I have been ambivalent about Greta's portrayal of the magic rings from the book ever since the picture was released with Digory and his mother in bed holding one while it looked like Digory was telling "Flora" (😡) about his adventures.

Why? Because it looked like they were touching a "yellow" ring (the colour in the film stills and now trailer is just gold) and not vanishing. When I tried to express my adaptational worry over this aspect I got comments insulting my intelligence telling me I didn't know what the picture was and was nitpicking and ruining the fun for everyone else, how it probably wasn't even one of Uncle Andrew's rings but Digory's mother's wedding ring.

I concurred that we couldn't rule out (at that point) it being a wedding ring but I honestly did not think it was. At best, I was vaguely hoping maybe Aslan did something to the ring after the adventure to make it not work anymore (of course that ruins Last Battle, but as a standalone it could explain why "yellow" rings can be touched). However the trailer shows the children touching the yellow rings a lot and not vanishing. As far as I could tell there WASN'T any sign of the green rings in the trailer at all (if I missed this please do correct me and give me a timestamp as to where they are, because I'd be interested to see them!).

This does make me a trifle miffed as someone who has loved watching Narnia adaptations since 2006 when I first saw LWW and 2007 when I started following Narniaweb for PC news. We had a certain subset of fans 20 years ago calling the Walden Media movies soulless Lord of the Rings knock offs just because they were filmed in New Zealand. Now we can have Digory looking like he's doing a full on Frodo cosplay with a gold ring instead of the ring lore Lewis invented (yellow/Green with different rules), and because it's Greta Gerwig whose fans love saying she's "Never made a bad movie" (and good for them, I'm glad they enjoyed her work!), no one is calling this out?

I know I'm probably going to get comments saying why am I picking on such a small detail, but when it's a million "small" details together, the story they create isn't anything like Lewis's. A go go Jadis, a TARDIS like Charn, character name changes, Aslan with feathers and scales, 1950s setting... Maybe one or two of these changes in the context of a largely faithful adaptation wouldn't be a huge deal but all of them together ARE.

I also can't help wondering if this change wasn't to make Polly look smarter. I love Polly Plummer but in the book she is completely dazzled by the humming and shine of the rings and told she can have a yellow one (the book flat out says if she was younger she'd have wanted to stick it in her mouth), she doesn't question and grabs for one. It's her weak moment. Digory's moment comes later with the bell and Jadis in Charn. But given this is a Greta Gerwig film I wonder if she can't stand to have her female lead make a mistake that big. So she's safely touching the rings with no problem BEFORE she puts it on and vanishes.

I know Greta says she loves these books, but I don't think she understands them or loves them enough not to rewrite them completely for the screen.

First off no hate to the child actor who is doing the best he can with the material he's given. His acting is not what I'm taking issue with here.

That said, from the minute I saw this scene in the trailer I've been trying to figure out why it rubs me the wrong way and here's what I've come up with:

1. The tone makes it seem like everything is bright and happy, Digory is cheerfully waving to a little girl and grinning, a horse is galloping. As if this is supposed to be whimsical. Just no. A bloody witch from another world with magic powers is rampaging through the street! On a stolen horse. Where's the gravity of that? This would be like if Tumnus said, "Even some of the trees are on the white witch's side" while taking Lucy back to the lamppost and Lucy started giggling and going "Hello trees!" like a happy psycho. You're in danger. Act like it.

2. In the book Digory was not a firsthand witness to the witch's (Magicless!) full rampage. He was also not a victim of hers in that. It was very telling thematically that the minute she had a bigger world to play in and Andrew to boss around as her servant and stuff to steal and people to bully, Jadis acted like the children (Polly and Digory) stopped existing. She didn't even talk directly to them when complaining Andrew was taking too long getting a chariot or flying carpet for her. To involve Digory in her horseback chase very much takes away from the fact that she only cared about what was an immediate threat to what she wanted. And Digory waiting at home without Jadis, waiting for Polly, was how he first got the idea in his head a magic fruit MIGHT heal his mother.

To take that away for a whimsical action sequence they're trying to make seem like it's ET on a bike or flying on Falkor is just stupid.

I keep seeing the argument among certain fans that it doesn't matter what details Greta Gerwig changes, simply because "all adaptation is ultimately a form of fanfiction".

On the one hand I understand the angle users of this argument think they're coming at this from. Screen is a different medium, the book has to be rewritten (in the case of classic where the author died years ago, almost always) by a different person with their own interpretation of the work, their own bias towards the work, etc...

This alone, however, as a fanfiction writer (initially FOR the Narnia fandom!) of many years, I can 100% attest does not a fanfiction make.

Adaptations when done faithfully (as in taking the themes, characters, setting, etc, as conceived by the author and putting them on screen for a visual audience, not as in some abstract "who can say what faithful really means, since it means different things to different fans" rabbit hole theory) are not transformative enough to constitute what would be allowed on the majority of fanfiction sites without being flagged for copyright. The major change is the medium. Oftentimes if you were to write out the events of a movie in prose and post it (this is called a novelisation btw) you would be asked by most sites to take it down because the work is not transformative enough not to get those who run the site into trouble.

This is also why the trend of going through a book or movie's story with one added character (an OC) and everything else identical to the original work tends to get backlash from fanfic readers. The addition of the one tiny new element might technically just tip the transformation scale to legally allow the story remaining up on whichever site is hosting the fic but it's still a play by play of a story, almost more of an adaptation than a proper fanfic.

Expectations for what makes a good fanfiction (expansion on certain characters, often resetting familiar events in a different time setting or location be it a fantasy realm or a coffee shop, gratuitous descriptions of certain couples being paired up and interacting when they weren't together in the original work) are often the exact opposite of what a fan looks for in a film adaptation of their favorite book or video games or any other mediums that can be adapted.

So when someone criticizes a choice Greta has made (let's say taking the story into the 1950s) and says "it's like she's writing a fanfic", this is, whether you personally mind the change or not, a legitimate argument.

It is common for a Narnia AU fanfic to be set in a different time period just to see what changes with the characters. I had a good friend back in my teenage years of writing Narnia fics who used to primarily write either the Pevensies in modern day or Pevensies in Edwardian era timelines (you know, like Polly and Digory were SUPPOSED to be). But I doubt even she would have wanted the movies billing themselves as adaptations to have done the same. That stuff belongs firmly in fanfic for the most part, given how few (in done cases none) adaptations of Narnia books exist so far.

I'm getting rather tired of seeing the "But what about Clueless!" argument when it comes to this. That is completely apples and oranges.

Firstly Clueless while a retelling of Emma in "modern day" (90s) never presented itself as a straight adaptation of a work with no other screen versions. Cher is not literally Emma. She's a stand in within a modern story inspired by the plot of Emma.

Second, Clueless wasn't made in a vacuum. There was another more traditional Emma movie greenlit/being made around the same time and studios were open to that. People could literally watch either movie by 1996. Unfortunately nowadays you would be hard pressed to find a studio willing to compete with a similar story being made by another studio even if the approaches are vastly different. This is why an allegedly more faithful version of JA's Persuasion was scrapped when the one with the actress from fifty shades with an alcohol problem and a pet rabbit was announced by Netflix.

So if Greta was making "Polly" a 1950s deconstruction of The Magician's Nephew and billing it as a complete reimagining, at worst the naysayers would be disappointed because we don't have a faithful adaptation of MN yet and aren't likely to get one greenlit for years after Greta makes her deconstruction. But I think if it wasn't being billed as a straight up prequel/origin story to Narnia but with a David Bowie Aslan and rock n roll, most fans would have shrugged and moved on. Because THEN it would be more similar to Clueless or Ten Things I Hate About You.

Unfortunately as is it DOES feel like she's using her big name status to just put her million dollar + AU fanfic on screen.

Irregardless of if you view it that way or not, or whether you're personally excited to see the movie, there are going to be a subset of older fans who at the least feel this isn't an on screen translation of the work they've loved for so long.

This does not make half the fanbase "babies" or "idiots who don't know what adaptation means". It just means they're seeing the whole situation differently than those who are excited about this adaptation.

With the upcoming film adaptation splitting portions of the fanbase, it's becoming very common to find fans who are excited about Greta Gerwig's adaptation operating on the assumption that anyone who critiques details of the pre-release material (photos, statements from the team, and now the trailer) is a right-wing religious person who is angry because Aslan is being voiced by a woman.

This has led to a shut down of many fans who speculate over unconfirmed or partially unclear details, including Jadis having magic in our world or people touching the rings and not disappearing or the names of minor characters.

The problem is it's very common for neurodivergent fans (be they autistic, ADHD, OCD or something else) to be drawn to fantasy works like Narnia and to hyper-focus on small details (including adaptational changes whether confirmed or potential), and the current discourse of wait and see or you're a bad fan or "if you fixate on this detail, you're a troll ruining the space for others" is very unwelcoming to the way most neurodivergent fans tend to interact with their favourite properties.

Disclaimer 1: I don't claim to speak for all neurodivergent fans of Narnia or fantasy, I'm just talking in general terms about what is most common.

Disclaimer 2: while I understand it's completely possible we could have a Greta Gerwig fan who is neurodivergent and be on the opposite side of the issue, most neurodivergent hyper-focus subjects tend to lean towards fantasy like the original Narnia books (and Walden Media films) rather than the kinds of movies Greta is largely known for making. Therefore I've focused this post more on Narnia book fans who may fall on the autism spectrum and interact with the work in a way that could get them wrongly labelled or mistreated in this current fandom disagreement.

I’ve seen a lot of people say Jadis using magic on Earth in the new movie is a major change from the novel. I didn’t really remember it being that big of a deal, so I checked and these are the only two relevant parts I could find:

“It must have been a terrible moment for the Witch when she suddenly realized that her power of turning people into dust, which had been quite real in her own world, was not going to work in ours.”

“If she had lost some magical powers in our world, she had not lost her strength; she could break an iron bar as if it were a stick of barley-sugar.”

I only skimmed so there might be some other parts. But it seems like she can’t use at least one power and probably some others, not that she can’t use magic at all. So are people misremembering how it works in the book? Or am I missing something?

I don't know when fantasy fandoms in general got this ridiculous mind set that every interaction with every piece of media in the fandom had to be positive in tone or it was toxic.

Now, should you always as much as possible be polite and kind? Yes. Respectful? Absolutely. Do we all as fans sometimes fail in that area and need a little reminder? Yes.

But only saying positive things about the new MN trailer because we "haven't seen the full movie yet" is ridiculous. You can say and feel multiple things about the adaptation as new details are released and if most of those feelings are negative that's okay.

Do you think the Inklings never gave each other negative feedback or just said they personally didn't like something one of their members read aloud at their meetings? Do y'all seriously think they had to sensor themselves and only say "well I guess I'll wait and see" or "I'm sure it will be great, since you haven't released a bad book yet" just because they were only listening to a fragment of JRR Tolkien's or Lewis's story and the whole book or essay wasn't "out yet"?

Absolutely not.

They said what they thought and whether or not their opinion was positive or negative, they still kept meeting!

So this constant discourse among the fandom that if you make more than one post about a point you don't like in the new trailer or something you feel won't work in the new adaptation or share a doubt about Greta, you're unhinged or a baby or a bad faith fan or "against what Lewis stood for" is bonkers.

Now, does that mean I'm advocating for all sides of the fandom to go on a disrespectful swear-laced rage either to decry or defend the new adaptation? Absolutely not! But lately it doesn't matter if you use the most respectful language or include something positive; if the whole or at least majority of your opinion isn't shining with full on optimism or positivity you get labeled as "ruining" the fandom.

As long as someone is not making personal attacks, they're allowed an opinion and if they have a different take on that opinion or something new to add because we got something new released or they noticed something they overlooked it doesn't make the person bad or crazy or trying to ruin anything.

I find it interesting that so many fans can remember the user names of people they feel have too many negative posts and have to comment to call them crazy or stupid or worse but can't just scroll past to a post by someone whose opinion they'd rather read.

Respectfulness is always required. Positivity is not. And it's not real if you force it anyway.

I know there's heated debate over the chronological order vs. publication order. But I'm curious in what order you prefer to read it? I feel like I read the series in a different order each time.

The Narnia books have been translated into many languages, and I'm curious to know how translators handled the bit in TMN after Uncle Andrew tricked Polly into putting on a yellow ring, when he gave Digory one yellow and two green rings and instructed him to keep the yellow ring in his left pocket and the green rings in his right:

Remember very carefully which pocket the Greens are in. G for Green and R for Right. G.R. you see: which are the first two letters of Green.

Obviously, a direct word-for-word translation of this would not work for the majority of languages, so the translators would have to invent something suitable. If anyone here has read the book in other translations, I'd love to know what those scenes say! In Spanish, perhaps the translator could do something clever with the "d" sounds at the end of verde/green and beginning of derecha/right, or perhaps they did something completely different. I lack the knowledge to even speculate about other languages.