r/movies • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 r/movies Contributor • 29d ago
Media First Image of Daniel Craig from Greta Gerwig's 'Narnia: The Magician's Nephew'
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u/wewereromans 29d ago
Why do all these stills look like Dr. Who sets
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u/LimpyDan 29d ago
Because Narnia is bigger on the inside.
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u/In_My_Own_Image 29d ago
I mean, there was an episode called The Doctor, The Widow and the Wardrobe.
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u/TLKv3 29d ago
Lowkey, I now want Daniel Craig to do a season of Doctor Who. I actually think he'd absolutely fucking crush it as The Doctor and could serve as a nice bridge to a new soft reboot.
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u/chargedcapacitor 29d ago
A new studio with a decent budget and good writers needs to be found first
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u/Jbstargate1 29d ago
Honestly i think most set shots would especially with this amount of post processing on it.
Don't know why they didnt just use actual film stills that were processed.
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u/Comrade_Falcon 29d ago
Empire still always look like this and are never just film stills.
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u/palpablebubble 29d ago
"why do all these previews look like shit"
Because they literally always do, they're just pictures from the set
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u/dual_citizenkane 29d ago
They may not be complete yet. Films are sometimes even worked on into the final weeks before release.
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u/SutterCane r/movies Veteran 29d ago
And even on the premiere day.
The Avengers from the Avengers went and filmed the post credits scene after the film premiered.
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u/ComradeJohnS 29d ago
they cut Rosario Dawson, aka Nurse Claire, from Brand New Day within a few days of premiere.
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u/RogueIslesRefugee 29d ago
That beats Return of the King. IIRC, it was delivered for distribution with hours to spare, largely thanks to how long it took to get the final shot of the ring stamped "PJ Approved".
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u/katep2000 29d ago
Yeah, the reason Cap’s got his chin in his hands the whole time they’re eating shawarma is cause Evans had grown a beard for Snowpiercer and the prosthetic they used to cover it made his chin look swollen.
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u/thatguygreg 29d ago
Shots like this always looked great on a glossy printed magazine page. On digital, it just looks weird.
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u/Known_Pepper5419 29d ago
Thank you for helping me figure the rest of the vibe out (Doctor Who), I was getting big Spy Kids vibes.
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u/safarifriendliness 29d ago edited 29d ago
Is that not the vibe the titular Magician gives off? Been a bit since I read the book but he’s like a crazy magical inventor right?
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u/imjustbettr 29d ago
No he's mostly a fraud coasting on magical items he inherited. He's a loser who's only upper hand is that he is older than the main characters. He caves as soon as someone not kid-sized opposes him.
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u/Swiftax3 29d ago
He literally has forged rings made from dust recovered from atlantis. I think its a fairly valid interpretation honestly.
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u/imjustbettr 29d ago
He literally has forged rings made from dust recovered from atlantis.
He "inherited" those and it's implied he has very little magical skills or talent himself. I'm guessing all the gizmos in this shot are just for show.
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u/katep2000 29d ago
Yeah it’s outright stated Uncle Andrew is pretty much a con man that got lucky enough to inherit something genuinely magical.
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u/mouringcat 29d ago
I was thinking it looked like a scene from a Hidden Object adventure point and click game.
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u/SugarAndIceQueen 29d ago
So that's what these remind me of! Jadis looks like she belongs in that Beatles episode from the last run and this might as well be NPH's Toymaker. Welp.
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u/SenorNerd718 29d ago
Right?!! 😆
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u/wewereromans 29d ago
That's what I thought it was when the first one was released yesterday. I thought it was a new Doctor being announced
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u/SenorNerd718 29d ago
The set looks very TARDIS like and Daniel Craig outfit gives Steampunk Doctor vibes.
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u/wewereromans 29d ago
I meant the one with the witch and the kids from yesterday, but yeah Craig is definitely given steampunk Doctor vibes here as well
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u/dewittless 29d ago
We'd be so lucky to get Daniel Craig as the Doctor, holy smokes.
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u/wewereromans 29d ago
Well shit, now I want it.
He's too big a name now, but it's kind of inspired really.
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u/Mushroomer 29d ago
Considering the wierd position the franchise is in, doing a movie with a big star like Craig as the Doctor might be a solid way to relaunch it. The series needs a new entry point.
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u/LookAtMaDog 28d ago
I literally thought this was a shot of inside the TARDIS and they were saying Daniel Craig is the new Doctor
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u/MarvelsGrantMan136 r/movies Contributor 29d ago edited 29d ago
Craig on playing Uncle Andrew:
“I’d like to say that his intentions are good, but I’m not sure that they are. It’s not to say that he’s cruel and mean and awful. He gets overexcited about what could be, and therefore overlooks the people around him and the consequences of what he’s doing. I stayed up all night and read it [the book as a kid]. It was the first time I started a book and finished it near dawn, and I’d never read a book cover-to-cover before.”
Gerwig:
"He’s the stupidest magician in the world who actually made magic”
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u/Diet_Clorox 29d ago
I'm all for Craig trying to bring a nuanced take to Andrew, but I remember this character using two children as guinea pigs for interdimensional travel because he was too much of a coward to do it himself.
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u/Canuckleball 29d ago
A lot of actors don't approach roles with that mindset though. Everyone is the main character in their own story, and very few people are moustache twirling villains who openly admit to being evil. Uncle Andrew certainly doesn't think of himself as a monster, even though he is. To convincingly play a character, you have to really get inside their skin, and think how they think, feel how they feel, etc. It's pretty normal to empathize with the characters you play, and to try to rationalize their evil the way the character themselves would.
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u/Caelinus 29d ago edited 29d ago
Yeah that is important for writing villains too. If your villain is bad because villains are bad, they always fall flat. They need to be the hero of their own story, and they need to know what they want, and what they are willing to do in order to get it.
It makes them more sympathetic a lot of the time, but that is not really the point. You can have a villain who is truly detestable even while you understand why they are doing what they are doing. The point is verisimilitude. People do things because they want things, and making what they want seem reasonable/desirable/possible makes the villain seem like a character instead of a prop.
Edit: Bad because they are bad villains can work in some limited sense, like if they are literally just a monster and what they want is "eat," but complexity makes them far more memorable. For example, the only villains I really remember from the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe are Thanos and Calvin. The former because he was fixated on something he wanted, even if it was the dumbest idea ever. He was a zealot, and I got that he was insane, and it was fine. It worked. Calvin (from Agents of Shield) was better, because while he was also insane, the thing he "wanted" through his insanity made him feel both more sympathetic than Thanos and extremely dangerous.
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u/CubeFlipper 28d ago
If your villain is bad because villains are bad, they always fall flat.
Unless they're Skeletor.
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u/ThisIsTheNewSleeve 29d ago
Yeah he is absolutely the worst in the book. He is cruel and awful.
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u/TravelerSearcher 29d ago
And the fact that he sees Jadis as an object of desire and possibilities despite her clearly evil actions.
"A dam fine woman." Is one of the last lines in the book.
As the adult in the story that sends two children off into the unknown that leads to Jadis coming to Earth and then jumping to Narnia, he has the most responsibility outside of Jadis herself for The White Witch rising to power
And he was disappointed he didn't get to stay in Narnia because he couldn't exploit it's resources. He saw the lampost land in the soil and grow and (paraphrasing) then envisioned dropping gold bars and ocean liners and having them grow from nothing to the end of gaining wealth.
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u/ThisIsTheNewSleeve 29d ago
Andrew was a user of people. He was a leech on Digory's family, he used Digory and Polly, he wanted to use Jadis for power and Narnia for it's resources. He's a parasite, with almost nothing redeemable about him.
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u/BlueKnightofDunwich 29d ago
And he specifically sent Polly into the unknown dimension without the means to return knowing that Digory would have to do what he wanted in order to rescue her.
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u/sharrrper 29d ago
After using actual guinea pigs
I seem to remember the kids finding one with a magic ring taped to it in between woods or whatever
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u/VGstuffed 29d ago
Great casting. Is this Craig’s first villain (ish) role since Tin Tin?
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u/X-LaxX 29d ago
Man I wish the TinTin sequel got made
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u/lukednukem 29d ago
Just recently Peter Jackson said: "Fran and I have been writing a script for the next Tintin film because 15 years ago, Steven Spielberg directed a Tintin film and I produced it," Jackson exclusively tells Gold Derby. "The idea was that then I was supposed to go straight onto a second one, and we'd swap the roles, so I'd direct the second one and he'd produce it. It's just taken 15 years to get there, unfortunately, a bit late. But it's a timeless story. So we just wrapped up. So probably the next film that I'd actually direct is a Tintin movie."
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u/SatansCornflakes 29d ago
Probably gonna end up in the “Del Toro’s Hobbit” pile of me never getting what I want
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u/Jadziyah 29d ago
Tintin is huuuuge in Europe but the US has absolutely no idea who it is, which is a shame
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u/MegaDuckCougarBoy 29d ago
I've been thinking that Jadis isn't grand enough and Andrew isn't pathetic enough but that quote from Gerwig tells me she gets it so I'm now cautiously optimistic
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u/grill_smoke 29d ago
That's Mark Ruffalo, you're not fooling me!
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u/butt-puppet 29d ago
Came here to say something similar...
Why did they cast Craig as Mark Ruffalo?
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u/tetoffens 29d ago
I'm seeing Fred Armisen.
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u/maskaddict 29d ago
Weird brag, but okay. You should know that he's married, but, like, no judgment.
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u/tetoffens 29d ago
It's nothing weird like cheating. I see him from outside his window every day.
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u/ArchDucky 29d ago
A buddy at work keeps thinking Will Forte is playing Sinestro in Lanterns. Everytime he says it, I say "Get out of here Hal, you friggin' turd!" and he laughs his ass off. I honestly don't see it.
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u/MangyAsianMan 29d ago
This looks actually interesting. I genuinely hope they find a way to recreate the book cover artwork that I grew up with.
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u/bentreflection 29d ago
Wow this brought me back to being a kid so hard. I used to love this cover for how dark it was.
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u/CeruleanBlew 29d ago
Yes, my brother had these editions! I also got the set that came out in 1994 just because Chris Van Allsburg’s covers were so beautiful.
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u/bigpig1054 29d ago
I still have the whole paperback box set with these covers! They're held together by scotch tape and prayers, but i have them still!
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u/Baby__Keith 29d ago
This looks actually interesting.
Glad to hear someone else thinks so.
I feel all I see on /r/movies is how colourless and lifeless movies are these days, and how no one is taking any sort of creative risks.
So along comes a highly lauded director with a very distinct creative vision and aesthetic, but apparently it's not appropriate for a series of novels that have already been adapted countless times in a variety of different ways.
Sometimes I feel like people just like to bitch and complain.
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u/HighSeverityImpact 29d ago
This one has actually never been adapted to film (minor television adaptation notwithstanding), and it's one of my favorites of the series. I'm definitely looking forward to seeing it brought to life. The other books, even The Lion Witch and the Wardrobe, have only really been done the once, and the series was never completed. It's not like these things are perennially getting remade.
Meanwhile, there's more Ebenezer Scrooge and Christmas Carol adaptations than you can shake a stick at, and /r/movies never hesitates to celebrate those.
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u/ParrotofDoom 29d ago
This is the version I grew up with: https://www.freenovelsonline.top/2016/11/the-magicians-nephew.html
It's amazing how long I'd spend sometimes, in bed, studying the covers of these books.
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u/narkaputra 29d ago
so its a steampunk setting? not a fantasy one?
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u/come-on-now-please 29d ago
It better not have a highly stylized tim burtonish "normal" world, kinda defeats the point of having Narnia
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u/EgotisticalTL 29d ago
Everything I've seen so far screams that this is all about Greta and not the source material.
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u/green_meklar 28d ago
That sounds like a great way to preemptively destroy a franchise. Which would especially disappointing considering that Magician's Nephew has never been adapted to the screen before.
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u/quiglter 29d ago
The story begins in the "real world" at the very end of the Victorian age
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u/Monsieur-Incroyable 29d ago
Except Greta has changed the time period to the 1950s, which would also push the The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe much further out into the modern times... which is going to be weird. Unlike other people here, I don't think Greta is a good choice for the movie. I've read multiple comments from her that lead me to believe she doesn't respect the source material at all. As a huge Narnia fan, I want Lewis's Narnia, not Greta's interpretation of it. :(
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u/MapleHamms 29d ago
The children get sent to the countryside to escape the war…the Gulf War
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u/Evepaul 29d ago
If this one is 1950, the next one has to be in 1990. I guess they could set everything in former Yugoslavia and send the children to the countryside to escape the civil war.
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u/wowzabob 29d ago
I mean you could, but the works are indelibly British.
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u/The_Flurr 28d ago
There's a bit of a pervasive attitude in American-made media that the specific time/place setting of stories from "western cultures" don't really matter unless American.
Especially true of stories from Britain.
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u/Acquiescinit 29d ago
This adaptation is going to fizzle out just like the previous ones. I don’t see how there’s a big enough market for Narnia if you push out the people who like it because of the source material and religious themes. And it seems like this interpretation is not remotely interested in appealing to those people.
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u/Monsieur-Incroyable 29d ago edited 29d ago
Agreed. Literally, makes no sense. The books are proven fan-generating money makers, why on earth would you change them?
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u/DaaaahWhoosh 29d ago
Are they actually planning on doing the full series? It's been a long time since I read it but I feel like The Magician's Nephew can be a relatively self-contained story (as well as being a poor introduction to the setting despite being in-universe the first stuff to happen).
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u/TheGreatStories 29d ago
Wait how can you have LWW without world war 2?
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u/zokka_son_of_zokka 29d ago
Have the parents want to go on vacation. Have the kids want to go for a visit. Have the parents die (though that screws a bit with the Prince Caspian setup, that's not hard to get around). Have the parents around and everyone visiting, for gods' sake. It's not hard. The question is if it's a good idea, which I don't think so.
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u/TheColourOfHeartache 29d ago
Despite that this technology/aesthetic is WAY older. I see a Wimshurst machine, that's 1880s tech.
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u/WesterosiAssassin 29d ago
Ugh, there are few things I (usually) hate more with adaptations than when they take something that took place in a particular time period and 'modernize' it for no reason (other than presumably the studio thinks audiences are too dumb to care about it if it takes place in the past? idk, that's what I always assumed). If they actually use the updated time period to say something interesting with it (i.e. Apocalypse Now) or it's something that's been adapted to hell and back already so there's no pressure for it to be the 'definitive' version (like Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet or any of the other modern-day adaptations of his plays), I'm all for it, but otherwise... ugh.
Like IT... I liked those movies for the most part but why did they have to push it forward so the second half was in the modern day? Were they just trying to cash in on the Stranger Things popularity with another horror set in the 80s with kid protagonists?
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u/ElectricalAd1533 29d ago edited 28d ago
Look what she did to Little Women. She doesn't gaf about the source material whatsoever in her adaptations.
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u/Baby__Keith 29d ago
As a huge Narnia fan, I want Lewis's Narnia, not Greta's interpretation of it. :(
Surely that's what the books are for, no?
The whole point of getting an artist in with their own unique visual style is to see that style
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u/pooch516 29d ago
I'm assuming this shot is in the real world that's the first bit of the book. Narnia is the fantasy world that they get sucked into.
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u/sloppyjo12 29d ago
The reason other movies have been lacking color is because Gerwig uses it all in her films
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u/-Sp0iledmilk- 29d ago
Greta just simply steals the colors from other films, and puts it in her own!
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u/GrassWaterDirtHorse 29d ago
She has a contract with Pazuzu, the Demon who Eats Color. Her jealously would not allow others to have such a vibrant display.
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u/baconeggwaffle 29d ago
I hope this is good
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u/Monsieur-Incroyable 29d ago
Depends on what you're looking for, this isn't Lewis's Narnia that many of us fell in love with. This is Greta's stylized interpretation of it. As a huge Narnia fan and based on what I've read and Greta's own comments, I fear I'm in for a huge disappointment.
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u/IrishWarhog 29d ago
That sucks, my 5 year old daughter's just started reading this book (well listening to me read it) yesterday. So far digory has just left to find Polly in chapter 2 and she's on tenterhooks as to where they're ending up
Carried it down to breakfast this morning as a subtle hint
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u/Lifeboatb 29d ago
yeah, re-reading the books as an adult, The Magician’s Nephew became my favorite. I’m not sure I even want it to be a movie.
However, I did like her Little Women adaptation.
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u/turkeypedal 29d ago
The direction I'm seeing is "what if Lewis wrote this today?" There was a nostalgia for the first decade of the 1900s back then. I can totally see moving that nostalgia up to the 1950s.
The other stories were not written as historical pieces--you as a kid were supposed to identify with everything. Having TWW in the 1990s accomplishes something similar.
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u/HemingwaySweater 29d ago
This man spent 20 years of his life grimly trudging through being James Bond so he could play as many fancy lads as possible for the rest of his career and I really respect that.
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u/NathanCollier14 29d ago
I'm kinda glad they're going in chronological order this time around instead of book order
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u/Dederking 29d ago edited 29d ago
What the fuck is the set design on this movie? I have not read the book in a long time but doesn't this shit happen in the late 1800s?
Edit: So the book took place in 1900.
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u/wisperingdeth 29d ago
I love Daniel Craig, BUT I'm really not sure he's the right person to play Uncle Andrew. He's nothing like how the book describes the character in this photo for one thing.
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u/-reddit_is_terrible- 29d ago
nothing like how the book describes
Im getting the feeling that is exactly what Gerwig is going for
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u/RBlomax38 29d ago
Reddit: “there’s no color in movies anymore!”
sees two colorful images from upcoming movie
Reddit: “it looks gaudy”
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u/TheMythofKoalas 29d ago
Just because people want X, doesn't mean all attempts at making X must be accepted as inherently good. I love werewolves and want more werewolf movies. That doesn't mean I can't watch a werewolf movie and admit it is crappy.
This image looks a little gaudy (IMO). Not the end of the world and probably looks a lot better in motion. But it's a weird choice as a presentation of the film (again, IMO).
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u/RBlomax38 29d ago
obviously hasn’t read the actual book being adapted
Also Reddit: “Narnia is fantasy not steampunk”
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u/Mythoclast 29d ago edited 29d ago
You made the magic multiverse laboratory look too weird, it'll make Narnia look less special.
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u/Africa_versus_NASA 29d ago
I think the issue is more that there's a fundamental contrast at play in this book between Victorian London and the pains of reality (Diggory's mother's illness) and the fantasy of world-hopping and hope of Narnia. It seems like it would make more sense to save the fantastical colors for the fantastical parts. Instead, this makes me worried that they'll have a more fantastical / zany atmosphere from the get-go.
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u/nymrod_ 29d ago
This looks like some kind of Imagnarium or Wonder Emporium
By which I mean it looks a bit more shit and less original than it should
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u/Proof_Specialist_455 29d ago
I'm not a fan of the set design so far. It reminds me of Wicked, and not in a good way, but if this is supposed to be a kids' movie, I guess it's perfect.
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u/Ulsterman24 29d ago
Given everything we know so far about this production- yes, they have completely ignored the tone of the books. And the intentions of the author. And the characterisation of the world of Narnia. And...
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u/thinmeridian 29d ago
I hope the movie doesnt look like this the whole time because it's way too busy
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u/hummusluvr8 29d ago
Is this concept art or movie stills? Everything has looked gaudy so far….
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u/Locoman7 29d ago
What is this art style? I thought narnia was more medieval
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u/WalrusExtraordinaire 29d ago
Assuming this picture is of his workshop, that’s in England. In the book it’s 1900 but I guess this movie is set in 1955? But regardless this part isn’t in Narnia
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u/Dux-El52 29d ago
I hope he has a funny accent in this film