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Greta Gerwig's Narnia · Mythmakers

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  Hello and welcome to MythMakers. MythMakers is the podcast for fantasy fans and fantasy
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  creatives brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. My name is Julia Golding and
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  today I am joined by my frequent podcast partner and friend, Jacob Renica and we are going
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  to be discussing Greta Gerwig's take on Narnia. I'm going to be looking at the news that's
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  coming out about the magician's nephew, which is the film that she has chosen to start with.
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  So Jacob, first of all, what did you think when you heard that Greta Gerwig is in the frame for
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  doing this? Yeah, I was excited and still am. I'm a fan of her work, her as a filmmaker,
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  as a creative. I thought what she did with Barbie was very clever and enjoyed that and clearly
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  was something that resonated with audiences and connected and did very well and did a lot,
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  I feel for Barbie as a brand as well as a result of the film and engagement and re-engagement with
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  people who played with, you know, Barbies as a child and now coming back to something that they
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  maybe had left behind, re-embracing that as a story that dealt with both parents, children,
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  like motherhood, what it means to be a daughter and that sort of thing that making it relevant
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  for contemporary audiences and across the board for male, female, equally people enjoyed it.
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  So that was something having experienced that and seeing what it does for treating
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  somebody else's property and an engagement with it that does something positive for greater
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  participation and investment from a broad variety of people. So Barbie's one end of it and her
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  little women, I don't know the script for little women is really great. So I'd recommend
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  anybody about there. It's got some cool set pieces. I think in that film, like in Barbie,
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  she showed that she really had something to say and also Lady Bird, which was the,
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  and so all of that is quite pleasing. I think little women was, you know, the idea of the quadrants
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  that studios are looking for four quadrant films with that younger women, younger men,
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  older women, older men. I think little women was younger women, older women. Barbie,
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  she managed to pull off the impossible. Right. Make it a four quadrant. I don't know about
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  the older men, but certainly younger men, younger women, on what could have been a total cringe
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  fest. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So I think, and I think, yeah, so seeing how she's able to deal with
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  those different audiences and in the case of a period piece with little women, one of the things
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  I appreciate that you see in the script that kind of comes through in an ambient way or implicitly
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  in the film itself is how seriously or how much attention she paid to the time period or how
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  thoughtful she was about looking at like, what is the zeitgeist of this particular period and
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  trying to have that in conversation with the characters that are there. So I think she's clearly
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  thoughtful, very thoughtful, skilled, careful storyteller that wants to make, that has a unified
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  vision. Like you said, that ultimately has all the different pieces working together to deliver
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  a particular, you know, her particular message, her vision of the image for her in this particular
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  work, given the limitations of the screen and visual storytelling. So yeah, so I'm, yeah,
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  and unqualified, like, like excited, I'm happy and good to see somebody like that that is that
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  thoughtful and smart, dealing with dealing with the text that is also thoughtful and smart.
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  Yeah, I'd say that she is the most sought after female director at the moment and for Netflix to
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  have got her for this property means how much they're investing in it. So turn away now if you
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  don't want any spoilers at all, but it does seem that the early indications are that she has
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  decided to set the magician's nephew in around mid 1950s, 1955. Now there is a reason for this,
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  I think, which is if you turn to the very first page of the magician's nephew before everybody
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  throws their toys out the pram. The very first sentence is this is a story about something that
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  happened long ago when your grandfather was a child. So my kid's grandfather was a young,
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  relatively young man in the 50s. So she can turn and say, well, hang on a minute, I'm just
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  following the book. The next sentence goes on to, but it firmly is the era of, you know, Sherlock
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  Holmes and Nezbit, but that first sentence is what has given her that possibility. And I'll just
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  say that my particular theory here is that she's actually more interested in what it would mean
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  for the line in the witch and the wardrobe. I've got to get this out my system because she's doing
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  both films. And Diggery is Professor Kirk, who is the man who has the big house in line the witch
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  and wardrobe. There was a very good film in 2005 of line which the wardrobe, which you'll probably
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  remember, very magical. It dealt with very well the Second World War context. It made a lot of that.
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  So if I was her coming to this, I'd be thinking, what new can I say? Well, okay, if I make it a
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  contemporary story, and there's all sorts of things that you can then do. But one of the obvious
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  things you can do, rather than evacuation, you can do a pandemic story. So all these kids are locked
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  away and able to go out and sort of revert back to the board game world that we all did in the pandemic.
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  She could do that. My family suggested she could also do a story about modern day refugee kids,
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  as she wants to be really right on up there. I don't know, it's possible, like Ukrainian refugee
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  children or something like that, because there was a stage when lots of families accepted refugees
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  from wars. So she's got contemporary residences that she can pick up on. So anyway, let's go back to
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  the magician's nephew. What do you think about dumping the Edwardian early late Victorian setting
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  and putting it in 1955? Are you a ghost? Or are you pro? I'm not. I think I'm, yeah, like I,
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  so there's, and these are all decisions, like any any any work of adaptation is a garden of
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  forking paths, right? So you're you have to make decisions at every turn and those will eliminate
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  certain possibilities, but you have to make decisions. So it is, so the rationale that you just
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  described for maybe looking at not that at line, which in the wardrobe as a like contemporary
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  film, something is taking place in the in the modern day and doing that for the purpose of like,
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  what does this have to say to our time period? Right. What does this have to say about about belief,
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  about cynicism, about hope, about optimism, about good and evil even? What does that look like
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  today instead of of firmly, you know, staying with a period, leaving the time period in the book
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  and focusing on that and working that into the into the story, which is like what you said,
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  the the previous Narnia film took seriously and said it's a period. It's not just a fantasy film,
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  it's a period, it's not just a fantasy, a portal fantasy film, it's a period portal fantasy film.
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  Yeah. And so when you're when you're adapting any portal fantasy, that's something that you'll
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  have to wrestle with in adapting that is, do you take this as the time period in which the book was
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  written for the modern day, the part where this fantasy world bumps up against our world,
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  or do you take the spirit of a portal fantasy, which is people from our world coming into the
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  next. And so you have you have to make that decision. And so in order to differentiate it from
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  the previous the previous film, then I think that's I think that's a smart idea to do something
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  that's clearly different. But also I think and you know, Gerwig is clearly wants to make this
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  relevant and have something that resonates and has meaning for contemporary audiences. And I think
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  that's I think that can only be I think that's a good thing. Ultimately that that updating
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  you, although there is because this was written in a particular time period and Lewis was setting it
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  in the you know, really like 1900, essentially that there are certain elements of the story that
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  are dependent on that that will need to change. But again, any adaptation is a work of translation,
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  which means it's a work of interpretation. And so there are certain things that you have to
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  change to be able to make sense and intelligible for a contemporary audience. So I understand it.
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  I'm not a guest. I think great things can be done with that like you with you mentioned the
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  the first sentence of the of of majestic nephew is you know, when this is story that takes place
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  when your grandfather was a little child and when Sherlock Holmes was on Baker Street. So Sherlock
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  Holmes has had several is the can you have the keeps on giving in terms of adaptations, right? I don't
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  know how you felt about the BBC adaptation of Sherlock or the American version with still British
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  lead playing Sherlock Holmes. Yeah, right. In the Sherlock and the Johnny. Yeah, right. So yeah,
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  I think that the BBC one because I think the American one started to be just like any other
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  detective after a while. Because I mean, you had many more series and episodes. But the BBC one
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  became quite certainly the early series. It lost its way a bit later on. Anyway, that's a different
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  discussion. Yeah, right. I think it's it gives though, though people who like the books might be
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  worried about Sherlock moving the books remain. Right. It's just this is a like a like a musical
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  variation. Right. Yeah. And I've got a feeling we might have to get ourselves into the headspace
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  where we're thinking about Greta Goek's that this is like a variation. Otherwise, we're just
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  spreading. I think it's particularly a problem with Lionel wardrobe because that film wasn't that
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  long ago. Right. And it does make things like colourblind casting much easier if you've got a set of
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  contemporary kids because a set of kids that involve different ethnicities during the Second World War.
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  There's a completely different cultural context that would be questions to be raised about that.
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  Whereas now we have blended families. We can have all sorts of and it will just look more modern.
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  And we want to get to Narnia. So that's the important point. Right. So I think that's up.
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  Could just be very lightly touched. Yeah. And I think and in terms of just the flexibility
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  possible in a reinterpretation or kind of a reimagining is Lewis, you know, he was looking at Narnia as
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  a supposal, right? Yeah. What if a lion did this? He's not saying that this is like an allegory,
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  one to one allegory for a Christian message, right? He's like, okay, what if I'm setting this world
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  up? Let's see that there's a figure that there is a God that there is a Jesus. And what if
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  in this world of talking creatures, how would Jesus appear in this world? How would that kind of
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  play out in that setting? So he called it a supposal. So you can take that same principle and say,
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  I suppose like what if Narnia was set in the line which Nordra was sent in the modern day?
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  How would that play out? And that would play out differently. Just like for Lewis,
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  he wasn't thinking of some like slavish one-to-one correspondence between his own theology,
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  all these different mythological systems. He was kind of putting this together and saying,
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  what would these look like? How would they interact? He was really doing what children do commonly
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  with different toys, taking you have your Barbie and you have your transformers and your
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  Star Wars, right? And they're freely mixing and mingling and you're telling wonderful stories
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  that can keep children delighted for hours and is formative to their imagination.
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  But it's not in a rigorous, they're not saying like, you can't do this. This character clearly cannot
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  function in a, you know, 2020 setting. This character is actually this night figure that I have
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  cannot interact with a Paw Patrol, a contemporary talking animal, right? So I think that his flexibility
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  loses flexibility in dealing with that like imaginative worlds. I think that they're completely
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  accommodated. Now, if you were to, that's a different conversation we're talking about Tolkien, right?
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  Oh, yeah. I'm not doing that sort of thing. Yeah, organic whole. Yeah, right, right, right. So
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  so anyway, so I think that's yes, but there, but I think there is something, there are things that
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  are lost and I'd be interested to hear from you, Julie, on what you think items from
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  magicians and FU that were Victorian era feel are kind of like baked in. What do you think are
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  things that you would lose possibly from removing some of those elements or recasting it, you know,
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  40 or 50 years later? Yeah, absolutely. I think that's a longer conversation. Can we just quickly dip
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  in to the casting so far? Oh, yeah, sure. I think the changes are not going to be so big
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  for the magician's nephew as they could potentially be for the line in which in the wardrobe
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  coming back up to date because the 1950s still feels like quite a long time ago for most of us.
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  And the casting has been very small sea conservative, I would say. So it will look,
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  it's not going to get that outcry that, oh, you've cast a, you know, a different race person
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  to be degree or whatever it might be. Because the way they've gone on that is they've got Daniel Craig
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  as while Uncle Andrew, which he's just chewed up the scenery, I'm sure, because that's
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  the one. You've got Emma Mackie as Jadis. Now Emma Mackie was also in Barbie. She looks very much
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  like when you see her, you'll think wow, cheekbones. She looks like the illustration. She's got the
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  look. I could imagine her also in another context being Corella DeVille, you know, she's got that.
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  So I'm sure she'll be great. Kerry Mulligan as a maple Kirk, the mum. So I'm anticipating that
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  she won't just be in bed, I would imagine there'll be some, you know, more use of Kerry Mulligan
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  than someone who's a deaf store, maybe some flashbacks or something. And then of course the two
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  big roles are David McKenna, who is Diggory and Beatrice Campbell, who is Polly. Obviously as
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  young actors, we don't know very much about them. What we do know, though, about David McKenna,
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  is that very nicely, actually, that he's from Northern Ireland. And does have a kind of young
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  CS Lewis stature, because he's a kind of big a lad, shall we say. He's been cast and this is
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  going to come out first. He's playing Piggy in the adaptation of the Lord of the Flies, which I
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  think the BBC are doing is about to come out. So he is clearly already has an extremely much
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  more difficult role, actually, under his belt. So I'd be interested to see what he does. He's not
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  what I would say, he's quite a British casting, rather than a kind of Disney kid casting, shall we
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  say. And I think that's really good. So I think that the cast will hold it really well together. So
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  do you have any, I mean, I don't know if you looked into them. Okay.
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  Yeah, yeah, nothing else I'm casting. Other than the group. Yeah, that's good.
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  Yeah, going into what you were just asking. And I'm going to ask the question back to you about
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  the 1950s. The immediate thing I thought of was what they're going to do about strawberry
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  fledge because my favourite illustration from magician's nephew is one which so many people
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  will remember. It's the one of Jadus riding a handsome cab acting like this Babylonian queen type
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  thing that she got. By the 1950s, we don't have handsome cabs of that nature in London. I mean,
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  there are the occasional horse, but by then it's an occasional horse, perhaps somebody on a milk.
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  Yeah, you do get actually just thinking about it. There were a few horse-strong vehicles,
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  but certainly not cabs. And of course, the Frank, the cabbie, becomes spoiler the first king of
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  Narnia. So they're going to have to fudge that find a way to get him. You want a kind of
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  cotney lad who can make him a guardsman or someone who would conceivably have a horse.
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  Right. It could be a rag and bone man, actually. There are people around
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  of horses at that time. So there are things as a British person I'm thinking you could do,
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  but I wonder what Greta's going to do. So that's one big challenge, I would say. How about you?
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  I would do one each. Well, it keeps walking. Yeah, so that one, I agreed there that's tough.
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  So you don't have the same impact. Yeah, of Jades writing a cab on the roof.
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  And the salt of the earth, just kind of like hardworking blue collar,
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  common person point is that it's an unassuming everyday person that is put in as Narnia,
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  unexpected rather than somebody of aristocrat or somebody with the proper upbringing.
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  Yeah, I mean, that's the purpose and the lesson there. So I'm sure that they could find something
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  there, but the question is, yeah, how do they do that? So, yeah, I absolutely agreed there.
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  Wamp post, right? So this is the nutrition staff used story in general was was created
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  because the question was asked. So I think it was Roger Lancelink Green to ask Lewis when he read
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  the line to which in the wardrobe. Well, where did that? So there was a lamp post there.
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  Where did it come from? And so Lewis started working on, so the nutrition's in FU was actually
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  the book that he started writing after Lane, to which in the wardrobe, but it was actually ended
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  up being the last one that he finished writing because of the difficulties that he found in trying
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  to develop it and to his satisfaction. So, but he started it because of this quietly,
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  in part because of this question, that's well, what about where did this lamp post come from?
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  So he had to go, okay, something has to happen prior to this World War II group of children
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  that allowed for this lamp post to be embedded here. What was that? And so if it's coming from
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  1900s, right, London somewhere, then you have, it's a gas lamp, right, at that time period.
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  And so, yeah, there could still possibly in that time period from what I understand,
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  there could be a few remnants of gas lamps being used during that time period, but by and large,
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  things have converted to electricity. I reckon I'll just fudge that, because those
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  traditional lamp posts do exist and because it's a city that visually likes to keep it
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  sense of continuity in age. So, as does Oxford. So you'll see those lamp posts around it,
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  not all everywhere, but some of them. So I think that would be okay. I think thematically,
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  just sort of digging deep, deeper, what is clear about the interaction with charm
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  and 19th century, late 19th, early 20th century London is Age of Empire stuff.
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  It's a bit subtle for a kid to pick up on, but certainly as an adult reader, this was the heyday of
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  the British Empire. So there is a message in it about Chan being the last, you know,
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  she ended her empire, had a battle with her sister, spoke the deplorable word,
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  killed everybody. So she's collapsed an empire and she's moving to London to thinking she can
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  take over and then finds her magic doesn't work, but she's still very strong. So she's sort of like
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  giant-type figure, really. And so she still does pose a threat, but she wouldn't have been
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  able to take over, but there's a warning in her that she that makes sense to bring to London.
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  And I'll think about what's happening in 1955. It's a decline of empire. It's the battered London
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  of post-war Britain, rationing is just ended. You've got a young queen on the throne,
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  so there is a revival happening which leads into the sort of sixties where things pick up again,
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  but it is, you know, the London would be that of not that dissimilar to Chan, it will be
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  bomb sites and you can actually use that though, I suppose. But the feel you're moving from
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  high heyday decline and it changes the themes of the book, which you may lean into, but you aren't
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  using something. Because of course the whole Empress, Jades bit, is actually a nod to the Enes bit
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  story of the Amulet episode where a queen of Babylon comes with the children to claim all the goods
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  in the British Museum. It's a wonderful book. And she just, she sums every all her own stuff
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  out of the museum and it all starts pouring out. It is a really fun episode. So Lewis has got that
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  which he would have heard as a youngster himself. He's got that in mind when he's writing that.
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  So there are some connections here which will go because of the change in time.
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  Yeah, and that's going to be interesting. We've been talking about a younger, right, a queen on
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  the throne. Jades has kind of seen this like a foil for. You could do all sorts of things for that.
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  Yeah. It was a queen when she was at her most, the late queen, her most fashionable. She and
• 24:08
  Prince Philip were quite a glamorous looking couple. I don't know that they'll find time for that
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  because, of course, I'm very on in that scene, but it is a possible nod that you can do there.
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  Yeah, and when you mentioned a charm in the deplorable words, that's another aspect that is,
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  it was impactful in the book and I imagine two readers at the time is you're seeing the deplorable
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  word is this kind of central weapon that is deployed to essentially wipe everything out
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  on every side of the platform. Right, right. So the people, so readers, adult readers,
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  who are reading that at the time when it's published, read that and clearly would probably have
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  an easy time making that connection and saying, and I can see that being kind of a profound
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  lesson moment there for some adult readers, but not for the children in the story. For children
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  in the story, this need 1900. So this is decades before the atomic bomb is even an idea.
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  And so it doesn't have an impact on them as the children. They just think that this is there's
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  something that's big and bad and can happen and it's vague in general. But in here, in changing the
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  time period, what you can have is that lesson being kind of comprehended by the children themselves,
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  which is something that wasn't possible in the original historical setting. So again,
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  it's different. It's a change, but it's something that could potentially have a resonance with
• 25:44
  the actual characters themselves and that changes degree. So a degree who is post war,
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  it was aware of atomic weapons and that and then seeing Charne and maybe making that connection
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  himself and what that does to then, if you bring him into line, the Witch and Wardrobe later,
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  where he's aware of exactly, he's seen in his own world what Charne is what the deplorable word
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  is capable of in our world. It's not just a theoretical. This is a big bad thing that could happen.
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  He says like, oh, this sort of thing happens in our world and it's just as bad as what's in Narnia.
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  So Narnia in some cases might be seen as more of a threat to our world or one of the possibility
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  of peril. And if J.D. is coming back through the Wardrobe into our world, that's probably going
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  to become more real. I think if she does this to that world, this happened. This is in a localized
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  way happened in this broader world that Narnia is attached to. What can she do now in our day?
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  She doesn't, but in spades, she does try and use a deplorable word or a spell on Letti, doesn't she?
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  And it doesn't work. So in our world, she doesn't have, she's got strength but not magic,
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  whereas in Narnia, she has magic, because she remembers she goes around to many people to stay.
• 27:08
  Right. Yeah. That's a good point. I know, but then another question would be like,
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  so if J.D. is still back and functioning, she's had this so much time, she's had in Narnia time,
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  yeah, far more time to be able to, has she found a way to recover that sort of magic or find a way,
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  has she been working to try to bring magic back into or her magic into our world?
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  Who knows? But that's, I can see, I can see a degree that the child having witnessed what is
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  possible with not just bombings, but also the atomic bomb and the news of that and what that would
• 27:44
  have looked like to a child, then that affecting and having kind of lasting emotional memories
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  coming into the present day and how they see then a revival of this magic and probably flashbacks
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  to what they experienced themselves as a child. So yeah, I think there's, again, there's trade-offs
• 28:02
  for changing that, but I think regardless, since war is still something that happens in our world
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  today, I think that's still going to be just as relevant this warning about empire power,
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  how do you use weaponry? What does it mean to possess something? What's our relationship with
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  creation, a stewardship right over creation? She might have her own America, you know,
• 28:30
  because in terms of the stage America is, and it's world power, are you the same as
• 28:40
  the UK was back in the 50s? Discuss. Anyway, another theme that is coming into the frame is
• 28:51
  the big one, which is about the central story about getting a fruit that will heal your mother
• 29:00
  of what looks like cancer. Philip Pullman is pretty irate about this. He really dislikes
• 29:10
  famously, dislikes this book and dislikes CS Lewis as well, and this is the bit that he particularly
• 29:18
  dislikes, because he thinks that degree is being rewarded, that good boys can cure their mother,
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  which is a terrible message to give to boys whose mothers and girls, whose mothers do die as
• 29:31
  tragically people do unjustly, just because that's the way things happen. What do you think the
• 29:38
  story is going to do about that? What would you do? Yeah, that's a good question, and I think that's
• 29:46
  I think it's a fair point in that you don't want children are impressionable, and it's often
• 29:52
  children. I know I'm heartbroken when my child thinks that something is his fault, that he that is
• 30:00
  not his fault, something larger in the world, or health wise, or something somebody got hurt,
• 30:06
  and he feels like he's responsible for it, and just like how how much that troubles him as a
• 30:12
  more sensitive child. I totally get that. I absolutely do not want that. It wouldn't want that
• 30:19
  to be oppressed for children, and so you do have to be careful about being mindful of the lessons
• 30:26
  that children are taking away. On the other hand though, magician's nephew seems to have been
• 30:35
  probably the most autobiographical of the Narnia Chronicles for Lewis, so his mother died,
• 30:42
  and this is in some ways a reimagining of his own childhood and a way to in some ways almost
• 30:50
  like redeem the memory and experience that he had as a child, and to give him hope, or maybe this
• 30:56
  is something that he wished a sort of hope he would have had as a child writing it for baby Jack,
• 31:04
  something for him. In some ways, I could easily see that as Jack feeling like
• 31:11
  he should have been able to save his mom because he was being a good boy, and in that case,
• 31:17
  this is actually giving a validation for a reworking of that mentality, but then
• 31:24
  providing himself with the sort of wishful feeling that like okay, but it actually wasn't because
• 31:29
  you were a good boy necessarily. It was only because of Aslan and this other world and something
• 31:35
  that was completely outside of your control, that then was able to bring healing to her
• 31:42
  in that sense, so it wasn't ever necessarily about Degree, but it was about Aslan, what Aslan
• 31:48
  could provide. So you can interpret it and see it that way, which is more resonant with
• 31:53
  Lewis's Christian worldview and how you actually save people from death. There's nothing that
• 31:59
  humans can do and it's foolish to try to extend life, add into an item, but because you just
• 32:05
  become a monster, presumably the longer you live and the more that you have the substitutes of life,
• 32:10
  and if you're just hanging on and grasping at life, there's a root desire there that isn't
• 32:17
  reconciled with larger ideas that he believes in his Christian outlook that humans should be more
• 32:24
  attuned to. It shouldn't be about life in terms of longevity of life, but rather the quality
• 32:30
  of life and how you're helping other people to flourish in that. So anyway, so I think
• 32:37
  I think it's in some ways, if you see it as Lewis, this particular aspect, as Lewis kind of
• 32:42
  working through his own childhood and providing hope for maybe not just for himself, for other
• 32:48
  people and something in difficult situations. I can see that being a false hope in from Pullman's
• 32:54
  perspective, but also from a different perspective. I think any hope, any sort of relief or
• 33:03
  light you can give to somebody that's in a difficult situation can be helpful if it's done
• 33:11
  sensitively, and it is clear that this is a work of fantasy and not necessarily a direct
• 33:21
  correlation to what's actually happening in the world. I don't know, what do you think, Julia?
• 33:25
  I think yes, Lewis has every right to tell this story in the way he wants to tell it. It's a story
• 33:30
  written for younger children, which is about magic, and even a younger child will realize that
• 33:37
  this is a magical event, not an everyday event, and it's the magic that makes a difference.
• 33:45
  Good moral choices help, but it's not because he was good at the magic apple. He's given the
• 33:53
  magic apple because he makes good moral choices. He doesn't take it for himself and so on, and that's
• 33:59
  perfectly fine as a story to tell, and there are plenty of happy ever after stories out there, which
• 34:06
  are a similar thing. If you want to read a story which deals with the death of a mother and the
• 34:14
  and the role of a child, you you read a monster cause. Monster cause absolutely been both the
• 34:20
  thing that I remember. That is the YA. That's a book for YA when children, older children are able to
• 34:27
  cope with complexity. There is nothing wrong with saying in this magical tale, this boy
• 34:34
  because of his bravery and courage is able to make up some things he did wrong, and he gets this
• 34:43
  magical artifact, this lovely apple, which helps his mum. That's fine. I think it's probably more
• 34:52
  and I think with Philip Pullman, it's more an annoyance that he's always compared
• 34:58
  with CS Lewis, and obviously temperamentally probably wouldn't have got on, let's face it,
• 35:04
  and I think he's kind of fighting a battle on this one. If I was him, I would say that's not how I
• 35:10
  would write the story, and then leave it at that because there's nothing wrong. I like happy
• 35:16
  ever after stories, and I'm fully aware the world isn't always happy ever after, and I was aware
• 35:22
  of that as a kid. I think it's fine to have a lovely family film going to the Greta Gowick thing,
• 35:32
  where you don't have to say, oh, S and by the way, lots of other people are dying. I mean, fine,
• 35:39
  but that's not how the film isn't really about that. The film is about his choices,
• 35:46
  and after he's made some mistakes, and it would be awful if at the end, after doing the right
• 35:53
  thing, he gets home, and his mum dies. I mean, just see for that, you know. Right from a child,
• 35:59
  yeah, the child's seeing that. No, that's good, and I think, and that drives me a break with the
• 36:02
  Chester's UK Chesterton writing about critiques against showing dragons or monsters to children,
• 36:10
  right, that the children shouldn't see the, sometimes the scarier things in life,
• 36:18
  monsters specifically are bogie as the phrase that he uses, and he says something along the lines of,
• 36:24
  you know, children are going to see monsters anyway, like what a child is thinking about in terms
• 36:30
  of what is bad and worse and scary is probably far worse than any adult could write. What the adult
• 36:37
  would be writing would probably pale in comparison to the imagination of a child. The importance
• 36:41
  is not showing that is making clear that dragons exist. It's to show that dragons can be conquered
• 36:48
  in some way. Right, it's to give that sense of hope that like, yes, the world is scary,
• 36:53
  but there is a way forward in that world that does have hope and light, and you can't
• 37:00
  carry that with you in spite of the monsters and everything there. So I think that that's what
• 37:05
  the story does, right? And also it gets out. Yeah, in defense of CS Lewis, he's anticipating quite a
• 37:11
  lot of the breakthroughs in modern medicine, because his own mother didn't have any of the treatments
• 37:17
  that are available to a woman in the 1950s and certainly not today. So you can do it that the
• 37:25
  magic apple is like, you know, it's like Aslan's form of chemotherapy. People get better
• 37:34
  from cancer. They do. And thank God that they do. They're in recovery. So you could, if you
• 37:42
  wanted to sort of fudge it a bit, you could have a little bit of that context. If you're a
• 37:47
  Greta Goa, who was worried about this, but maybe she won't be. Anyway, it's just out there as a
• 37:52
  critique of the story. So I thought it was worth raising. So do you have anything else you want to
• 37:57
  say about this? Or shall we park it there? You know, tie up our handsome cab at this point in
• 38:03
  the conversation? Okay. Yes, yeah, I'll tie up our handsome cab in 1955, London.
• 38:12
  Well, wait to see what they do. Next to the car. Next to the next to the, yeah, next to the
• 38:15
  good. Yeah. So, you know, I think this is great and it's tough. And one of the difficult things,
• 38:19
  it can be difficult in talking about something before there's so little information about in
• 38:23
  terms of a film. And you haven't seen the word that haven't been like official photos, like
• 38:28
  official promotional materials and things is just kind of hearing rumors and kind of extrapolating,
• 38:37
  which is fine. What's the most difficult thing is I think like making is keeping observations.
• 38:42
  Everything we're doing. Tentative until you can see what the final product, what's happening? What
• 38:48
  is she doing? How is she doing? Some of the things that you're pictures that you're seeing
• 38:52
  might not even appear in the final cut of the film. Yeah, they may be just pulling the wool over
• 38:56
  our eyes and actually doing a really good treatment. And then what we look like. Right, right.
• 39:02
  No, exactly. So to say, right, that's fun. So it is it is fun to kind of to think through
• 39:07
  the different ways as a creative, right? It's trying to think so. So what could this mean?
• 39:11
  Story-wise, keeping it tentative and knowing that like we can, you can like the book exists
• 39:18
  and will always exist in the form that it is. And so nothing can touch that original idea and
• 39:25
  your relationship, your individual relationship with the magician's nephew as written by and
• 39:30
  CS Lewis and illustrated by Pauline Danes. That will always exist and you can you can maintain
• 39:34
  that you can as a creative or as a fan can do the same thing like what would what's the movie that
• 39:40
  you would make? How would you reimagine magician's nephew in this day or even if you were to put
• 39:46
  it in the future or what if you were to put it in a medieval age, right? So there's all sorts of
• 39:50
  things that you can do, a thought experiments, storytelling-wise that I think can help hone
• 39:55
  our own storytelling, you know, muscles and tools that we have as we engage with other people's
• 40:01
  stories and appreciate what they're having to consider as a creative. That can reflect our own
• 40:07
  storytelling, I think in a really significant and positive way. Thank you, Jake. Thank you very
• 40:13
  much for discussing magician's nephew with me. Happy to be here.
• 40:24
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• 40:31
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