A wardrobe is probably the last place you’d expect to find a way into another world. Then again, Narnia has never been particularly interested in playing by normal rules.
Step through the wrong door and suddenly you’re standing in a snow-covered forest, a faun is offering you tea, an army of talking animals is preparing for war, and somewhere in the distance, a lion who may or may not be the most important creature in the entire universe is waiting for you. That’s the fun of Narnia. It can feel like a children’s story, a full-blown fantasy epic, and a slightly unhinged fever dream within the same movie.
The films also have a surprisingly small footprint. There are only three released Narnia movies so far, covering just a fraction of C.S. Lewis’ sprawling world. With Greta Gerwig now bringing The Magician’s Nephew to the screen, it’s a good time to go back through the wardrobe and see how this whole adventure started.
So, if you’re wondering where to begin, here are the Narnia movies in order.
All Narnia Movies in Order of Release
Three movies equal three very different ways to get yourself into Narnia-related trouble. One starts with a wardrobe and a suspiciously polite faun, another returns to a kingdom that has basically forgotten its own history, and the last one decides that apparently the edge of the world is a perfectly reasonable place to take children on vacation.
The fun of watching them in order is seeing Narnia get progressively bigger without ever losing its fairy-tale weirdness. And while not every movie landed equally well, each has something that makes it worth revisiting.
1. The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005)
Watch it on Amazon Prime Video
| Release Year | Runtime | Director | IMDb Rating |
| 2005 | 2h 20m | Andrew Adamson | 6.9/10 |
The first Narnia movie understood that you don’t need to explain everything immediately. Sometimes it’s more fun to let a kid walk through a wardrobe and discover that the impossible is just there.
Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy arrive in Narnia almost by accident, and the film lets us explore it alongside them. You can’t easily forget the snowy forest, Mr. Tumnus, the lamppost, the White Witch, the enormous battles and, of course, Aslan. It’s a very specific cocktail of cozy storybook fantasy, and something is definitely wrong here.
The White Witch is still one of the film’s best cards. Tilda Swinton plays her less like a conventional fantasy villain and more like someone who has already decided the entire room belongs to her. The result is a movie that can be wonderfully charming one moment and surprisingly grim the next.
It also has the advantage of being the cleanest entry point into Narnia. You don’t need a glossary, a family tree, or three hours of homework. You open the wardrobe and go.
2. The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (2008)
Watch it on Amazon Prime Video
| Release Year | Runtime | Director | IMDb Rating |
| 2008 | 2h 30m | Andrew Adamson | 6.5/10 |
When the Pevensies return, Narnia has changed dramatically. Their old kingdom is practically ancient history, humans have taken control, and Prince Caspian is trying to stop the whole thing from collapsing under the rule of his uncle Miraz.
This is where the movies become noticeably less “magical children stumble into fantasy land,” and more “fantasy kingdom desperately needs therapy”. The world has history now.
People have been fighting, kingdoms have fallen, and the Pevensies aren’t simply discovering Narnia anymore. They’re being asked to decide what they mean to it. It is also the movie for anyone who thought the first film could have used considerably more sword fighting.
3. The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (2010)
Watch it on Amazon Prime Video
| Release Year | Runtime | Director | IMDb Rating |
| 2010 | 1h 53m | Michael Apted | 6.3/10 |
Lucy and Edmund return with their cousin Eustace, who has the kind of personality that makes you understand why nobody invited him on the trip in the first place. They join Caspian aboard the Dawn Treader, heading across an increasingly strange sea in search of missing lords and whatever else happens to be lurking beyond the map.
This is easily the strangest-looking chapter of the trilogy. Dragons, merfolk, mysterious islands, lost warriors, and a voyage toward the edge of the world make it feel less like a traditional fantasy war movie and more like someone kept adding increasingly bizarre chapters to a very expensive bedtime story.
Eustace is arguably the secret weapon. He’s irritating in exactly the way the story needs him to be, and his arc gives the movie some personality beyond another round of “save Narnia from evil.”
Dawn Treader isn’t generally considered the strongest of the three, but it makes Narnia feel enormous. The first movie gives you a kingdom. This one makes you wonder how much of this world is still hiding beyond the horizon.
What’s Next for Narnia?
The wardrobe isn’t staying closed forever. Greta Gerwig is bringing Narnia back to the big screen with Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew, and this is more interesting than simply getting another remake of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
The film goes all the way back to the creation of Narnia, following Digory and Polly as they stumble between worlds and witness the beginnings of the magical kingdom. It also brings Emma Mackey into the world as Jadis, meaning we’re getting a very different look at the woman who eventually becomes the White Witch.
Then there’s Gerwig herself. Netflix has handed her one of the most recognizable fantasy worlds ever written, and she’s approaching a story that is considerably weirder than its famous wardrobe-selling premise suggests. If she can capture the book’s sense of cosmic wonder without sanding off all its eccentricities, this could be a very different Narnia from the one audiences saw in the 2000s.
Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew is scheduled for February 12, 2027, in theaters, followed by its Netflix release on April 2, 2027.
Writer. Dreamer. Journalist (maybe?). Anime lover (definitely). I turn curiosity into stories and everyday life into a narrative worth reading.
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