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‘Sometimes one story is the beginning of all others,’ the trailer for Greta Gerwig’s first Narnia adaptation rather loftily begins.
That grand claim makes more sense as the Netflix first look goes on, sweeping us through the strangely psychedelic realms of the first screen adaptation of CS Lewis’s The Magician’s Nephew.
This is the first chronological book in the Narnia series, where Lewis unspooled the creation of the fantastical realm behind the wardrobe door and tracked how exactly a lamppost from London got there.
Set to Led Zeppelin’s notoriously hard-to-licence Stairway to Heaven, the trailer goes through the main beats of the book: two kids, Polly and Digory, in Edwardian England stumble upon the Wood Between Worlds, where a series of pools lead to other universes.
From there, they stagger into a void (they’re foolhardy kids) and witness Aslan (voiced by Meryl Streep) forge Narnia. Instead of having the rapturous effect intended, this is where the glittery rock opera started to lose me.
The Netflix announcement states: ‘As a lifelong fan, Gerwig is beyond thrilled to bring her singular vision to this beloved world.’ As a Gerwig fan, I was beyond thrilled for that too. But what we’ve seen so far is not as singular a vision as I had hoped.
There are quick cuts of trippy, space-rock visuals which look more like an off-the-shelf Marvel project. Perhaps one of the universes the kids visit is Asgard. Or perhaps Marvel’s way is the only one we can now conceive of a multiverse.
In the netherworld void, the actors lose their corporeality, blurring with the twinkly, bisexual lighting of the cosmos around them. It’s the moment Aslan makes Narnia, but for me it was the ebb of the entire trailer.
It’s frustrating that even Gerwig isn’t immune to the CGI gremlins, flattening fantastical realms into green-screen action where nothing looks like anything real.
Yet it is in keeping with what the trailer tells us about Netflix’s hopes for this film and those beyond it.
Beholding the Wood Between Worlds, Diggory exclaims: ‘There are other worlds? Probably hundreds of worlds. Even infinity worlds!’
You can imagine a Netflix exec rubbing their hands together at the subtext of ‘infinity worlds’: to be travailed in infinity sequels! The streaming giant is chomping at the bit for some of the franchise action, which was a huge motivator for its bid to acquire Warner Bros last year.
Netflix has Wednesday and Bridgerton, but neither is a patch on what Disney has with Marvel, Prime Video with Lord of the Rings or HBO with Game of Thrones and Harry Potter. The Duffer Brothers have scarpered off to Paramount after coming closest with Stranger Things, albeit to increasingly mixed results.
Gerwig’s Narnia is quite blatantly being pitched as their great, big franchise. The poster tagline reads, ‘A universe begins.’ Netflix hopes so.
But the history of film and TV is littered with such attempts (Divergent, Universal’s ‘Dark Universe’, even the first Narnia film series). Ultimately, it’s the audience’s decision whether something will run and run. Looking like another successful franchise doesn’t guarantee this will be one too.
It would be a mistake to bet against Gerwig, or this cast (Streep, Carey Mulligan, Daniel Craig, Emma Mackey). But the excessive computer-generated imagery in the trailer is disappointing when Barbie (which the trailer pointedly tells us was made by the same director as this) dined out on its anti-CGI credentials, using old-school practical effects and craft models.
CGI fatigue is real. I suspect the proliferation of AI slop is only exacerbating the backlash to it. Complaints over its use here are already being made online, although many have been equally left thrilled by the trailer.
When production wrapped on the prequel earlier this year, it was reported Gerwig had made use of puppeteers, real animals and creature performers – none of which is hugely evident in this first look, but it is encouraging for the as-yet-unseen majority of the film.
I still trust Gerwig to deliver the enchanting, epic world Netflix is already touting this will be. But this trailer hasn’t convinced me of it quite yet.
Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew will be in theatres on February 12, 2027, and on Netflix on April 2, 2027.