Charn

There were a lot of things that I was like, just, oh, that is, that is probably more vivid almost than I imagined it.

Like I'm thinking about the, especially the scenes that I assume were in the land of Charn.

That just looked not just different than I was imagining it, but more vivid, more, not more colorful, but just.

maybe saturated yeah there was something about that those scenes in the trailer that i'm like that looks interesting like i'm excited to visually see what is created in that world yeah i think the other place that i thought and i'm just guessing at the locations a little bit but I thought that, you know, the magician's nephew is, the magician in the story is this guy, Uncle Andrew.

But-

You see, and maybe I would've seen that if, and maybe everybody else reading it did the same thing, if I had not been reading all of that going, "We're in Charn.

We're in Charn."

No, we're in [laughs] Charn.

No, for real, my whole ...

All of my margins are, "This is The Magician's Nephew.

It's so good.

Like, the Wood between the Worlds, um, Charn, like, all these locations, you know, the portals, the rings, Uncle Andrew.

Like, there's so much mystique and, uh, beauty and subtlety about it, you know, versus Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, which is like, you know, it's an adventure, right? Um, and when I heard they were making a Magician's Nephew m- movie, I was like, like that...

Who w- who I would pick to direct that kind of movie would probably...

[upbeat music]

What's this? Figurine.

Is this Charn? This is Charn.

That's Charn.

Right.

And we are seeing her here as the last queen of the dying, totally dead world of Charn.

It's a huge role.

It is.

Um, and so she thought, "Right, uh, this is the journey." So we've got purposely make our world bleak and bombed out, and they've had to rebuild the sets 'cause it d- it's not like that anymore [laughs] here, you know.

Um, so they've gone for that, and then the world of Narnia and Charn, 'cause we mustn't forget Charn, is the contrast, the place you escape to.

Uh, so one of my favorite bits in the article is she refers to the Wood between the Worlds as being based on the London Underground map.

Right.

She's, she's, she's admitting to this or enjoying the idea of this layer, which will annoy like crazy the ones who want... 'Cause we've never seen a Magician's Nephew, so we've not seen the late Victorian period from the book with Queen Jadis riding a chariot like some kind of Babylonian queen, which is what Lewis had in mind.

She's, she's moving it to this context.

And just to bring into the design idea, Charn is like a Barbarella, '60s...

It's like pinba- like a broken pinball machine is what it said.

It's such a striking image.

And one of these pools takes Digory and Polly to a world called Charn.

Now, Charn is not some fun, magical playground.

No, it is not.

It is a dead, frozen city sitting under a dying red sun.

The Deplorable Word.

Yeah.

It was a single spell that ended every single biological life in Charn except her own, and she used it simply so she wouldn't lose a civil war and her throne.

The creation of the world.

Digory and Polly witness the dead city of Charn and the awakening of the White Witch.

With a $200 million budget.

Let's unpack the massive industry shift here.

Modern blockbusters often rely on cheap irony, undercutting magical moments with a sarcastic joke.

Right.

Gerwig has to balance the strange dead city of Charn and a comic but dangerous Uncle Andrew without resorting to cheap irony.

She has to demand absolute sincerity.

Let's move on.

This is clearly in Charn.

There's Polly and Diggory having found Jadis in Charn.

It's obviously the ruins of churn.

Her outfit is very Buck Rogers to me.