Part 1 & 2

[-centaur-]

I was recently thinking on having a full series of Narnia movies (one can dream) and wondering how they might finish a film adaptation of The Last Battle. The action climax is easily the darkest in the series, culminating in

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Basically the deaths of everyone.

After this, there's a long section in which

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Tirian, Jill, Eustace, and others explore the "New Narnia", ending up at Aslan's country.

That last bit is one of my favourite parts of the series, a beautiful picture of the peace after the destruction on earth, and a glimpse into Lewis's own theology.

Now, imagine this in film. The big climax, dark movie leads to a dark climax, and then it's literally all sunshine and roses. I'm not sure lots of people would enjoy that. Similar to Lord of the Rings, where the climax is the destruction of the Ring (I doubt I need to "spoiler" that), the filmmakers opted to remove the canonical conclusion of the scouring of the Shire, a wise decision in my opinion.

I wonder what the best way to do LB would be. As much as I think film studios are trying to squeeze money out of their franchises, I wonder if a "Last Battle Part 1" and "Last Battle Part 2" would be a decent idea. In sort of the same split as the last two Hobbit movies, finish one movie part way through the drawn-out climax (Tirian and the others fight more than once, maybe leave some sort of cliff-hanger?) and then begin the second movie with the literal LAST battle.

Or maybe the better option is to leave out some of the detail of the

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exploration of the New Narnia

and shorten it a bit to provide a bit of an epilogue. I can see that working ok- perhaps a two and half hour film with the last twenty minutes to half an hour being the ending.

Any thoughts?

[Anhun]

I'm not sure if its worth making the Last Battle into a movie at all, but it definitely would not do as a two-parter. "Part 1" as you call it, could possibly work as a self-contained apocolyptic war movie. You have a point there.

The problem is making Part 2 into its own movie. The Real Narnia part of Last Battle is more of a metaphysical poem, than a story. It has no character development, no conflict, the only goal is to go further up and further in. You can't make a movie based on that. Maybe the screen writers will cook up some tacked-on conflict, like the people have to go further up and further in to escape a tsunami. You'll think I'm joking until you remember the scenario of people being sacrificed to an evil mist.

I think the best way is to end with the characters escaping through the door. As you yourself pointed out, the shift from the Narnia Apocalypse to the Real Narnia is jarring, and anti-climax.

[Future Narnian]

Oh, I would hate it if they left the ending out with them going to the New Narnia. Plus they kind of need it since the rest of the book is so depressing. And we need to establish what happens since clearly Narnia isn't restored. Otherwise people who haven't read the books are just going to be thinking "What a stupid way to end it -- everybody dies!"

[Anhun]

But they don't even find out they're dead until after they get to New Narnia. If the movie ends with Jill or Eustace peeping through the ajar door before closing it on darkness and void, the non-reading audience won't know they're dead either.

[Adeona]

I do think they'd need to cut the ending down a bit, Anhun - but probably not that much. People need to see how joyful the ending is. Perhaps end it with the group setting off further up, after Aslan explains where they are and bounds off? The Friends are all running and bounding and laughing and the camera pulls back to the vastness of the new Narnia and Aslan's Country?

Perhaps some of the things from the end can be woven into the story before they enter the Stable - for instance the talk with Emeth. I can imagine them capturing him as the guard on Puzzle, then they talk to him (slightly different since he either hasn't yet met Aslan or it would've been under different circumstances) then maybe he escapes or is freed by the other Calormenes but later enters the stable similarly to the book scene. Then at the end they just see him again, perhaps talking with some of the other characters from earlier on.