The Netflix Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew trailer debuted Tuesday and amassed over 25 million views on YouTube alone. It highlights the separation between a movie and its trailer, as Greta Gerwig attempts to put her best foot forward in an effort to sell the film. Does it succeed? The online consensus is no.
I am what’s called a Narnia Normie. I have not read the books in 20 years and have never reread them. I am not a CS Lewis aficionado, though I am a film buff.
With these caveats, I think Netflix put out a good trailer. After all, a trailer has to use the source material of the movie. And what we know of the movie is troubling, to say the least. Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew, shifts the action to the 1950s and gives Aslan a David Bowie-inspired design: heterochromic eyes and a bold red-striped visage. Aslan will be voiced by Meryl Streep.
So in marketing this travesty of a film, Netflix put in zero dialog from Meryl Streep’s Aslan, although with an implicit hint at her singing in the film. Reducing Streep’s Aslan was the smart move. Including the popular Ledd Zeppellen song, “Stairway to Heaven,” was a more mainstream choice than the obscure “punk rock” vibe Gerwig has been aiming for. The cinematography is good, especially compared to other Netflix projects, and especially considering how bad Gerwig is as a director (Barbie was poorly directed and edited).
But that’s as far as the praise can go. And what I am praising has nothing to do with the film’s merits as a Narnia adaptation, meaning if the product was an original IP, people probably would not care about the creative liscense taken. But they do and they have good reason.
Greta Gerwig’s trailer is mocked for being too heaviliy ripped off from James Gunn and the Guardians of the Galaxy. The top comments all lampoon Gerwig with Marvel parodies like “Narnians of the Galaxy,” “Aslan the Great Lion will return in Avengers: Doomsday,” “Narnia in the multiverse of madness,” and “The Lion Wears Prada.”
The music is out of place for Narnia and is part of the Marvel-fication of movies. As an aside, I believe that the MCU had disastrous consequences on filmmaking. The olny thing that’s not clear is whether a plucky band of misfits will unite to take on a big bad. Additionally, the actors are speaking American English, with or without British accents.
Netflix put out as good of a trailer for a bad film as they could. The trailer doesn’t assuage the audience’s casting concerns. It only reinforces the fact that this film is more to reinforce the musical taste of the director, a played out trope in Hollywood. The tone of the trailer is out of place for the world of Narnia, and it relies on sleight of hand to distract from the movie’s well documented shortcomings. It’s bright red lipstick and pearls on swine.
