Can You Imagine If You Had To Fit 2 Dæmons As Well As Two People In A Dorm Room?
So I saw "The Golden Compass".
Short story, the movie wavered between a 2.5 and a 3 out of 5, if we're going by my standard star rating system of old (well, TECHNICALLY I used Gai's, but that was for reviewing Naruto-based media. Which "The Golden Compass" is decidedly not). That's basically exceedingly mediocre to competent, which kinda translates to "Well, it could've been worse".
Long story? Well, let's just start off by saying that, if you're a fan of the books, you're gonna be pretty disappointed. That's not to say that the film is entirely a piece of ass; in fact, there are quite a few good things to say about it. But there are also more than quite a few bad things to say about it, and those have the funny tendency to overwhelm the former. I'm just going to go on a tangent about the movie instead of separating the two, though, so bear with me here.
Hoo boy, where to begin? Well, ok, I'll start off by saying that the casting and acting were probably the film's strongest areas. Everybody seemed to have a decent, if not excellent, grasp of their character, and performed them with gusto. Especially Nicole Kidman as Mrs. Coulter. She played a very chilling and convincing villain, and I applaud her for that. Daniel Craig as Lord Asriel is also noteworthy, although his most defining moment in the entire book was cut from the movie (more on that particular can of worms below), so the Asriel we got was mostly in short spurts. Ian McKellen was a wonderful Iorek, although I do wish the original voice actor hadn't been pushed aside for the purposes of familiarity. And, in what seems to be the continuation of a certifiable cinematic tradition these days, we had none other than Christopher Lee pop up as well (although he never interacted with McKellen)! Boy, does he play a villain well, especially with his mere minutes of screentime that he actually got. My favorite part, though, was definitely that of Lee Scoresby. Whoever played him absolutely nailed the whole cowboy thing; hell, even his Dæmon was well-acted! I've always been a fan of Mr. Scoresby, and it did a fan proud to see him represented so faithfully, it really did. The rest of the cast deserve honorable mentions, although no others really stood out to me all that much.
As far as the disappointments go, I guess the most general one was how rushed the movie was. I mean, yeah, condensing's gonna happen when a book is made into a movie, but The Golden Compass (hereafter referred to as TGC) fell quite a bit short of being a movie that one could consider "too long" (ie, 3 hours or more). In fact, it barely passes the 100-minute mark! Look, I understand that shorter movies often equate to being more palatable to the general public, but 2.5 hours is more than reasonable for a movie adapted from a fairly lengthy and detail-rich book. The beginning was what felt the most rushed, as far as I'm concerned. So much seemed like it was glossed over - which, to be completely honest, surprises me. After all, the movie's official website was incredibly rich with details concerning the parallel world that the series takes place in. Clearly, though, it was foolish of me to believe this meant that such information would be presented in the final film. An issue parallel to this one is the integration of information: the movie actually makes use of a short blurb at its outset to (very) briefly explain the world in which the movie takes place. Why it was felt this was necessary is beyond me; it sorta goes back to the whole "show, don't tell" mantra of high school writing classes. Use the story to tell me what a Dæmon is; let the story reveal the mysterious substance of Dust. The use of an introductory blurb in this case is done in a very jarring, inelegant fashion that basically summarizes a backstory that could be (and, in many cases, actually IS) revealed in the story proper. The reason why this blurb is a full-blown issue and not just some mere inconvenience is largely because it seems to have put the writer and director in the mindset of "if it's in the blurb, they know it". Dæmons are never adequately explained in the movie, and the Gyptians (as a people) get practically no introduction - after all, they're briefly mentioned in the little blurb! But that wasn't the only method of condensing. Several key scenes aren't so much cut as they are trimmed down to the bare essentials necessary to keep the plot rolling forward. The two key examples here are Mrs. Coulter's party (which actually IS cut, but the key events of it - Mrs. Coulter being otherwise occupied so Lyra can explore her room and slip out - still occur) and the Gyptian gathering (which was far less grand, and seemed to be simply a meeting of people in a small room rather than a massive congregation of the many tribes of a nomadic water people). And then, of course, there's the aforementioned glossing: the Gobblers and everything around them are barely explained and have far less emphasis put on them, at least until later. This includes Roger's kidnapping; Lyra seems to only casually notice his absence right before she departs Oxford with Mrs. Coulter, as opposed to freaking right out about THE SUDDEN DISAPPEARANCE OF HER BEST FRIEND IN THE MIDST OF A SERIES OF SIMILAR CHILD KIDNAPPINGS like she does in the book.
Unfortunately, condensing of the plot was far from the movie's biggest flaw. This dubious honor belongs solely to the fact that two very sizeable chunks of the story were actually switched in terms of their order of occurance.
Specifically, Lyra goes to Svalbard before she goes to Bolvanger.
Now, this will mean little to nothing to those of you who haven't read the book, so let me explain here: in the novel, Lyra is captured in a surprise attack on her traveling party and brought to Bolvanger. After a series of very important events, including a particularly revealing conversation with Mrs. Coulter, she eventually stages an escape plan for all other children being held there (which include her friend Roger). After the arrival of her former traveling party and a battle sequence, Lyra escapes in Lee Scoresby's balloon and heads off to liberate Lord Asriel, who is being held prison at the Armored Bear stronghold in Svalbard after being arrested. On their way, the balloon is attacked, and Lyra is separated from the others...only to be found by bears and brought to Svalbard. Once there, she charms Iofur Raknisson the king (whom she knows to be an usurper of Iorek, her bear companion), and leads him into combat against the oncoming Iorek. Iofur is killed in probably my favorite scene in the entire book (seriously, there is nothing more badass than armored polar bears beating the absolute SHIT out of one another), Iorek claims his throne, and Lyra is lead to Asriel, who has used his influence to obtain the effects necessary to continue his research despite being under arrest and imprisoned. Long story short, he kills Roger and uses the death to open a rift that will allow him to travel through parallel universes.
Whew.
Now, like I said, the movie has the events at Bolvanger switched with those at Svalbard. Lyra is captured during an attack on her party, but is brought forth as a gift to the Bear King (who is inexplicably renamed Ragnar Sturlussen in the movie). Similar events go down: the Party comes to her rescue, Iorek fights and kills Iof- er, "Ragnar" in a scene that does the book's fight PERFECT justice, and Lyra sets out for Bolvangar. She loses Iorek on the way, and is taken in at Bolvangar, where the same events occur (albeit condensed. In addition, Lyra somehow figures out that Lord Asriel is her father completely on her own, despite having no reasonable means to make such a connection). After the Battle Royale, Lyra leaves on Scoresby's balloon with Roger and Iorek to go find Asriel, who managed to bribe his captors and has set up shop at some undertermined place in the Arctic.
And then the movie ends.
Seriously. Right there.
This is precisely the reason why the rearranging of events is so heinous: it gives the director/writer a way out of the book's conclusive events, and ends the movie in the most sickeningly happiest way possible. There is no excuse for this, although Weitz certainly tries. What I think happened was that Weitz felt Lyra shouldn't achieve her goal of rescuing Roger until the movie's conclusion, that going on any longer would just seem pointless to the audiences. So, he compromised: he simply made it so that the movie ends shortly after she achieves this goal without sacrificing the whole THIRD of the novel that occurs afterwards. Thing is, the switch is sort of awkward, and makes the entire Svalbard excursion seem remarkably pointless. Since Asriel couldn't be imprisoned there, as that would complicate things beyond repair, it simply seems like Svalbard is little more than an excuse for an awesome bear fight, and therefore a shallow pandering to the action-oriented crowd. As for why the rightful ending was cut, Weitz suggests that it was because he did not want viewers to get the idea that Lyra's walk through the Aurora and into the alternate dimension as her ascending into Heaven. That, of course, is a complete crock of SHIT. Nobody with any reasonable level of intelligence could possibly infer such a thing, especially since not a single piece of dialog would even remotely suggest it. In fact, Asriel makes his goal of traveling alternate dimensions quite clear in the film, and Lyra following him through would leave one to assume that she did precisely that: wander into another dimension! No, this was probably done as a way of giving the movie a happy ending, as the somewhat twisted ending of the novel could ostensibly have resulted in even more backlash against the film, adding fuel to a suddenly roaring fire.
Speaking of backlash, the controversy that this film has stirred up is immense, and damn well near legendary. It's so weird, because I don't remember getting a whole lot of religious stuff out of the novels when I read them as a kid, especially from the first book. But the movie's very existence is causing a stir nevertheless, and while I'm not going to get into that extensively, I figure I should at least mention the religious aspects of the movie. First off, it's all handled rather neatly. The Magisterium, the villainous Church of the novels' world, is only ever referred to as "The Magisterium", and while the veil may be thin for some (Mrs. Coulter explains to Lyra why Dust is bad at one point in such a way that makes her story's connection to the idea of the Original Sin exceedingly obvious), I figure it's handled with decent tact. Except when the Magisterium is actively villified beyond what the book does: in the film, it is a very obviously villainous member of the Magisterium that poisons Asriel's Tokay drink, and not the Master of Jordan College.
Anyways, for the sake of thoroughness, I feel I should make mention of the effects in the film. For the most part, these are incredible. The Dæmons are animated beautifully, although sometimes there's a bit TOO much of an emphasis put on them, and it feels like they're there just for the sake of having flashy effects (although those scenes are probably more a result of the scripting than anything else). The artistic design of the film is top-notch, and translates well onto the screen. It really isn't much these days to say that a movie has convincing CGI, so I'll skip that whole bit...but I do want to reiterate that the bear fight kicked major ass. Seriously, I can't stress that enough. As mentioned earlier, this battle was definitely among my favorite points in the novel, and its film counterpart more than lived up to that stigma. There is really nothing quite like watching two badass polar bears in full armor laying an absolute smackdown against one another. Even the fight's climax was left intact, complete with jaw-swatting goodness. I once said that I wouldn't care what else was done to the movie, so long as I got my bear fight, and while it didn't entirely remove the bitter taste in my mouth after I left the theatre, it did prevent me from feeling entirely ripped off. That being said, there was a certain effect used whenever Lyra consulted the Alethiometer that bothered me a lot. Basically, after asking a question, the scene would break into what I can only describe as a "Dust vision" - that is, it seemed like Lyra mentally saw the answer to her question. I hated this. Just showing Lyra interpret the symbols after much thought would have been far more preferable. But hey, at least the sequences were flashy and pretty.
So would I recommend the film? Y'know, if you feel like you absolutely need to see it, either as a fan of the book or just because you have your heart set on it, I'm not going to talk you out of it. Fans of the book should probably see it at least once, although I do caution those not familiar with the novels, as the movie tends to be something of a muddled mess for those coming new into the series. As always, I recommend the book over the movie; it truly is a very enjoyable read.
And even after all of that, I still want me a high-quality prop replica of the Alethiometer. I think that would be damn skippy.
Short story, the movie wavered between a 2.5 and a 3 out of 5, if we're going by my standard star rating system of old (well, TECHNICALLY I used Gai's, but that was for reviewing Naruto-based media. Which "The Golden Compass" is decidedly not). That's basically exceedingly mediocre to competent, which kinda translates to "Well, it could've been worse".
Long story? Well, let's just start off by saying that, if you're a fan of the books, you're gonna be pretty disappointed. That's not to say that the film is entirely a piece of ass; in fact, there are quite a few good things to say about it. But there are also more than quite a few bad things to say about it, and those have the funny tendency to overwhelm the former. I'm just going to go on a tangent about the movie instead of separating the two, though, so bear with me here.
Hoo boy, where to begin? Well, ok, I'll start off by saying that the casting and acting were probably the film's strongest areas. Everybody seemed to have a decent, if not excellent, grasp of their character, and performed them with gusto. Especially Nicole Kidman as Mrs. Coulter. She played a very chilling and convincing villain, and I applaud her for that. Daniel Craig as Lord Asriel is also noteworthy, although his most defining moment in the entire book was cut from the movie (more on that particular can of worms below), so the Asriel we got was mostly in short spurts. Ian McKellen was a wonderful Iorek, although I do wish the original voice actor hadn't been pushed aside for the purposes of familiarity. And, in what seems to be the continuation of a certifiable cinematic tradition these days, we had none other than Christopher Lee pop up as well (although he never interacted with McKellen)! Boy, does he play a villain well, especially with his mere minutes of screentime that he actually got. My favorite part, though, was definitely that of Lee Scoresby. Whoever played him absolutely nailed the whole cowboy thing; hell, even his Dæmon was well-acted! I've always been a fan of Mr. Scoresby, and it did a fan proud to see him represented so faithfully, it really did. The rest of the cast deserve honorable mentions, although no others really stood out to me all that much.
As far as the disappointments go, I guess the most general one was how rushed the movie was. I mean, yeah, condensing's gonna happen when a book is made into a movie, but The Golden Compass (hereafter referred to as TGC) fell quite a bit short of being a movie that one could consider "too long" (ie, 3 hours or more). In fact, it barely passes the 100-minute mark! Look, I understand that shorter movies often equate to being more palatable to the general public, but 2.5 hours is more than reasonable for a movie adapted from a fairly lengthy and detail-rich book. The beginning was what felt the most rushed, as far as I'm concerned. So much seemed like it was glossed over - which, to be completely honest, surprises me. After all, the movie's official website was incredibly rich with details concerning the parallel world that the series takes place in. Clearly, though, it was foolish of me to believe this meant that such information would be presented in the final film. An issue parallel to this one is the integration of information: the movie actually makes use of a short blurb at its outset to (very) briefly explain the world in which the movie takes place. Why it was felt this was necessary is beyond me; it sorta goes back to the whole "show, don't tell" mantra of high school writing classes. Use the story to tell me what a Dæmon is; let the story reveal the mysterious substance of Dust. The use of an introductory blurb in this case is done in a very jarring, inelegant fashion that basically summarizes a backstory that could be (and, in many cases, actually IS) revealed in the story proper. The reason why this blurb is a full-blown issue and not just some mere inconvenience is largely because it seems to have put the writer and director in the mindset of "if it's in the blurb, they know it". Dæmons are never adequately explained in the movie, and the Gyptians (as a people) get practically no introduction - after all, they're briefly mentioned in the little blurb! But that wasn't the only method of condensing. Several key scenes aren't so much cut as they are trimmed down to the bare essentials necessary to keep the plot rolling forward. The two key examples here are Mrs. Coulter's party (which actually IS cut, but the key events of it - Mrs. Coulter being otherwise occupied so Lyra can explore her room and slip out - still occur) and the Gyptian gathering (which was far less grand, and seemed to be simply a meeting of people in a small room rather than a massive congregation of the many tribes of a nomadic water people). And then, of course, there's the aforementioned glossing: the Gobblers and everything around them are barely explained and have far less emphasis put on them, at least until later. This includes Roger's kidnapping; Lyra seems to only casually notice his absence right before she departs Oxford with Mrs. Coulter, as opposed to freaking right out about THE SUDDEN DISAPPEARANCE OF HER BEST FRIEND IN THE MIDST OF A SERIES OF SIMILAR CHILD KIDNAPPINGS like she does in the book.
Unfortunately, condensing of the plot was far from the movie's biggest flaw. This dubious honor belongs solely to the fact that two very sizeable chunks of the story were actually switched in terms of their order of occurance.
Specifically, Lyra goes to Svalbard before she goes to Bolvanger.
Now, this will mean little to nothing to those of you who haven't read the book, so let me explain here: in the novel, Lyra is captured in a surprise attack on her traveling party and brought to Bolvanger. After a series of very important events, including a particularly revealing conversation with Mrs. Coulter, she eventually stages an escape plan for all other children being held there (which include her friend Roger). After the arrival of her former traveling party and a battle sequence, Lyra escapes in Lee Scoresby's balloon and heads off to liberate Lord Asriel, who is being held prison at the Armored Bear stronghold in Svalbard after being arrested. On their way, the balloon is attacked, and Lyra is separated from the others...only to be found by bears and brought to Svalbard. Once there, she charms Iofur Raknisson the king (whom she knows to be an usurper of Iorek, her bear companion), and leads him into combat against the oncoming Iorek. Iofur is killed in probably my favorite scene in the entire book (seriously, there is nothing more badass than armored polar bears beating the absolute SHIT out of one another), Iorek claims his throne, and Lyra is lead to Asriel, who has used his influence to obtain the effects necessary to continue his research despite being under arrest and imprisoned. Long story short, he kills Roger and uses the death to open a rift that will allow him to travel through parallel universes.
Whew.
Now, like I said, the movie has the events at Bolvanger switched with those at Svalbard. Lyra is captured during an attack on her party, but is brought forth as a gift to the Bear King (who is inexplicably renamed Ragnar Sturlussen in the movie). Similar events go down: the Party comes to her rescue, Iorek fights and kills Iof- er, "Ragnar" in a scene that does the book's fight PERFECT justice, and Lyra sets out for Bolvangar. She loses Iorek on the way, and is taken in at Bolvangar, where the same events occur (albeit condensed. In addition, Lyra somehow figures out that Lord Asriel is her father completely on her own, despite having no reasonable means to make such a connection). After the Battle Royale, Lyra leaves on Scoresby's balloon with Roger and Iorek to go find Asriel, who managed to bribe his captors and has set up shop at some undertermined place in the Arctic.
And then the movie ends.
Seriously. Right there.
This is precisely the reason why the rearranging of events is so heinous: it gives the director/writer a way out of the book's conclusive events, and ends the movie in the most sickeningly happiest way possible. There is no excuse for this, although Weitz certainly tries. What I think happened was that Weitz felt Lyra shouldn't achieve her goal of rescuing Roger until the movie's conclusion, that going on any longer would just seem pointless to the audiences. So, he compromised: he simply made it so that the movie ends shortly after she achieves this goal without sacrificing the whole THIRD of the novel that occurs afterwards. Thing is, the switch is sort of awkward, and makes the entire Svalbard excursion seem remarkably pointless. Since Asriel couldn't be imprisoned there, as that would complicate things beyond repair, it simply seems like Svalbard is little more than an excuse for an awesome bear fight, and therefore a shallow pandering to the action-oriented crowd. As for why the rightful ending was cut, Weitz suggests that it was because he did not want viewers to get the idea that Lyra's walk through the Aurora and into the alternate dimension as her ascending into Heaven. That, of course, is a complete crock of SHIT. Nobody with any reasonable level of intelligence could possibly infer such a thing, especially since not a single piece of dialog would even remotely suggest it. In fact, Asriel makes his goal of traveling alternate dimensions quite clear in the film, and Lyra following him through would leave one to assume that she did precisely that: wander into another dimension! No, this was probably done as a way of giving the movie a happy ending, as the somewhat twisted ending of the novel could ostensibly have resulted in even more backlash against the film, adding fuel to a suddenly roaring fire.
Speaking of backlash, the controversy that this film has stirred up is immense, and damn well near legendary. It's so weird, because I don't remember getting a whole lot of religious stuff out of the novels when I read them as a kid, especially from the first book. But the movie's very existence is causing a stir nevertheless, and while I'm not going to get into that extensively, I figure I should at least mention the religious aspects of the movie. First off, it's all handled rather neatly. The Magisterium, the villainous Church of the novels' world, is only ever referred to as "The Magisterium", and while the veil may be thin for some (Mrs. Coulter explains to Lyra why Dust is bad at one point in such a way that makes her story's connection to the idea of the Original Sin exceedingly obvious), I figure it's handled with decent tact. Except when the Magisterium is actively villified beyond what the book does: in the film, it is a very obviously villainous member of the Magisterium that poisons Asriel's Tokay drink, and not the Master of Jordan College.
Anyways, for the sake of thoroughness, I feel I should make mention of the effects in the film. For the most part, these are incredible. The Dæmons are animated beautifully, although sometimes there's a bit TOO much of an emphasis put on them, and it feels like they're there just for the sake of having flashy effects (although those scenes are probably more a result of the scripting than anything else). The artistic design of the film is top-notch, and translates well onto the screen. It really isn't much these days to say that a movie has convincing CGI, so I'll skip that whole bit...but I do want to reiterate that the bear fight kicked major ass. Seriously, I can't stress that enough. As mentioned earlier, this battle was definitely among my favorite points in the novel, and its film counterpart more than lived up to that stigma. There is really nothing quite like watching two badass polar bears in full armor laying an absolute smackdown against one another. Even the fight's climax was left intact, complete with jaw-swatting goodness. I once said that I wouldn't care what else was done to the movie, so long as I got my bear fight, and while it didn't entirely remove the bitter taste in my mouth after I left the theatre, it did prevent me from feeling entirely ripped off. That being said, there was a certain effect used whenever Lyra consulted the Alethiometer that bothered me a lot. Basically, after asking a question, the scene would break into what I can only describe as a "Dust vision" - that is, it seemed like Lyra mentally saw the answer to her question. I hated this. Just showing Lyra interpret the symbols after much thought would have been far more preferable. But hey, at least the sequences were flashy and pretty.
So would I recommend the film? Y'know, if you feel like you absolutely need to see it, either as a fan of the book or just because you have your heart set on it, I'm not going to talk you out of it. Fans of the book should probably see it at least once, although I do caution those not familiar with the novels, as the movie tends to be something of a muddled mess for those coming new into the series. As always, I recommend the book over the movie; it truly is a very enjoyable read.
And even after all of that, I still want me a high-quality prop replica of the Alethiometer. I think that would be damn skippy.