The actual one which came as a disapointment was Voyage of Down Trader, which bearly kept any plots from the book. It was very inaccurate, and it didn’t receive very good ratings. Prince Caspain, on the other hand, tried it’s best to be accurate to the book, but as you mentioned, the book has a structure that isn’t very easy to adapt. And it did revive decent ratings, just slightly less than the original movie.
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I wasn’t talking about general reception, just my personal feelings. 
VDT didn’t bother me as much because, from what I recall, they did keep a lot of the book, they just shuffled the order of events around (and added a really silly subplot about the White Witch). And overall, I felt it had at least some of the sense of exploration, wonder, and adventure that the book had, whereas Caspian departed quite a bit from the tone of its respective book. I also had lower expectations, which probably helped. XD
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You’ve given me a reason to watch this now.
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Since you see very interested in this franchise, here is my personal ranking of all 7 Narnia books from my least favorite to my favourite:
7. The Last Battle
6.The Voyage of Down Trader
5.Prince Caspian
4.The Silver Chair
3.The Lion, the Which, and the Wardrobe
2.The Magician’s Nephew
1.The Horse and His Boy
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I don’t know if I can rank them. I think Dawn Treader is my fave, and Last Battle is probably my least fave as well–there are a lot of things in that book I could never decide how to feel about lol.
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Out of curiosity, what where you unsure about?
Personally, I found that Last Battle has a lot of memorable/endearing characters and interesting symbolism. Granted, my opinion of it is probably heavily tainted by the Patrick Stewart audiobook rendition that I grew up listening to.
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Spoilers, naturally
-Killing off nearly all the major characters is a really strange way to end a children’s series*
-The theological implications of the Calormen who makes it to Aslan’s Country are…controversial
-Tash kinda comes out of nowhere. He was only mentioned previously in The Horse and His Boy, and it that, he just seemed to be a false idol, not a real being, much less Aslan’s archrival.
Those are the main things I still remember. Keep in mind, I’m not necessarily saying they’re bad–I just don’t know what to make of them.
*It would also really suck to be Susan–though unlike some, I don’t really have a problem with what happens to her. She didn’t get to go to Aslan’s country because she stopped taking him seriously, not because she grew up or was interested in dating. And there’s still hope for her to end up there eventually.
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Same here lol. I can see what Lewis was going for, and it did give a satlisfing ending to the series, but still many aspects of it make you not know how to feel about them.
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Oh man… these are the best. What gets me is that everyone forgets the Original TV serials, the ones that actually followed the hooks fairly closely. And I’ll never see Tom Baker as anyone but puddleglum.
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I’ll never see Puddleglum as anyone but the Fourth Doctor. 
He’d make a great Tom Bombadil as well.
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Agreed!
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I still don’t get it why they didn’t continue making movies based on it. Down Trader, despite not receiving great reviews by critics, still made a lot at the box office.
I know there is that thing with the actor who played Eustace being too old to be cast for The Silver Chair, but why don’t they adapt The Magician’s Nephew and The Horse and His Boy? I think those books can still be made into great movies, and they wouldn’t need any of the original actors for them.
@John_Smith, what do you think?
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VDT was only moderately profitable (as blockbuster movies go), and both it and PC made way less than the first one. Producers don’t look favorably on franchises with diminishing returns. There was also some disagreement between various involved parties about whether Silver Chair or Magician’s Nephew should be next. Since they apparently couldn’t reach an agreement and there wasn’t a terribly strong financial incentive for the producers, it just never went anywhere.
Anyway, the production rights have all reverted back to the Lewis estate at this point, so if they were going to come to a deal with the same producers, it needed to happen years ago. Have you heard about the Netflix series, though?
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What Netflix series?
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Netflix is the current owner of the production rights.
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Are you talking about the BBC ones? Also, I think the Lion Witch and The Wardrobe movies did phenomenal job of following the books.
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You’ve seen the Walden Media version of Dawn Treader right? It’s a good conclusion to Walden Narnia trilogy, but it totally rearranges the elements of the book to have a conventional third act big battle.
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Yeah. I didn’t care for any of the movies past TLWW.
And eustace was a dragon WAY too long. He changed back before they left the island, and they cut out the whole bit about eustace’s redemption.
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Well, Dawn Treader strayed a ton from the source material, as did Caspian, I was only talking about Walden Media version of TLWW.
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So that means, if they wanted to, they could make a Netlix Exclusive Narnia Movie or TV Show?
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