Netflix is Building a Narnia “Universe” | Talking Beasts
Podcast Discussion
The word “universe” in last week’s big announcement jumped out at many fans. Netflix is developing The Chronicles of Narnia feature films and episodic programming, and many fans are wondering what uncharted waters these new adaptations might take Narnia through.
Listen to our discussion below and post a comment!
- Official: Netflix Developing New Narnia Movies and Series!
- The Business Angle of Narnia-Netflix
- The Giant Surprise discussion
Podcasters: Glumpuddle, Gymfan
Listen:
Podcast: Play in new window | Embed
One topic that I'm waiting to come up is the soundtracks and how widely they will differ from the Walden music. What exactly are we looking for?
P.S.- You got my voice spot on, Glumpuddle. Sort of. XD
There are so many ways a music score could be done for Narnia. Some good ways, but mostly bad. The Lord of the Rings film score is the gold standard for me, not Harry Potter or disney film scores. I’m difficult to please, but I like to be surprised in a positive way.
BBC’s TV Narnia score was exactly what you would expect: It’s dignified and uplifting. It’s also boring in its lack of variation and scope.
Focus on the Family’s radio music for Narnia was their usual Saturday morning music: Occasionally stirring, but mostly bombastic and corny.
Walden Media’s film music for Narnia started off in an inspired way (Harry Gregorson-Williams music for LWW mixed traditional hollywood scoring with both electronic and forign musical instruments to great effect).
However, the score is also obviously trying to compete with The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter (not to mention other disney films) and so it comes off as sounding a bit overblown and portentous. PC was made worse because of the latter.
VofDT threw out all of that previous effort by removing the original composer and doing a cheesy and lazy hollywood score (some parts are copied-and-pasted directly from composer David Arnold’s previous films).
I REALLY want to be surprised by Netflix’s music for Narnia: Make it not the music we expect or even want, but the score we need: Make it reflect to Books. Also, dont play it cheep like VotDT. Take time to find talented composers who fit the material: Howard Shore was once an unknown horror-film composer from Canada, and yet he went on the make the beautiful and unforgettable music for The Lord of the Rings, one of the greatest film scores of the 21st century. That’s my shpheel. 🙂 😉