The Golden Compass (semi spoilers)
Hey, I was pleasantly surprised by The Golden Compass after all the negative reviews...
Overall, it was a lot like the 1st Harry Potter movie. If you've read the book you'll probably like it, if you haven't you may be confused/overwhelmed. Also if you've read the book and you can't stand book-movie adaptations ever obviously you won't like it.
Here's my review (no major spoilers, but if you want to avoid hearing anything about the movie you can avoid clicking).
Good things:
Casting and Acting were wonderful (probably due to the great acting, I found most characters more likable/real in the film than in Pullman's prose.)
Changes from the book were usually either 1) not noticed or 2) welcome changes (eg. it was really eye-opening to see some characters/scenes visually rather than from the flawed narrator perspective of Lyra).
Concerns about loss of the core themes / religious elements were overblown
Daemons were generally well done, Panzerbjorne were awesome.
Bad things:
The direction was subpar/uninspired.
There's too much exposition explaining who certain groups of people are. They do this constantly in the book, so I'm not sure how they could have done it better...
A few weird CG things
The music/scoring was at times really bad. Honestly, whenever I noticed music I was like "what is this crap" or "this is totally the wrong feel for this scene". And, mostly, I didn't notice it at all which is just sad... there should be some memorable theme...
Love to hear what anyone else has to say after they see it.
For your entertainment:
http://www.conservapedia.com/The_Golden_Compass
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Golden_Compass_%28film%29
Overall, it was a lot like the 1st Harry Potter movie. If you've read the book you'll probably like it, if you haven't you may be confused/overwhelmed. Also if you've read the book and you can't stand book-movie adaptations ever obviously you won't like it.
Here's my review (no major spoilers, but if you want to avoid hearing anything about the movie you can avoid clicking).
Good things:
Casting and Acting were wonderful (probably due to the great acting, I found most characters more likable/real in the film than in Pullman's prose.)
Changes from the book were usually either 1) not noticed or 2) welcome changes (eg. it was really eye-opening to see some characters/scenes visually rather than from the flawed narrator perspective of Lyra).
Concerns about loss of the core themes / religious elements were overblown
Daemons were generally well done, Panzerbjorne were awesome.
Bad things:
The direction was subpar/uninspired.
There's too much exposition explaining who certain groups of people are. They do this constantly in the book, so I'm not sure how they could have done it better...
A few weird CG things
The music/scoring was at times really bad. Honestly, whenever I noticed music I was like "what is this crap" or "this is totally the wrong feel for this scene". And, mostly, I didn't notice it at all which is just sad... there should be some memorable theme...
Love to hear what anyone else has to say after they see it.
For your entertainment:
http://www.conservapedia.com/The_Golden_Compass
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Golden_Compass_%28film%29