Greta Gerwig’s colorful Narnia is here

One of Netflix’s biggest gambles of all time comes in February of next year in the form of Greta Gerwig’s first post-Barbie project, Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew. The trailer dropped yesterday, and it is certainly fantastical and colorful. I would have really liked to have an upbeat, family-friendly adventure film for the 2026 holidays, given that the other big releases of the holiday season are Dune: Part Three (downer) and Avengers: Doomsday (heard it’s a bummer). Oh well!

The Magician’s Nephew is the penultimate entry into C.S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia series of children’s fantasy novels. But by narrative chronology, it’s the first book in the series, a prequel to The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. The novel takes place around the turn of the 20^th century and centers on Digory Kirke—later known as “the Professor” and the keeper of the Wardrobe—and Polly Plummer. Gerwig’s film, though, is bumping up the timeline. Based on the trailer, it looks like her Magician takes place in post-war London. Which means the inevitable Wardrobe adaptation might take place around 2000?

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe takes place in 1940, the Pevensie children are sent to the Professor’s country digs to escape the Blitz. It’s a key plot point that the Pevensie kids are sent to the countryside, not sure what would prompt that circa 2000. Meghan O’Keefe suggested an even later setting, perhaps 2020, with the Pevensies going to the country during the COVID lockdowns. That makes a kind of sense!

Anyway, the trailer for Gerwig’s adaptation shows off young actors David McKenna as Digory (Ciaran Hinds is heard giving voiceover as the elder Digory) and Beatrice Campbell as Polly, as well as Daniel Craig as Andrew Ketterley, Digory’s uncle. There are also quick glimpses of Emma Mackey as the White Witch and Carey Mulligan as Digory’s mother. Also, Meryl Streep will voice Aslan the lion (which is, of course, upsetting to all the worst people), but here Aslan is only seen as a celestial being.

It looks very cool and psychedelic, though of course, the internet has complaints, chiefly about the amount of CGI in the trailer. It’s a fantasy film, I don’t know what anyone was expecting. There is going to be a lot of CGI. I have a theory that people complain more about CGI in family/kids’ movies than they do in grown up, serious movies. Like there’s a ton of CGI in the Dune movies but no one says anything because those Serious Movies, For Serious People.

And it’s not like this CGI looks BAD. It’s not grey or muddy. Compare this to the Avengers: Doomsday trailer and, well, marvel at how much brighter Magician looks in comparison. You could say it’s a tone thing, but also, Doomsday just looks MUDDY. It’s got that shoddy digital lighting meant to cover up shoddy effects. Complain about that, it’s a fair thing to notice, but the CGI in Magician looks, at worst, kind of cartoony.

Maybe that’s intentional? Lewis’s books, after all, were illustrated. They’re KIDS BOOKS. FOR KIDS. Kids like pictures and colors. I wonder if Gerwig’s intention is to incorporate the CGI in a way that looks like pseudo-animation, a kind of homage to the book’s illustrations. Maybe not! Maybe the finished film will have super shoddy CGI and then, yes, that is something to be critiqued. Right now, in the marketing phase, I’m just glad The Magician’s Nephew looks colorful and bright. But then, I don’t need every movie to be For Me. I’m okay with a kids’ book being adapted into a film primarily targeting kids. Even if it was a book I loved as a child, it’s okay if it’s still For Kids. More adults need to embrace letting kids have their things, too. We simply must end the cycle of toxic nostalgia.