A fanfiction/future movie screenplays idea.

I just got the movie guide to LLW. This was bad news- now I am busily planning an idea for how to complete the chronicles in movie form appropriately.
I’m curious as to how people think this should go- the book to movie process. As I see it, we have five main stories that must be shot in some sequence, and two that are floaters- Magician’s Nephew and Horse and His Boy- but where’s the draw for all the strictly movie fans (because we know there are many) if all our favorite characters have moved on?
--- Susan, perhaps?
This is my vision- critiques welcome, but please don’t bash the entire idea.- I can’t imagine the movies without the original characters- this is my personal idea on how to fix that.
This would be the beginning of Magician’s Nephew, which I envision being the sixth movie, although that causes problems for the End of Last Battle- though I have some ideas on how to fix that too…
I originally wrote this as a loose screenplay, but changed it into what I hope reads as a more pleasing narrative (my screenplay was hurried, and very poorly written).

Magician’s Nephew Introduction:
She was dancing with a fox, which was rather difficult, considering the height difference. But this fox had done so much for her family and country- she was seeing him in the jaws of a vicious wolf, even as he charmed her as they danced. Her brothers were dancing with dryads, her sister was being led in an intricate dance with a strange, half man half- goat? The faun, the faun, oh what was his name- he was lively and spritely and young and handsome. But he had been hard and cold as stone once- he’d been stone!
The ball room disappeared, and the scene changed quickly to one of her and her siblings, playing in a field. But it wasn’t here, in England, it was there, in the world where she danced with talking foxes, oh what a strange world!
She heard their voices, Lucy and Edmund, singing a duet together, even as they were dancing, even as they were playing with her and Peter, and then suddenly they were standing together, older, and she could see them singing.
“Well done, Lu!” Peter said, jumping up from a golden chair next to her. “That was brilliant.”
“And I suppose my job wasn’t amazing?” Edmund joked.
“You can’t carry a tune in a bucket,” Peter scoffed.
“He lies, we all know you sing better than him, Ed,” Susan laughed, “he’s just jealous. Magnificent he may be, but magnificent singer he is not.”
All three laughed as they turned to look at her, but as they laid eyes on her, she gasped in pain, and their solid forms disappeared in the blink of an eye.
~~~~~

MN Part 2

Susan woke with a gasp, her face puffy with the tears of the night before. “Susan,” came the voice of her aunt from her doorway. The room was full of moving boxes, bare except for a picture of a boat hanging on the wall. The wardrobe was wide open, with bright colored ball gowns spilling from it, crammed in with little care. Susan closed her eyes again, sighing, before she sat up and got out of the bed.
She shot a brief, angry glance at the ball gowns spilling from the closet, which she remembered dancing in so many nights! But those nights were as unlike as they were like the dream she’d just had- the one that flitted away from her whenever she tried to grasp it, a dream of herself dancing with an odd partner.
“An odd dream,” she told herself firmly, shaking her head to clear it of the last vestiges of the memory, even if it had been good. It had also been painful, like this week.
Her memories were persistent. One from just two weeks ago flashed into her head.
She was at a party, with a friend. “Where’s your brother? I thought your siblings were invited tonight?” her friend asked, surveying the room.
“Peter went to a dinner party at the professors house with Edmund and Lucy,” Susan replied, her interest on the other side of the room.
“Oh,” the friend replied, looking disappointed. “That’s a shame. Why aren’t you there with them?”
Susan’s face looked dark and stormy for a second, before she wiped it clear. “I had no interest in the silly things that they would be discussing, Mary Anna. Please, let’s not think on it. I’m much more interested with making sure Lizzy Bane doesn’t spend the entire night hanging off Tom, because last week he told me he’d spend this evening with me, and she not exactly letting him get anywhere near enough that he could ask me.” She grabbed her friend and dragged her towards the couple in question as the memory faded.
“I should have gone, Peter,” Susan said to the empty spare bedroom in her Aunt and Uncle’s home. “I’m so sorry I didn’t. I’m so sorry I fought with you.”
She began to cry as she picked up the black dress.

MN Part 3

She’d stopped crying by the time she reached the church. Her aunt and uncle sat to one side of her in the first pew. Six coffins stood at the front of the church, with pictures of her parents, siblings and cousin standing in front of each coffin. The accident necessitated the closed coffin, and her uncle had had to identify the remains. Susan wished she could look on her family’s faces, but she knew that she couldn’t have. As the service began around her, she stared at the coffins, seeing flashes of her siblings superimposed on the still images staring down at her, benevolent and kind.
There was Peter, as he had been during the war, yelling at Edmund, then dazed and confused in a crowded train station, saying farewell to their mother. There were memories from the boring days and the happy days spent at the Professor’s place.
There was the sad memory of the angry Peter, fighting five boys singlehandedly, and just barely holding his own, until his brother had joined him in the fray. “I had it sorted,” he’d growled unthankfully, before he’d said, “I wasn’t always.”
“You weren’t always what?” Susan murmured to his picture, straining to remember.
She shook her head and her gaze fell on Edmund’s picture. His grin jumped to mind, his crushed and broken spirit during the air raid, holding to their father’s picture. His distraction during a game of cricket, then his happiness in the latter half of the summer- gone was the surly boy, but why? There was fear and pride in him warring in her, because she knew something was wrong, or had been very wrong in those memories, during that span of time when he’d changed. Something was definitely wrong, because her brother was dead, at nineteen, but something had been wrong then too.
The pastor said something she didn’t hear, and she was late to stand, as images continued to flash through her head, ones she couldn’t focus on well enough, fuzzy at the edges and silent like an old movie. The boys were fighting, but not angrily, and on horseback with swords. And then there was a scene of battle.
And her brother lay dying.
A scream rose in her throat, and she choked off the thoughts, which were coming around to an image of Edmund gasping, the wreckage of a train around him, but she could see it so clearly because she’d seen him like that before- she’d seen him dying. They’d all died, in horrible pain, and her imagination was grasping at it, at the screams that must have rent the air, a vision pulled together from the pieces she’d heard of the accident, and her memories of war and fear (they seemed so much more numerous than they should).
“You didn’t really want to” Lucy to her, in strange clothes, her eyes sad. Susan’s eyes unwillingly were drawn to her dearest sister, thoroughly confused.
Remembering Lu was remembering the innocence of youth, without growth. She’d matured without aging- a child in the body of a beautiful young woman.
Images danced, swirled around her, making her head spin, of Lucy as a frightened child, being sent away, Lucy at the Professor’s.
Lucy running from wolves in her nightmares, talking to trees, her stories.
Lucy running from wolves that were trying to get them, trying to get them all, Lucy throwing her dagger, Lu on horseback, running from yet more danger, Lucy happy, Lucy sad, Lucy angry-
Lucy in Susan’s arms again, safe from runaway trains.
The worst memory was the last memory, of the night before she’d died. Lucy was glaring angrily at her. “Why won’t you take your head out of the clouds, and remember? Remember what you once were, Susan Pevensie. What you once did. Who you once were, and come back!”
“I don’t remember, Lucy,” Susan whispered. “I don’t remember.”
She closed her eyes as the funeral drew to a close, everyone weeping around her, and one image lingered clearly against the backdrop of the alter, of the four of them together, standing before thrones. Then it too faded into darkness, everything faded until she couldn’t see anything. “I don’t remember,” Susan repeated softly, into the void.

This is so sad! But so good! Please continue!

Oh, my, I do like it! Now I have another reason to log in ^_^

Lioness_of_God said:

This is so sad! But so good! Please continue!

Click to expand...

I swear it gets happier!

Ginny_JillPole said:

Oh, my, I do like it! Now I have another reason to log in ^_^

Click to expand...

I'm so glad you like it, although I'm sure that you have plenty of reasons to log in already, because I know I sure do, and I haven't been here a week yet!

Thank you both for commenting, I'm glad you're enjoying. I'm posting more now!

The boys of Pendleton Academy had always been quite fond of teasing the girls of St. Mary’s, across the way. Sometimes the teasing had grown into all-out antagonism, and unfortunately, some of the antagonism had lasted well past graduation, especially when there was a particular grudge against one party by another. For the group of young men that spent their free time hanging around the Pendleton Academy archery field, their particular grudge was with a girl who had gone away to America and come back with airs. Far too many of the boys of that group had been snubbed by this girl, and quite a few of their sisters had felt slighted by her as well. Even after she'd withdrawn from the social circuits a year back, the grudge against her still stood. Rather than discouraging them when she’d stopped responding to their jibes, it had incensed them. It didn't matter that she'd also stopped smiling or laughing, stopped being part of the popular crowd when she stopped trying to make herself pretty. She only had one friend left to her these days, one left over from the time before her rise to popularity. Mary-Anna Poppins, so unfortunately named, was Susan’s staunch companion. And it was on the cloudy afternoon while the two friends were walking home from their day of work at the girl's school, that things between the two young women and the group of young men, practicing their archery, finally crashed together.
“Little Ellen Murray just needs a bit of help,” Mary-Anna was saying, glancing cautiously towards the boys, as if afraid to draw their attention, but afraid to leave them be. Susan just nodded, still in the dark place she’d been in for so long, and therefore unresponsive to her friend’s kind gestures.
“Look at those two losers, walking home alone,” A boy called out. “Hey Dylan, this would be a good time to show them a thing or two, eh?”
The young man called Dylan looked over, a malicious smile growing on his face. “Yeah, I ‘spect it is. Hey Poppins, Pevensie,” he called. When he noticed the instantaneous stiffening of their backs, his grin grew wider. In a moments irrational thinking, he swung his bow in their direction, aimed right in front of them, and let the arrow fly.
He was rewarded by their screams, and the look Susan sent him as she realized what had happened. She walked over to the arrow, which had landed in a tree behind them, and yanked it out. Mary tried to hold her back, but she was unstoppable. She hopped over the fence that separated the archery field from the road with far less dignity than the girls of St. Mary’s were known for, and more athleticism than any of the boys were expecting. There were about ten of them, but as the girl approached they began to shrink back a bit, avoiding the fire that spat from her eyes.
“You could have killed us,” she said, her voice dangerously low. Her hands were shaking, and images of Peter, a man, and a sword in a tree jumped to mind.
But Dylan seemed immune to it, standing tall and proud against her. “I’m the best archer in town. I was aiming for the tree, I hit it. You were never in any danger, unless I had chosen you to be.”
“You aren’t the best, not by a long shot,” she spat, her tone derisive, her eyes mocking. The memories were pushing against her brain. She saw Edmund dying again, felt sick to her stomach as she saw the evil dwarf approaching, ready to give the fatal blow, but she pulled her bow and took him out of the picture, so she could be with Edmund, Edmund who was departing, she could see that, and was departed, she saw the coffin, she knew he was, and yet lived on, for how else could she remember the man he would be?
Dylan’s renowned temper flared.
“Oh? Who’s better?”
“Me,” her eyes fluttered, as if in disbelief, as though she hadn’t expected herself to say such a thing, as if she was doubtful. She was, in fact, although those blasted memories were drawing pictures of her as a brilliant archer, from far away and working in direct combat. The boys laughed, perching on the closest side of the fence that served as the visible perimeter of the archery field. Seven targets were set up, and a small, paper covered wooden ring danced in the light breeze, suspended from a tree branch. It had been Dylan’s goal to successfully shoot it for ages. She looked at it, and he did as well, knowing that she knew he’d never hit it.
“Go ahead and try then,” he sneered, handing her his bow, which seemed almost too heavy for her. She certainly doesn’t have the muscle for it, he thought. Eight arrows were positioned nearby, and she held a ninth in her hand, the one he'd shot at them.
She lifted her chin in defiance. “I believe I will,” was her retort, right before she pulled back the bow.
Afterwards the boys would say that she transformed. Indeed, there was something of a warrior princess in her stance, in her face. There almost seemed to be the shadow of a crown resting on her brow. She let the arrow fly, and had another on the string and in the air before the first could land dead center on the first target. In minutes all seven targets had arrows through their centers, some at an angle, because of where she stood, but even at an angle everyone could see that the point of the arrow went through the exact center. She gave them half a moment to think about what they’d seen, before aiming for the wooden ring, now dancing in a strong breeze. Dylan’s eyes watched hungrily, his interest no longer in seeing her fail, but in seeing a master at work. The images of her, the queen, were dancing past her eyes, even as she aimed. She gasped as she let the second to last arrow go.
She was training the people of Caspian’s camp, when he came and joined them. She challenged him to hit the highest pinecone in the tallest tree. “Are you sure that isn’t an acorn?” he gulped. She grinned, and set her arrow on it. It flew true, and arrow and pinecone landed in the ground, the fruit skewered by Queen Susan’s arrow. The arrow flew, puncturing the paper and flying through. But everyone saw the perfection of the puncture, and there was awe on every face as they turned back to look at her. Mary Anna let out an uncharacteristic whoop of joy.
The look on Susan’s face, though, was not one of triumph.
“Lucy,” she whispered, tears stinging her eyes. “Peter, Edmund. Mum. Dad.” Their faces flashed in her memory, their ghosts appeared beside her as she called them into being. She raised her voice to a yell. “Why’d you leave me?” She raged as she pulled an apple out of a wide-eyed observers hand, threw it as far as she could and let loose the ninth arrow.
“Aslan,” she murmured, as the apple landed in two distinct thumps on the solid earth, split by her ninth arrow. “Why’d you leave me?” And with them looking on in awe, she turned and ran down the lane, blinded by her own tears.

Hope you caught/were amused by the hints at the use of deleted scenes in the flashbacks. Some good ought to come of them, after all.

MN part 5

She knew that it wasn’t a church she was seeking, but because that was the last place she saw them- in a house of God, all five of them, in five wooden caskets, that was where she headed. But not to that church- the one she had last seen them in, nor to the one Mary-Anna had brought her once. No, she passed six churches on her long run before she found the one she wanted, although she hadn’t know she wanted it.

It was nestled between a bank and a museum, and it wasn’t obvious in and of itself, but rather because the entrances to both the bank and the museum were flanked by lion statues. Susan knew, with the absolute surety of one who has been touched by an immortal diety, that this was where she was meant to be, this was where she’d find the answers she was seeking.

Susan stopped dead in the vestibule of the church, nearly colliding with the back of an old woman with a cane. She recognized the church as a Catholic one, and though she wasn’t Catholic, she watched the older woman carefully and mimicked her actions, until she was kneeling in a pew before the alter, looking up at the man hanging from the cross. She remembered with a sudden vividness the feel of Narnian air with the scent of fire, cruel and vicious fires from torches, the foul smell of the beasts that had stood behind and beside the White Witch, Jadis, as she raised the bloody knife above the shorn and tied Lion. And clarity burst upon her, followed closely by the feel of the Lion’s breath upon her.

“You’ve been here all along!” she murmured. And she spun to face him.

He smiled at her. “We meet again, young queen.”

“Older and wiser now than I was when last we met,” Susan quipped, her delight at seeing Aslan once more diminished quickly by the memory of what had actually passed since they’d last met. “And younger and less wise than I have been in times past.”

Aslan smiled gently. “You will learn wisdom again, and you have time to grow up here.”

“You said that to Peter, when you told us we wouldn’t be coming back. I remember- you told him that. But he didn’t grow up, he died. So you lied.”

A part of her was hoping he’d do something drastic, like pick her up and shake her. Not because she doubted, like Trumpkin had once a long time ago, but because it would make him completely real. Well, maybe because she still had doubts.

Aslan seemed to understand that, because he walked up to her and put his head on her shoulder, so that she could wrap her arms around his neck, like she used to do. “Peter did his growing up in the time between when we last talked and the accident. Be at peace with his fate, child. You know that that is his story, when you should be more concerned with yours.” At the word yours, Susan felt a chill go up and down her spine. Aslan’s voice had turned stern.

“I was afraid and angry that I couldn’t go back. It was easier, to pretend it had never happened. And then, once I was pretending that, it began to feel as though it didn’t exist. As though I’d never been there, as though I’d never been Queen of- of N-Narnia.” The feeling that had overcome her when she was on the archery field came over her again when she said the name of her true country, “Oh Aslan, how could I have forgotten!” she groaned, feeling the strength come over her. “I submit myself to your mercies,” she murmured, dropping to her knees in front of the Lion. “I feel ashamed, knowing how easily I turned from you, and the memory of Narnia!”

Aslan shook his great head at her. “It will never be easy for you to remember Narnia. It was only ever easy for the others because they had each other to help them remember. Your adventures there were harder for you because you did belong in Narnia, but you also belonged in England, in your world. If you want it to be easier, remember me, remember Narnia- and pass it on.”

“People will think I’m crazy!” Susan gasped in dismay. The Lion smiled down on her.

“Then tell stories to your children. And tell that young man over there why he isn’t crazy.” Susan turned to look to the door, where Dylan had been standing for the last five minutes, completely frozen with his mouth wide open in shock. “You’ve found me here now. You know now. I know what you want in your heart, but you can’t go back to Narnia now. It no longer exists. Nor can you join your siblings. You have a life. Don’t turn your back on Narnia again, or you may never come back to me. But once a Queen of Narnia, always a Queen, even though you let yourself stray before. So rise, Queen Susan, and go on to live!” Aslan’s face smiled upon Susan as he faded away.

“What the- what on Earth was that?” Dylan nearly swore, striding into the church. The woman who had been there before was gone, so Dylan wasn’t following anyone’s actions as he went through the appropriate motions, and belatedly crossed himself for almost swearing. When he got to Susan’s side, he was pale but anxious. “Pevensie, there was a Lion talking to you.”

“Not a lion, The Lion,” Susan responed. “And it’s Susan, Dylan. Susan Pevensie. You may as well know that, because you won’t believe the story I’m about to tell you. You’ll want to know the proper name of the girl you’re about to send to the mad house.”

“There was a lion in this church. Since I saw it, I’m about as mad as you are. So are you going to tell me this story or not?”

Susan’s eyes, as well as her thoughts, were on the wooden cross, and the man whose effigy looked down upon her, with the eyes of the Lion who loved her.

“I was there when the Son was sacrificed,” she murmured. “Bound to a table, with his mane cut, and then she took her knife and- she killed him. But Lucy and I couldn’t look. And then we stayed with him, and when we were about to leave, he came back. He rose again.” She turned to Dylan. “And after he came back, he took us to our brothers and we helped them win the fight against the Witch and bring Edmund back to life, and we became Kings and Queens! Oh, the stories go on and on, and you wouldn’t believe half of them if I told you. You probably think I’m crazy as it is- the sacrifice of the Son and all.”

Dylan just looked on at her. He could smell strange smells in the air, smells of summers and summer air that wasn’t English air. And the musky smell of the Lion still hung around Susan, with a smell of flowers much like a scent that would have accompanied Susan’s richest gowns, which had been washed and treated with scented water, back when she was a Queen. Susan herself was changed, as she looked back at him. Her eyes glowed with happiness, despite her words. Her stories, and the Lion, had brought her back to life in a way that made her more beautiful than any amount of make-up could.

“I think I should like to hear the rest of these stories,” Dylan replied, “from the beginning.”

Susan smiled, and began- “It all started with the war, the story of my siblings and I, when we were sent from London to the Professor’s house- that’s where Lucy found the Wardrobe…”

Mn 6

“Tell me more about it,” Dylan begged, escorting Susan from the church into the late afternoon sunshine. The sun was dipping toward the horizon. They’d sat in the church for several hours, the scent of Narnia hanging about them, as Susan had told him the story of the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, “tell me everything.”
“Everything,” Susan laughed, “where do I start?”
“From the beginning! We could go sit down at the park and you could tell me the story of early Narnia that you hinted at. You know more than you told in the story.”
“Of course I do, that was certainly not the end of our adventure, and we knew the whole history of our world by the time we left. After all, we lived in Narnia for fifteen years!”
He stopped dead, and because they were holding hands without knowing it, he dragged Susan backwards slightly. “But you haven’t aged that much!”
“That’s because when we came back through the Wardrobe, it was as if we’d only been gone for a few hours. It made for a difficult transition- we’d been Kings and Queens, and then suddenly we were little more than schoolchildren.”
“Oh, please tell me everything, about being Kings and Queens.”
“Oh no, I will do no such thing, not yet. You asked for a tale of the beginning. I’ll give you a tale of the beginning. But first, we’ll have to travel back in time, to the birth of Narnia.”
“You know that far back?” Dylan asked, awestruck, leading her into the park.
“Yes, now don’t interrupt,” she scolded, sitting down on a bench, and indicating that he should join her there. “Strangely enough, the story of Narnia begins here in England, long ago when your grandfather was a child, in the town of London…”
___________________

Susan/Dylan scene fades upward from the trees around the park, into the setting sun sky, then pans down onto the beginning scene of the Magician’s Nephew, with Polly under a tree
The Magician’s Nephew, no narration (with everything but the tale of the tree falling down)
Final scene is of the house in the country surround by trees, panning up towards the sky, and the camera comes back down on the night scene of Dylan and Susan in the park, surrounded by trees.

The Last of MN, but there is more!

Susan and Dylan were laying on the ground in the park, staring up at the night sky, surrounded by a few wildflowers, some of which were braided into a crown, and lay forgotten in Dylan’s hands.
“Wow,” Dylan said breathlessly.
“Yeah. It was quite a tall tale by the time we first heard it in Narnia, helped along by the fact that the people we ruled had lived under Jadis’s rule for ages.”
“I could imagine, although it still seems quite a tall enough tale despite the fact that I feel you know the truth of it. How’d you find out about everything that happened afterwards?”
“The same way that we found out about the true tale of everything else that happened, after the story was through. One year, there was a large storm in England, and the apple tree fell down. Digory couldn’t bear to have it cut up for firewood, so he had it made into a gorgeous wardrobe…” Susan the idea of it hang in the air between them.
“It can’t be,” Dylan whispered, turning on his side to stare at Susan, “the Professor?”
“Yes,” she laughed, raising up on her elbow to look him in the eyes. “Professor Digory Kirke, whose house we stayed in that lovely summer.” She looked around her. “Oh dear, it’s so late! I should have been home hours ago! Harold and Alberta will we be worried.” She jumped to her feet and pulled him to his. Still holding hands, they raced back to her front door.
As she turned to say good-bye to him, she noticed the crown of flowers in his hand at last. “What is that?” she asked curiously.
“Oh, I, uh, my sisters used to make me make them for them. Uh, it’s a crown.”
“Lucy and I used to do that all the time, here and in Narnia.” Susan told him, smiling sadly.
“Well, I made it for you, Queen Susan,” he replied, his voice dropping to a whisper. “Once a Queen of Narnia,” he began, putting the crown on her head.
“Always a Queen of Narnia,” Susan finished, grinning.
“I’m sorry I’ve been so beastly in the past,” he apologized. “I didn’t know, this afternoon when I teased you, about your family.”
“Don’t apologize,” she replied, touching her finger to his lips to silence him. “If it hadn’t been for you, I may never have remembered.”
“If I could come again tomorrow, would you mind? And would you tell me more? About you and your brothers and sister, in Narnia?”
“Of course that’d be fine. I’ll tell you about our second visit, how about that? The noble tale of Prince Caspian the tenth, who fought to free Narnia from the clutches of his evil Uncle, Lord Miraz.”
“I’d like that,” Dylan grinned, right before he leaned in to kiss her lightly on the lips. He pulled back, ran a hand through his hair, embarrassed, and walked off.
Susan remained frozen in disbelief, before moving her hand to her lips. “tomorrow then,” she murmured, turning to go in the door, sparing one last glance at his fading form. “I’d like that.”

And to end the scene- the camera pans out from her door, up to the night sky, where the stars twinkle and the lion roars.

Wow... very good...
Although I think it would make the movie too long, and I also don't think they will use flashbacks. But it's a very interesting point of view and very good as a fanfic.

Miss Tumnus said:

Wow... very good...
Although I think it would make the movie too long, and I also don't think they will use flashbacks. But it's a very interesting point of view and very good as a fanfic.

Click to expand...

Thank you! Yeah, I like it as a fanfiction- I figure it would go over in length as a movie. I have other ideas that are shorter, but this one began as a fanfic, and it is near and dear to my heart.

I would love love love if they would somehow fit in the scene from the coronation (the one they completely finished!) into one of the next ones! That's one of the major goals of the flashbacks, that and I figure it would take a catalyst like the memory of her family as they once were, as kings and queens, to make her remember Narnia.