Opinion: An Animated Narnia Movie Should Be Considered

Author: AJAiken

Amanda Aiken is a storyboard artist and animator in Scotland. She also co-edits Talking Beasts: The Narnia Podcast.

Despite animation being heavily used in many productions, bringing to life characters like Aslan, Reepicheep, and the Beavers, the idea of a fully-animated Narnia isn’t something that universally appeals.

Particularly in the West, there’s an attitude that animation is for children. No adults allowed! Even among filmmakers the medium can be seen as inferior, an opinion which not only overlooks the incredible amount of work which goes into animation but misses out on a beautiful and surprising art form.

Through a brief (and incomplete) look at the feature animation pipeline, I’ll explore what a new animated adaptation could bring to Narnia.

Story

Eat, Prey, Love (2016)

In animation, storyboards and scripts are usually developed simultaneously. This allows for visuals to drive the story. With several board artists collaborating on each production, scenes and shots are passed from person to person. Every moment is planned and studied and discussed; often, it’s redrawn several times. That drawing will be taken to layout, where key poses are created. From those, each scene is animated. When the storyboards are edited together into an animatic with temporary voices and sound effects, it’s like watching the movie before it’s made. It’s the blueprint for the entire production. This gives a certainty live action can’t match when so much depends on the sets and locations, the weather, and what the actors had for breakfast. Though some live action directors do storyboard heavily, all animated films are 100% storyboarded as it’s such an integral part of the process. This is why live action sequences with visual effects have animatics, as the VFX animation has to be planned perfectly.

Creative Control

Douglas Gresham, stepson of C. S. Lewis

On the flip side, this method of development means a story can quickly deviate from initial ideas and source material. With films like The Princess and the Frog and How to Train Your Dragon, the original stories have been drastically changed (though both kept their core ideas). Howl’s Moving Castle is recognizable, but the story and themes are different. Of course, such transformations are present across all media, not animation alone.

In the case of Narnia, the C. S. Lewis estate and Douglas Gresham would have more of a say in the creation of a film. With such overseers it is unlikely that changes similar to those of the films above would be made. Yet changes do need to be made to translate a story from book to screen, and we’ve seen the good and bad of that across all the previous adaptations.

Joy

“Oh, children, catch me if you can!”

Where animation could really make a story from Narnia shine is in adapting moments that are closer in feel to the book. As Fantasia mentioned in her opinion piece, those moments of joy – like Lucy and Susan playing with Aslan, or the romp at the end of Prince Caspian – were cut by both the Walden and BBC adaptations despite being so memorable. Yet they’re a key indicator of what Narnia is to fans. Perhaps the problem is that taking these moments into live action seems a bit silly. How can you show a lion playing with little children and make it look fun and not terrifying? How can you show the riot and revel of the romp? Or the stately game of the Great Snow Dance?

One of my favourite animated sequences is the song “Colours of the Wind” in Pocahontas. I can’t imagine this in live action. If it were it would seem foolish, sappy, overblown. Animated, it’s powerful and beautiful. It has joy. How wonderful it would be to see any of those Narnia moments made, not necessarily in that style, but with that sincerity of emotion.

Style

The Secret of Kells (Cartoon Saloon, 2009)

Animation has been criticized for its caricature, including by C. S. Lewis:

I thought [Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs] almost inconceivably good and bad.

[…] The next worst [thing] was the faces of the dwarfs. Dwarfs ought to be ugly of course, but not in that way.

[…] But, all the terrifying bits were good, and the animals really most moving: and the use of shadows (of dwarfs and vultures) was real genius.’

C. S. Lewis to A. K. Hamilton (1939)

I would love to see a Narnia onscreen where the design of characters, backgrounds and colours are all created to fit the story that’s being told. In an animated film every element onscreen has to be designed and drawn or modelled, from a landscape in the background to a hairbrush. This is in no way disapproving of the incredible work by Weta Workshop and others but ensuring that such design is carried across the entire production and is not restricted to photo-real representations.

For The Secret of Kells, Cartoon Saloon drew extensively from the Book of Kells. The Celtic designs influence the entire film, from characters to the flat perspective. It’s a cohesive, and beautiful, whole. A recent film which also impressed me in this regard is Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. Inspired by the comics in its use of colour, texture, layout, and character design, watching the film feels like reading a Spider-Man comic.

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (Sony Pictures Animation, 2018)

Imagine a film directly inspired by Pauline Baynes’ illustrations. So much of what I imagine of Narnia is taken from her drawings, and no adaptation yet has followed those designs. For me, this is the heart of why an animated Narnia could be so special.

Performance

Song of the Sea (2014)

One of the real strengths of animation is creating perfect acting for the perfect scene. Animation doesn’t require an actor to hit their mark at the same point over several takes. It’s planned, and changed over the course of the project, to tell the perfect story. This is such an assumed thing that bad acting is almost never mentioned when talking about animation. Instead what’s talked about is ‘bad animation’, a vague and hard-to-define term which is normally about awkward or unlikely movement.

Low-budget animation can have bad animation. Less money = less time = less planning, plus less able animators. Animation is expensive because it takes time; with less time, on low-budget or TV productions, it’s generally not as well made. There are exceptions, and there is excellent TV animation, but for an animated Narnia with a good story, good design, and good animation, I’d argue for a feature with a good budget.

C. S. Lewis

While complimenting a producer at the BBC on a recent Narnia radio adaptation, Lewis wrote:

But I am absolutely opposed—adamant isn’t in it!—to a TV version. Anthropomorphic animals, when taken out of narrative into actual visibility, always turn into buffoonery or nightmare. At least, with photography. Cartoons (if only Disney did not combine so much vulgarity with his genius!) wd. be another matter. A human, pantomime, Aslan wd. be to me blasphemy.’

C. S. Lewis to Lance Sieveking (1959)

It would be fascinating to know what Lewis’ views of the adaptations that have followed would have been. Like his opinions of Snow White, I imagine there would be parts he’d love and parts he’d hate in all of them.

What I take from his letters is that he greatly admired the art form of animation but was frustrated with Disney’s apparent disregard of mythology. I wonder what Lewis would have thought of The Secret of Kells and Song of the Sea. Both are steeped in myth and legend, with gorgeous use of colour and design to boot; perhaps he wouldn’t have liked the (deceptively) simple characters, though I think he may have appreciated the consistency in style.

The Future

However, there’s no point making an animated film just so it’s animated; no film should be made for the sake of it. I hope that, at some point, a director is inspired to make an animated Narnia movie because there are so many opportunities for storytelling in animation that go beyond any other medium. In the end, though, whether a Narnia adaptation is live action, animation, a stage play or anything else, what’s important is that it honours and grows out of the books.


The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of NarniaWeb.

Do you think Netflix should make an animated Narnia adaptation? Post a comment below!

37 Responses

  1. JFGII says:

    There are so many reasons Narnia is best suited as animated films or TV series’ over live-action, and I say that with great respect. Do you know how children would react to an animated film series?
    I know children would go ballistic if Harry Potter was an animated TV series as well, (which it’s best suited for anyway) but nobody is taking that idea seriously (not yet, not until the money stops from live-action).

  2. Cleander says:

    I'd only be OK with animation if they made live action first. The key with Narnia is to make it seem real, which makes me really favor live action. I wouldn't mind seeing what animation could do for Narnia, but I would be somewhat upset if that was all they did. The danger of it becoming a cutesy fairy tale is extremely high with animation. And I also think that it's totally possible to do dance scenes in live action and still have them be believable and good.
    The only animation I would like them to use, if they did it, is computer-generated, 3-D. Anything less would feel too cartoonish.

  3. Susan says:

    Disney’s Snow White is a beautiful spectacle in my mind because of real, hand-drawn artwork. Narnia would best be served by using as much richness in detail as Snow White. I’m thinking of the dwarves’ stairway with its carvings of owls and such. The movement of animation in hand-drawn works is fluid and sweeping and beautiful. Narnia needs special treatment and care; we shouldn’t abandon the best animation (even if it takes more time) for the “newest”.

  4. Skilletdude says:

    I'm not convinced that animation in its current phase of life has enough artistry to do Narnia justice. Just compare the hand-drawn animation of Disney's original 1940 Fantasia to their computer-generated animation in Frozen. From a technical standpoint, they are both impressive, but artistically, it's no competition that Fantasia is more artful and conveys more emotion. Only Pixar has been able to consistently bring more warmth to this style, I think.

    Animated Narnia films would be a much bigger ordeal. Not only do you have the challenge of adapting classic novels and preserving the essential story elements, but the difficulty in bringing quality and personality to the animation itself. Would there be a production team with the skill required, and the immense budget it would take, to make it this way? I'm not so sure.

  5. Friederike Lehrbass says:

    I prefer live action. It's so much more real and easier to connect.

  6. Aslan#1Fan says:

    I prefer live action. If Narnia were to be animated it could work. But it would take away from the realness of the series that I've come to love so much. Again, animation could work, but I think Live Action works much better from an emotional power standpoint as well, though there are some very powerful animations out there. I want to be able see a Narnia movie and feel in some respects to be able to reach through the TV and feel the fur of the animals etc.

  7. JFGII says:

    Animation the best it’s been? You’re right, not in its current state, no but live action CGI is not exactly up to the standard it was 15 years ago. There’s pluses and minuses for both mediums. Animation at its best would fit Narnia, so would live action, but just in different ways.

  8. daughter of the King says:

    I think a series in 2D could be superb. Hand-drawn animation is still popular in Japan, and Song of the Sea is an exquisite film. Even if Narnia is live-action, a good bulk of it will still technically be animated. 3D animation is also becoming more and more amazing. Pixar's The Good Dinosaur was basically the studio showing off how superb they are. The water and trees looked real.

  9. AJAiken says:

    I agree that Fantasia is much more artistic than Frozen, but I think you're comparing two very different films. Fantasia was experimental – it's closer to a string of short films than one whole. Personally I feel animation is very exciting at present. There are many films which are pushing the boundaries – short films particularly, but more and more features are being made. The Prophet, The Red Turtle, Klaus, The Peanuts Movie, Into the Spider-Verse are all very different but all experimenting with new ways of using animation. It used to be that the only way to make an animated film was the stereotypical 'Disney' way, but it's no longer the case.

  10. Hermit of the Northern March says:

    I used to not really want Narnia to be an animated series, because I was thinking of when movies first went to be totally cgi and how the characters looked "plastic-y" and didn't have the fluidity of movement.

    In recent animated movies such as Coco and How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World, the animation is so fluid and natural and the lighting is so well-done that these films are much more beautiful than they would be in live action – just like the old hand-animated Disney movies like Lion King, Pocohantus, Mulan, The Little Mermaid, etc. were able to use animation and music to tell a story very well. I think computer animation has only recently caught-up to having the beauty of the 1990s Disney movies.

    It hasn't quite caught up in style, look at the style in Prince of Egypt and try to imagine that as cgi. I think it would be much harder. This movie combined early cgi for background and effects and used hand-animation for the characters. It also was able to maintain the essence of the story of Moses despite being made by a non-religious studio.

    One benefit to Narnia being animated would be that we might have a greater variety of Narnians as supporting characters instead of only having a lot of fauns and centaurs.

    Poor animation, though, would be worse than live action. I tried watching Netflix's Watership Down, but the movement of the rabbits was not realistic and distracting (if they had used a cartoon style instead of realism it would've worked better than having photo-realistic animals with abrupt cartoon movement.) I've also seen Netflix Dreamworks' Trollhunters and the cgi animation is okay because it is done in a cartoon style and this would be acceptable for a Narnia TV series.

    There are other styles though, like Spider-verse and The Secret of Kells, which could work. I think it might cost more money to have a well-animated series than a live-action one, though.

    Live-action can also draw in some people who just watch movies or shows to see a famous actor, but I don't know if that really brings in that much more money.

  11. The Rose-Tree Dryad says:

    You make a great case for an animated Narnia adaptation, AJ! I especially appreciated the observation that scenes like the romp after Aslan's resurrection would be much easier to translate to screen in animation rather than live-action. I've been dreaming about 2D and 3D animated Narnia adaptations for years, but I hadn't thought about it from that angle yet.

    I'm excited for live-action adaptations (it's always great to watch a real person bring a character to life), but I would *love* to see a 2D or 3D adaptation with lush Narnian landscapes and heavy influence from Pauline Baynes' illustrations someday.

  12. Keeper of Lantern Waste says:

    Although I can totally picture a 2D animated Narnia (pretty much Pauline Bayne's illustrations to life) I would prefer a live action film. I love the Disney Renaissance and animation would lend help with the problem of finding child actors. However, I always feel a sense of other-worldliness with animation and I want Narnia to feel real.

    Of course I'd rather see a good animated show than a poor live action.

  13. Hawk satoshi 'the hawkshot' Sniper ketchum says:

    No just no
    have they done enough Damage to Narnia Films?

  14. Larry W. says:

    I remember that I had liked the BBC version of Narnia better than the 1979 cartoon because it had live actors. Is there any point in starting over again with another series when television and the movies had never completed their versions of the seven books? I'm afraid that another animated version would be abandoned after doing only one of the books. There are already enough versions based on The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.

  15. Col Klink says:

    When I first this story, I thought for a second they'd inexplicably released a podcast episode months ahead of schedule. I was disappointed to realize it was an opinion piece. Oh well.

    At this point in Narnian adaptation history, I do not want an animated adaptation. Special effects have progressed to the point where we can see some of the amazing things C. S. Lewis described in a live action movie and not have it look hokey or fake. (Well, it'll look a little too shiny perhaps. But closer to my imagination then would have been possible when the books were first written.) In animated movie, everything is a special effect so those parts wouldn't be impressive. After Netflix makes their adaptation of Narnia (assuming they every do; it seems more like just an idea for them at this point), we won't get another one for years. I don't want this one chance to be blown.

    That being said, I don't have a problem with an animated Narnia adaptation per se. While I know some people don't find animated movies as moving as live action ones because of their obvious unreality, my favorite movie is probably Ratatouille. And while it's true that animation in the US is associated with children's entertainment but I believe this isn't the case in other countries. Even in America they have The Simpsons and South Park. Anyway, even if one were to grant that animation is supposed to be for kids, I hate to break it to you, guys, but so is Narnia. 😉

    If I were to pick an animation style that would complement Narnia, it would be that of the TV series, Shakespeare: The Animated Tales and Testament: The Bible in animation. I believe they're both British/Russian coproductions. They used a combination of hand drawn animation and stop motion that is quite lovely. They don't look at all like a Disney movie, a Looney Tunes short or an anime. (That's not too badmouth the visual styles of any of those things. I just think the textures and designs of the shows I'm talking about would bring Narnia to mind more than they would.)

    TLDR: I'm fine with a (good) animated Narnia adaptation but until we get more good live action ones first.

  16. Col Klink says:

    I forgot to say that I'm not the biggest fan of Pauline Baynes' illustrations. I am a fan but while to some her pictures are Narnia, to me they're just one particular person's take on Narnia. So the prospect of sticking to that visual style like glue doesn't excite me. Sorry.

    Less controversially and more amusingly, I rewatched Saving Mr. Banks, in which the main character firmly insists that her literary creation not be adapted into an animated movie, right before I read this opinion piece. I'll take that as a sign. LOL.

  17. hogglestock says:

    I'm torn. I think you make really good points, but I think animation probably comes down a lot more to personal preference and style. With animation, there's so much more variety of looks and style to choose from, so there's the risk that they won't "get it right" for a bigger group of people. With live action, even if a certain character doesn't look like you imagined them, there's always the comfort that they found the best person they could. I think I'd just have to see an animated version before I knew what I thought.

  18. MelanieJoy says:

    I would think that given today's progress with live action movies and what they can accomplish – we could entertain the idea that C.S. Lewis would have been more open to it. Perhaps his opposition to it was based on the current time not being able to even come close to fulfilling his vision.

    As for my opinion – Real all the way! I am not against cartoons, I love them. But I have been waiting my entire life for every book to be done 'live'. After all, that's how my imagination sees it! There is so much magic that can be tapped into with visuals these days and so many other movies make use of them. And we got 2 1/2 movies (Caspian! *shakes fist), but only part of the story was ever told in that format.

    I want to see the birth of Narnia with today's colours and video abilities – Darn It!!

  19. JillPole231 says:

    I have been wanting an animated Narnia series of films since High School. We're talking more than ten years here. I spent most of my classes drawing Narnia characters in a Disney Renaissance style, hoping that someday when I was grown up I could pitch the idea to Douglas Gresham.

    I only recently heard of and watched Song of the Sea and its beauty just blew me away. While I read this article I thought of Song of the Sea's amazing style and how much it looks like a storybook come to life, and I was thinking how much I'd like to see Pauline Baynes' illustrations come to life in the same way, and BOOM! You mentioned Song of the Sea and Pauline Baynes.

    The only thing I would change if the films were made inspired by Baynes is I would change some of the details that didn't match C.S. Lewis' descriptions. For example, he described Lucy as blonde in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and I believe The Horse and His Boy and The Last Battle, as well. Yet Pauline Baynes colored in her hair to make it dark, even though she left Edmund's hair light… and his hair color is never specified. I want to see Narnia portrayed accurately according to what C.S. Lewis wanted. I wanna see a blonde Lucy for once. The author's descriptions should be the most important, followed by the illustrations. After that, the rest can be filled in by artists' preferences.

  20. Lord Argoz says:

    A really well-presented piece, and very persuasive. If you'd asked me before reading this what I thought of an animated Chronicles of Narnia I would have been fiercely opposed, now I'm completely open to the idea. I've never seen Song of the Sea, but just that one movie still you've pasted in the article is so beautiful, magical and potential-filled that I would love to see what could be done with Narnia in that same vein.

  21. Col Klink says:

    I might as well say this here. I don't really care whether C. S. Lewis would have liked any Narnian adaptations at all. I don't think he liked movies anyway. (That wasn't intended as a dismissal of him BTW. While I technically do like movies, there a lot of things I enjoy more.) When I watch a movie, I want it to be one that I like myself. I don't really care what other people think especially if they happen to be dead.

  22. Ryadian says:

    I'm very much in agreement, I really wish the Netflix adaptations would be 2D animated instead of live action. (2D, not 3D – I don't think there's a 3D style yet that would fit Narnia, especially not since I expect significant budget restrictions. On the other hand, TV shows budgets have produced animation like Avatar: The Last Airbender, which is the wrong style but still gorgeous.) Narnia has a beautiful and fantastic world and settings that go beyond what we'd consider normal – something animation can handle with ease. Because the world would all be the same medium, instead of needing to use CGI for the special effects, the fantastic elements would blend in seamlessly with the rest of the world.

    On the other hand, I also don't associate live action with realism anymore – not after the Hobbit trilogy, which looked far more cartoony and CGI than the last video game I played. Every CGI element looked out of place in those movies (and even characters like Thanos in Avengers: Infinity War), made worse when they used filters or most of the scene (except the background) was CGI. I couldn't not notice the fakeness. And yes, there are movies that can do better (the original LOTR trilogy, of course, did far better), but I don't really trust a Netflix budget to pull it off.

    We can argue that animation may have a stigma that it's "just for children" or it would be a "cartoon", especially in the West, but frankly the books have that stigma too – partially because they *are* children's books. They are excellent children's books that are deep enough to be enjoyed just as much (if not more!) by adults as by children. There are many animated movies where the same can be said (The Iron Giant, The Prince of Egypt, and Beauty and the Beast are prominent examples).

    Basically, I think animation would suit Narnia quite well, it'd be easier to make the fantastic feel as real as the mundane, and if there is some stigma over it being animated because "that's for kid's", well… I mean, I think anyone who's not willing to look past the medium to determine whether or not the actual product is good, probably was going to be turned off by Narnia's inherently unconventional and child-like fantasy anyways.

  23. Larry W. says:

    I just wondered why Lewis thought that the TV version would be blasphemy and the cartoon might be more acceptable if not too much like Disney's "vulgarity". Both Cartoons and TV series can be buffoonery, or they can be serious depending on how they are created. The old Disney films might have been too cute for Narnia, but I think they were clean and not offensive. Films with real actors instead of animated figures something that I like better because of their realism.

  24. Fantasia says:

    AJ, is that your drawing of the Wardrobe up top?

  25. AJAiken says:

    No, it's an image gP found for the post. It's from Song of the Sea.

  26. AJAiken says:

    I think Lewis was concerned about an Aslan who's a person in a costume. I think he'd be amazed by visual effects today! By 'vulgarity' I think he meant he felt it was disrespectful to tradition and myth as opposed to being crude.

  27. Larry W. says:

    I think I might have disagreed with Lewis about costumes. They may look a little strange a bit primitive, but I don't think they are disrespectful. Of course animation is also somewhat artificial even with technology, although it can be made in a respectful way. I didn't mind it that the BBC's Aslan wasn't perfect, although the mouth of the lion (especially its movements) could have been better if more money was available for the budget. The movies made Aslan look quite real, but it would have better if he had appeared more often in the foreground with more lines of dialogue.

  28. Col Klink says:

    I think vulgarity in this context doesn't mean crude or offensive. Well, actually it does but not in a way that has to do with sex or other bodily functions. The Disney company tends to have a specific style and they have a reputation for changing the stories they adapt to fit that tone and formula, sometimes drastically. So fans of the source material tend to be offended by their movies. https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Disneyfication

    I can't tell you why Lewis was offended by Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs because, unlike Lewis, I don't know or care much about dwarf mythology. (I am very familiar with the fairy tale upon which the movie was based but I never heard C. S. Lewis was much attached to that story. I think he was just attached to the idea of dwarfs. I suspect he was also thinking of Fantasia which decidedly Disneyfied Greek mythology, something of which Lewis was a fan. Though I think he was a bit hypocritical to object to that since he did pretty much the same thing with his civilized fauns, centaurs and Bacchus. 😉

  29. Col Klink says:

    Disrespectful is probably a bad way of putting it. 🙂 But it would be pretty much impossible for an adaptation to capture the feel of Narnia while using people in costumes for the talking animal characters. You see, the Narnia books are a great example of magical realism. And people in animal costumes do not look magical or realistic. They just look stupid.

    You're right that using puppets, like the BBC series did for Aslan, would be a better way to capture the feel of the books. Of course, puppets have the connotation of being something you can control and Aslan is supposed to be uncontrollable. That's the only reason I can think of for preferring a costumed actor to a puppet when adapting Narnia.

  30. Keeper of Lantern Waste says:

    Sorry to go off topic but I'm curious what you mean by "magical realism". The definition of realism I am familiar with is that there's a set of rules that the narrative introduces and adheres to throughout the book/movie.

    However, I feel like Narnia plays a lot more fast and loose with rules (if they are established at all). That ISN'T to say it's not a great series, I just think it relies on a soft magic system (not quite as soft as LOTR, but less defined than Harry Potter, The Last Airbender, etc). The debate of when Susan's Horn will work is one example in my opinion. I know Deep Magic is hinted at, but other than the Stone Table sacrifice, we don't know much about this. The only time I think a hard, rigidly defined magic is employed is with the Garden's apples/poem.

    Again, this isn't a problem with Narnia because while Aslan is omnipotent, He never directly features in a solution (by that I mean with the Stone Table sacrifice, Aslan is the one who saves Edmund, but any other non-traitor would suffice.) If Aslan had say a magic roar that can just restore peace to Narnia etc (ugh I'm cringing thinking about that) and employed this in the LWW's battle, it would have been lazy writing and also leave us screaming "WHY DIDN'T YOU DO THIS BEFORE YOUR SOLDIER DIED???"

    Again, apologies on going off topic:) I'm passing time until Talking Beasts comes back.

  31. Col Klink says:

    That's fine, Keeper of Lantern Waste. You're probably right that magical realism was technically wrong way to describe The Chronicles of Narnia. I was trying to convey that Narnia is full of impossible things, like talking animals, fauns, etc, but they feel very solid and real. If those things existed, you get the impression they'd look just like they look in Narnia. It feels both magical and real at the same time. I feel that it would be impossible for humans in animal suits to convey that feeling. They would work better for either creating a comedic atmosphere or a super symbolic one.

  32. Claudia K says:

    Anyways–
    I don't mind if you do both (live action and animation),But personally I prefer live action; it kind of gets you into the story with the actors and more, much more realistic. And I do want to see the actors. I would say that animation won't make you feel connected to the scenes; in fact, they might ruin everyone's imagination on Narnia. If Narnia's really animated, I'll say that I'm sorry to see the novel I loved get it's downfall.

    And don't you think animation doesn't even SUIT Narnia?
    I vote for live action.

  33. Reepicheep775 says:

    Great article, AJAiken! I am in full agreement with you. I would love to see a Narnia film animated to look like an Medieval manuscript. Personally, I think Narnia is much better suited to animation than live action.

  34. Larry W. says:

    I guess Lewis would not have approved of elementary school plays based on his books. I wouldn't be too critical of them since most likely costumes were necessary for the characters (including Aslan) unless puppets could be used. Some people might not like maroinette puppets (like those used in Gerry Anderson's Thunderbirds), but I think they are quite nice. If you can look past the strings they aren't all that bad (I'm not sure how they would work for Narnia). Claymation may be used for films. It has an earthy feel, and it could appeal to children. The age of the audience should be considered and younger children might like something unsophisticated– even with today's technology.

  35. Col Klink says:

    Well, I've never heard of children specifically liking something for being visually unsophisticated. But in any case, I don't praise something because other people like it. I praise it because I like it.

  36. Levi Sweeney says:

    Perhaps an anime-style TV series would be in order. I'm all for a live-action Netflix series based on the books, but the points delineated in this article are certainly appealing.

  37. Coto Movies says:

    Best movie EVER ! Everyone got so emotional, it was mind blowing at the last scene. This movie is mind blowing. It's better than it sounds. It literally changed me, in a way.