The Title of the Next Narnia Movie? | Talking Beasts
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The Magician’s Nephew has long been confirmed as the source material for Greta Gerwig’s upcoming Narnia adaptation. The title of the film, however, remains uncertain.
What should the title of the film be? Should they drop “The Chronicles of”? Or what about keeping it simply The Magician’s Nephew? Listen to our discussion and then post a comment below.
Whatever the name is, its only 252 days till it releases!!! I estimate a trailer in 100-150 days from now.
Yay
Here’s my thought. The IP is well known. Just name the movie the name of the book being adapted. It’s simple and clean. They could add “Narnia: Book Title” but printing “The Chronicles of Narnia: Book Title” is a mess on the screen lol
The set together is The Chronicles of Narnia, so I think it’s silly to put that on each piece. It would be like Marvel going, “The MCU Infinity Saga: Iron Man” it’s just way too much.
I think “The Chronicles of Narnia” is iconic and gains marketing points as an attention grabber. There are people who know what “The Magician’s Nephew” is and there are people who would not. “Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew” feels flat to me. Wordy as it is, I say “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew” is the best way to go to jog people’s memory and get people in the door. Or else throw everything out if/since this is a non-traditional adaptation and call it something original but source based like “Narnia: The Wood Between Worlds” or generic like “Narnia Awakes”, “Dawn of Narnia” or “Jadis Unleashed”. However, despite being interested in this article on the naming of the film and keeping an eye on things, I will be not watching this film if Aslan is portrayed as female, and perhaps even if he is not if they are making it all about Pink Floyd, Rock and Roll, and feminism. (If you don’t believe me, I have not watched Rings of Power which sounds tame in comparison to what this could be, and I’m a big LOTR film fan. And I have no desire to see Rings of Power.) If it is really “all about Rock and Roll” and being edgy with a loose hold on the source material, maybe they should just call it “Narnia: For Those About to Rock” and see what intrigue and curiosity it stirs?
I am only 6 minutes in to the episode, but I had a thought that I want to write down while it’s fresh.
A year or two ago, there was a Hollywood trend where people wouldn’t know a movie was a musical until they were watching it. Wonka, Mean Girls and The Color Purple are the examples.
It was as if Hollywood had seen some poor box office performances of musicals (Cats and Dear Evan Hansen) so they only hinted the newer movies were musicals.
So maybe Narnia 1 will be a musical, but we won’t know it til opening night! hahaha
I don’t think a musical, but I definitely think from the various little comments we’ve gotten here and there that music is gonna be a *huge* part of it, kind of like Greta did with Barbie (or possibly even bigger). Also, Aslan singing Narnia into existence alone has got me super excited! <3
I suppose you’re right, Gerry. I guess my idea was just a small possibility. Gerwig’s Barbie is not a musical but basically has two musical dance numbers in it!
Tile suggestion: advertise as
THE MAGICIAN’S NEPHEW:
The Chronicles of Narnia
While titled onscreen as
C.S. Lewis’
THE MAGICIAN’S NEPHEW
Neither will likely ever happen but it was worth a shot!
I kind of hate the idea of just calling the franchise Narnia because I’d consider it part of a dumb trend from a while back of making movie titles as short as possible. Like Disney retitled The Bear and the Bow with Brave and The Snow Queen with Frozen. They titled one movie John Carter when they could have called it John Carter of Mars. They titled their Muppet movie The Muppets and their Winnie the Pooh movie Winnie the Pooh. How boring is that? I mean, there were already so many movies that could have had those titles. And it wasn’t only Disney. Illumination’s Grinch movie was just called The Grinch instead of How the Grinch Stole Christmas. It’s just so lazy! I wouldn’t mind if they didn’t include the series title in the credits but if they actually called it Narnia instead of the literary sounding The Chronicles of Narnia, I’d roll my eyes and just feel like they were trying to make it as tweetable as possible.
Interesting The Personal History of David Copperfield (2019) chose to do the opposite and went with a long literary title when they could have gotten away with just calling it David Copperfield. Props to them for that.
If they tried to hide that this movie is the start of a series, well, if the movie were really good, I would still enjoy it, and I obviously wouldn’t be one of the people who was hoping for a single viewing experience and got conned. But it’d still make me a little mad because I despise dishonest marketing.
If the movie really is going to be as different from the book as we fear, than, yeah, I do kind of want them to not use The Magician’s Nephew. Actually, I’d kind of prefer they never use the word Narnia in the movie or the names Digory, Polly, Jadis and Aslan. (Andrew is a generic enough name that, I guess, I’d be OK with keeping it.) Then maybe I could enjoy the movie on its own terms and not worry about its fidelity. And if they included a credit that said inspired by The Magician’s Nephew by C. S. Lewis, that’d be cool. On the other hand, I also feel that The Magician’s Nephew is a really evocative title, and it seems a shame not to use it.
It’s hard for me to pick a favorite Narnia title. They’re all so lyrical even Prince Caspian, my least favorite. I’ll actually defend The Last Battle a bit. I like it because it sounds sad at first, but when you think about it, it’s happy (an end to warfare) just like the story.
I’m sorry my comments on the podcast are so negative lately. It’s just because the episodes are all about the upcoming Narnia movie and I’m not getting good vibes from that. But the podcast isn’t making me grumpy or anything. Actually, Talking Beasts is like my consolation. Even if I don’t like the movie or the marketing, I really enjoy hearing the podcasters analyze it.
P.S.
I heard about Sinners, but I wouldn’t have mentioned it to anyone since I’m not interested in horror.
Disney makes the names short for trademark purposes. By trademarking the word “Brave” you have a lot more power to basically prevent anything else being made for families from having the word “brave” in the title.
Yes, it’s selfish, but it works financially for Disney.
In terms of alternate title proposals for books – I feel something along the lines of “The Woodland Prince” would be a slightly more interesting title for Prince Caspian… it makes the identity of the Prince slightly more mysterious (similar to the Silver Chair), whilst also giving an intriguing juxtaposition between the highly distinguished title of “Prince” and the lowly everyday location of a “Woodland”.
I like your PC alternative title a lot!
Best title: The Silver Chair
Worst title: Prince Caspian: The Return to Narnia
I agree with the podcasters that having “Narnia” in the title feels awkward when the series is also titled The Chronicles of Narnia.
In German, several of the titles of the books have “Narnia” in them (I’m not saying I prefer them over the Originals because I don’t!). But LWW is called “The king of Narnia”, PC is “Prince Caspian of Narnia”, HHB is “The ride to Narnia”, MN is “the miracle of Narnia”. I remember initially thinking as a child that VDT is not Narnia because it just has the same title as the English books without Narnia in them. I don’t like that it’s not consistent and I think some of the original titles are brilliant anyways (but okay, they probably wouldn’t work as well translated).
In spite of all the Narnias in the titles, the Walden movies kept the long title in German and this started with for example “The Chronicles of Narnia: The king of Narnia”. Which feels really awkward and redundant.
However if Greta changes the title she could sneak Narnia in without having overly long titles. I don’t think she’ll do that though but you never know.