Dakota did well as Lyra, though it's clear the character's been toned down a bit for the screen.
Kidman was great as Mrs. Coulter, though some of my favorite Coulter book scenes were gone.
The Ice Bear scenes are all rockin'. In fact, Iorek's fight with the King provoked applause.
Wonderful design sense and production values in the film.
Freddie Highmore is cute as Pan's voice.
Sam Elliott was great as Lee Scoresby.
The major elements of the book are all present...though a tad simplified. Which brings me to...
Things that did not work:
Making the attempt to murder Lord Asriel something Fra Pavel did instead of the Master of Jordan College was a mistake, I think. One great thing about the first book is that no one comes out looking like a purely evil villain or purely altruistic good guy. In the early and subsequent scenes the Magisterium's been made almost cartoonish, mustache-twirling villainous, the scholars all pure and honest.
I love Ian McKellen. But he really wasn't a good choice for Iorek. He sounds so old and tired.
The Daemons sometimes appeared to inhabit a different film than the humans did. The CGI FX didn't seem as polished as that done for the Ice Bears.
Far too many "Dust Montages" and cutaways to the Magisterium to basically tell us things we already know. It slowed down the film.
The Witches are barely in the film! Despite their prominence in the book -and- the advertisements, they hardly turn up. I was disappointed.
And the biggest disappointment of all: The film doesn't have an ending. It just ends. Even my mother, who's never read the book could tell we'd been cheated. There's no true climax, no true closure. The attempt to sum everything up was unsatisfactory and (I think) will ultimately backfire far more than the controversial, depressing elements of the True Ending.
Good, entertaining parts throughout the film. I don't regret seeing it. But...I have serious doubts that it'll make it to the sequel. While I've made clear on numerous occasions that I don't really like the direction Pullman took the series in the sequels, I do feel fans of the series deserve to not be left hanging.
posted
I should also add that the teaser for the Inkheart film was attached. Doesn't seem to be online yet. It looked okay.
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posted
Looking over the critic reviews, the big problem seems to be that while everyone loves the Ice Bears, if you haven't read the book almost all the stuff about Dust, the Magisterium, Lord Asriel, the Witches, etc doesn't make much sense.
Watching it again, they're sort of right. I realize I had used my knowledge of the book to fill in some considerable gaps left by the simplification of the movie.
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posted
I haven't read the book in nine years, so I didn't remember what was cut so much as remembering the elements of the book. (including the real ending and the bad part as I walked out of the theater.) I can see why they stopped there, although Lyra going into "another world" is very endingish. But people in my theater actually groaned out loud when the realized the movie was stopping there.
I went with two friends who never read the books and one who claims to remember less than I do. They didn't seem to complain about it not making sense, although I thought I would be pretty confused. They also liked the casting, but the like to see LOTR actors, that gets them excited. Ah well.
Posts: 1757 | Registered: Oct 2004
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posted
I'm seriously ticked off about them not ending the movie. I mean, it pulls away into this grand, appropriately-cinematic view--and that's when they should have been jerked back into reality by visiting Lord Asriel, being betrayed, and crossing through the Aurora Borealis.
Swapping the order of the panserbjorne showdown and the Bolvangar climax was completely unnecessary. I mean, if they had been in the correct order, we would have had a lot more sympathy and support for Iorek when it came to him and his deathmatch. But as it was, it just felt like it was just there--no emotional attachment, really. No weight to Iorek's minispeech.
And why the devil did they change Iofur Raknison to Ragnor What's-his-face?
I suppose that finding Billy Costa as the daemonless kid was actually a pretty good move, but together with other little twists to the plot, the movie just felt rushed. We were out of the theater less than two hours before we had entered, which is simply not okay for an epic like this. Stories like this cannot (and, as my experience shows me, don't) get told in one hour and forty-five minutes. They just don't.
Loved the concept of the witches--seeing them ride their bows was absolutely amazing. But eye candy doesn't make an epic, any more than plot continuity makes a blockbuster. The two have to work together, not in tandem, as this film seemed to.
Altogether, the film was really quite disappointing. It was good until it started to end--which it didn't--and the only real highlight of the film was seeing Raknison's (that IS his name) lower jaw being smacked clean off. At least that part was true to the book.
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posted
Maybe they felt Iorek and Iofur sounded too similar? Kind of weak, it's not like any of us confused Saruman and Sauron, or other similarly named characters, though they weren't both big white bears in other iterations. Meh.
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posted
That was a pretty bland corporatized product right there.
Basically everybody in the movie shows up quick to have their obligate character exposition time then just fly away (in the case of the witches, all too literally) to be invisible until they're important to the plot again. Then once everyone's delivered their five minute abstract on who they are in the book, they say "Ok, now let's fly to the next part of the book" and then you get a expositional transition shot and then you're there so that anotehr character can give their five minute abstract on who they are in the book. And then some fighting happens to fill out the requisite summer fantasy blockbuster requirements aaaaaand we're done.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: And then some fighting happens to fill out the requisite summer fantasy blockbuster requirements aaaaaand we're done.
Do you live on the southern hemisphere? Just curious. Posts: 6689 | Registered: Jan 2005
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posted
One reviewer pointed out the "time passes" montages weren't handled very well. In the book, you can well understand why Lyra and Pan were so fed up with Mrs. Coulter's elegant but highly protected life.
In the movie, it seems like they just got there.
Man, do I miss the scene where Mrs. Coulter gently, sweetly coaxes the kids over to the General Oblation Board. So much more chilling than "We're EVIL, EVIL! Mwa-ha-ha-HA!"
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posted
One part that I found annoying was when, just a few cutscenes away from their arriving at Mrs. Coulter's mansion, Pantalaimon complains that she imposes too many "rules"--without any clear idea as to what these rules are. I mean, all previous scenes were of Mrs. Coulter doting on Lyra, and Lyra seemed to be having a pretty good time of it, too.
And the Iorek/Iofur problem is not a problem. Just call Iofur by his last name, and Iorek by his first name, and everyone will be happy. I mean, do "Iorek" and "Raknison" sound anything alike?
Also, they didn't call them panserbjorne enough throughout the film--something that really added to the atmosphere of the book, but which was completely missing in the movie. The "Ice Bears", as they were called, were simply there, nothing more.
I was really disappointed with this film. It stands fairly well on its own merits, but it could have been and would have been so much better had they simply followed the book more accurately.
Posts: 292 | Registered: Jun 2006
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quote:Do you live on the southern hemisphere? Just curious.
It's the joke. I'm saying the thing was such a paint-by-numbers product it's like they decided to make every blockbuster a summer blockbuster.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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From making a great book or series of books like His Dark Materials into a movie, there are two ways to go that won't bring complete hatred and scorn.
First, you can stretch it out over the course of 12 hours (i.e. LOTR or the long original Solaris) and really do it right...
...or you can reduce it down while keeping as close to the original style as possible (ones that come to mind are Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and Scanner Darkly). I can handle the film losing a lot of the elements of the book or source material as long as what is put on screen does the work justice.
Golden Compass did neither. It was way to fast, and although the characters were cute and well-dressed, there was no reason for me to care about them. Well, besides the fact that I know them all from the books. It's along the lines of the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe: snappy looking, action packed, but really and unfortunately shallow. But not quite as bad as I, Robot, which hardly even paid tribute to its source material.
I agree with 777. The movie could have been SO much better. Maybe spend more time with Lyra and the Golden Compass...make it mean more than just a Get Out of Jail Free card. Make the bad guys not stupid, and not so fragile. The last battle had so many people dying so easily...I just don't get it. I think my mind actually shut off at that point as to not completely ruin the film for me.
And when Mrs. Coulter slapped her monkey (*giggles*), she didn't react as if she had just slapped her soul-creature...thing...daemon, that's the word. It was just flat and unconvincing.
There are very few movies that I don't like. I can be very forgiving, as long as there is enough to make it worth while (I actually enjoy the 2nd and 3rd Matrix films because they weren't awful). But there were too many violations and omissions in the Golden Compass for me to ignore and forgive.
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posted
I agree with the above post. I watched it with friends who hadn't read the books beforehand, and they actually enjoyed it quite a bit. It's not shallow--on the other hand, it may be too deep for the director to implement effectively.
It's just that from a reader's perspective--a (mostly) objective, informed perspective--the story of the film seems too stumbled and crippled in order to make viable sense.
And I'm of the opinion that they should have done a LOTR-quality sort of job on this trilogy. With such a hefty, complex plotline, premise, and ultimate conclusion, there's little else you can do, and still make it successful.
I want my three hour epic fantasy film, and I want it now!
(Of course, if they want to make The Subtle Knife into a complete film, it will have to be at least three hours long, judging by where they finished with this one.)
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posted
I don't see how Subtle Knife or Amber Spyglass will be comprehensible without either making them three hours long or editing it to the point where they might as well call them anything they want.
posted
Right, sorry. I didn't mean necessarily shallow. I think it's just that the could have been so much more, and the depth of the stories of which they are based on were so deep, anything that falls short comes off as shallow.
quote: Thanks, Peter Jackson. Thanks a lot. Just look at what you've spawned.
I know, I know, you're an insanely talented filmmaker and you make three-hour fantasy epics look easy. I can't fault you for that. But just look at the mess you've caused. Now everyone thinks they can do it.
That's how I feel. The bar was set so high with LOTR that I expect that from every other epic-book-to-movie that comes out. It could have been so much better, and now it looks like we'll never get another version than this one. That makes me sad.
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posted
How many epic fantasy films can you really have? IMO after the first couple of these type films all the rest seem repetitive and cliche. IMHO.
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I thought it was extremely disjointed, rushed from plot point to plot point without much sense, the characters made crazy assumptions that didn't make much sense without the kind of background that was went into in the book, and until the last five minutes or so, it didn't even look like the first part of a trilogy.
It could have ended there, I feel like they just tossed some crap on the end to make a sequel possible. I think they should have gone ahead and done the real ending to set up the next movie, that was stupid.
Maybe Peter Jackson did ruin it for everyone by making LOTR come to life so well, but regardless I think they could have done a MUCH better job with this, and I doubt I'll see Subtle Knife.
I will say that the animation for the bear fight was stunning. I very much enjoyed the fight. And Ian McKellen as Iorek wasn't 100% awful, but I still thought it was a poor choice. My brother loved when he approached the bridge, he turned to whisper in my ear "Oh come on, he didn't learn from the first time?"
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: I will say that the animation for the bear fight was stunning. I very much enjoyed the fight. And Ian McKellen as Iorek wasn't 100% awful, but I still thought it was a poor choice. My brother loved when he approached the bridge, he turned to whisper in my ear "Oh come on, he didn't learn from the first time?"
The incredibly geeky part of me was giggling during this point in the movie, but I didn't share it with anyone.
Maybe I should meet your brother. Posts: 1711 | Registered: Jun 2004
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posted
I found the film, let's call it, "enjoyable". I was frankly expecting worse.
I think the problem with this film was, above all, uninventive adaptation. The writer (also the director), was simply not remotely practiced (talented?) enough for converting such a complicated epic story. Take a look at his credits: www.imdb.com. Among them is listed the writing of a few 'less-successful' films and tv shows. His producering is even less inspiring. How for the love of little green apples did he get attached to a dark, epic, complicated work of children's/adults's fantasy like The Golden Compass.
We saw his failings throughout the movie, in the form of very weak exposition (such as that horrible exchange between children at the beginning of the film), the characters speaking in cliches ("Oh Iorek, I thought I'd lost you!"), the scenes stealing derivatively from other fantasy and Sci Fi film (the flying mountain scene was entirely LOTR, Lyra was told who her parents were in a Lyra-I-Am-Your-Mother way), and the photography tending to the deliberately "epic", rather than the legitimately expansive.
On top of this, the story telling was just plain weak, discarding the book's refreshing or interesting scenes and plot in lieu of commonly used, clunky scene pieces that instead of meshing together with a natural fluidity, were strung together in a totally solid way, like a string of blocks lined up one against the other, with no reason or thought behind them.
These are all rookie mistakes, mistakes that should never make it into the first draft of a script. I am sure Christ Weitz is good at a certain kind of movie- I very much like Antz- but this was all wrong for his experience and apparantly for his capabilities... and it's very sad because I'm seeing a lot of this in the fantasy films being made, and if there's no one to make them I'd rather they weren't made. The Dark is Rising is an obvious example of this. The last Harry Potter was similarly pulling on cliches in the place of what is actually written in the book.
These problems are introduced to what is a solid, wonderful story in most cases by these writers or directors (or production companies in some cases?) in an apparent attempt to:
1) Make the story easier to understand. Often this has the reverse effect, because the story becomes so mangled and so heavy with spoken exposition (which is much more difficult to follow than implicit exposition for an audience.
2) Make the story more palatable for the (imagined) audience. Complicated relationships are simplified, often causing characters to act in ways that require further explanation, or contradict earlier statements. Complicated scenes become straightforward ones, often resulting in the kind of cliche we see all through The Golden Compass. We also see the introduction of new relationships, changes in age, changes in the way the world/magic works because it's deemed as too difficult to understand in its present form.
3) Make the story shorter. By the time the plot has been arranged into little blocks and stuffed full of spoken exposition to explain the changes made, everyone involved realises how heavy and long the plot is and requires shortening the film by cutting bits out instead of boiling the film down and making it more concentrated (which would require a total script re-write). For example, instead of showing in the scenes that Mrs. Coulter was already in with Lyra that she genuinely cares for her daughter, we had an expository scene involving a baffling interaction with her monkey that took up a whole two or three minutes.
The final thing I'm seeing in these films is a lack of imagination. The people who seem to be involved in these films often seem to have a track record that suggests they have little familiarity with the fantasy or science fiction genre. They are being asked to adapt and/or film a story for which, in the adaptation process is going to require the use of imagination applied to the newly emerged scenes, and often even the ones that remain. The result is often rather disappointingly mundane. I found this particularly strong with the latest Harry Potter (dir. David Yates), in which the scenes were there but they were lacking the organic wonder that made Alfonso Cuarón's The Prisoner of Azkaban so rich with wonder and story. Alfonso Cuarón made the world his own: he inserted the giant pendulum clock into Hogwarts, not because it was required by the book because it was a giant symbol of time that completely dominated the scenes. Even though we weren't introduced to the time turner until it became useful, we were already familiar with the fact that time was important because of the huge freaking pendulum that was until then just part of the set. In addition, this clock became part of the believable landscape of Hogwarts. Cuarón was familiar with magic, familiar with the creation of complex worlds that are not our own- he had both fantasy and history and children's film under his belt. Is that any surprise? Yates' experience was with social drama, and so he plays up the social drama of the story, replacing what he knows with what is in the story. It does somewhat work, because Harry Potter is in some aspects a social drama, but unfortunately it undermines the wonder and the magic of the parts of the story that require a 'familiarity' with magic- with magic storytelling, and magic world-building: it's quite different from the real world and allows a lot more freedom.
I think Peter Jackson understood fantasy world building, and demonstrated that with the films he had made before LOTR, despite their diminutive size. He was willing to go within the books of LOTR and imagine with that giant framework. I think Cuoron was willing/able/experienced enough to do the same thing. These are both directors but it applies also to writers. Adaptation of fantasy requires an understanding of world creation and fantasy and a willingness/ability to go beyond that in order to compress a complex story, and retain the same wonder and complexity- as well as the plot of the film- in the finished article: it can be done.
I don't think Production Companies, or however makes the big decision about director/writers, realise that good filmmaking doesn't often seem to translate to good world building or fantasy story telling. They just pick a good director who maybe has worked with young people before. Fair enough. But I don't think it's enough, not really. Not to create another LOTR.
I don't think we should say, "oh well LOTR was an anomaly. We should just accept that it set the bar too high." No. We should expect the same level of imagination, of skill, of adaptive ability every time, because there are directors and writers out there with those skills.
And that is my rant.
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quote:it's not like any of us confused Saruman and Sauron
That actually confused lots of people.
In the book or the movie?
I'll admit being slightly confused for a short while in the book by Iofur and Iorek, but they could have kept the name still and worked around it.
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