by some sort of CGI, you'll be put off. The casting is a bit of a hit and miss, they could have done a better job with Lucy, Eustace was a good choice, he's delightfully annoying (in VDT that's a good thing!) and IMO Drinian was a total miss. Jill was a very good choice. Tom Baker as Puddleglum was decent enough. They casted Barbara Kellerman to play both the White Witch and Lady of the Green Kirtle, which can be confusing if you've never read the books (okay, it's kinda confusing even if you did) and she was a fairly decent choice though she can be very intense. My favourite performances come from Warwick Davies as Reepicheep and Samuel West as King Caspian in VDT (I might like them better than Ben Barnes and the Walden version of Reepicheep). Again, if you wanna try something that's not Walden and don't mind taxidermy Aslan and giant bowling pin beavers, I'd say go for it. It's fully freely available on YT.

Speaking of low-budget, there's a 1979 2D animated feature length LWW adaptation that was featured on CBS. For some reason it features the coolest way Aslan does away with the White Witch and Edmund with glasses which, as a gal with glasses, I thought was neat. Again, worthy of checking out if you're really into Narnia and don't mind shabby animation. This too is freely available to watch on YT. Some screencaps are so memeworthy though. As a fun fact, soon after, the same studio went into pre-production for an adaptation of The Magician's Nephew. They went as far as had the first two or three chapters planned in storyboards, however the production was scrapped due to unknown reasons. There's a YT video the girls at TheLionsCall made when one of them purchased said Magician's Nephew storyboards here

I've only ever seen the promo videos and shots for the Logos Theater productions, but have never seen the shows because I don't live in the USA, but I would very much like to.

Thank you for reading this long post, and as a treat, please have this 1979 adaptation of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe random screencap with no context whatsoever!