So I went to see The Golden Compass tonight. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't great either. I thought that it was generally quite well cast, but that when writing the screenplay the screenwriters forgot something fairly important: the book is third person close to Lyra the whole time. The first one, anyway. The second book introduces Will, but we really aren't there yet so never mind. Anyway, the scenes without Lyra, which made the movie third person omniscient, felt awkward to me, espcially seeing as they were made up, not in the book, and therefore assumptions. It also didn't help that characters would say things that sounded very awkward but were said to let the viewer know what was going on. One especially artless piece of dialog required Lyra to cry upon being rescued by the Gyptians: "You're Ma Costa! You're Billy's mum!" as though she was only just meeting the woman when they obviously had known each other for some time. I would have been much easier for her to cry "Ma Costa!" in delight and have someone say something later about her being Billy's mum. At any rate, there were several instances of this that just stuck out horribly.
Another problem I had was the fleeting introduction of characters and their sudden attachment to Lyra, and the almost cartoony vilification of the Magisterium (evidently it is a technical ecclesiastical term in the Roman Catholic Church referring to the teaching authority of the church). I mean, that was certainly there in the books, but not to this point of ludicrousness. It actually all reminded me a lot of Ivan's The Grand Inquisitor in Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, but to the extreme. The "church people" in the movie were barely under the pretense that they were doing it for the good of humanity. In order to make it more digestible, they changed the feeling of the Magisterium to that of a "big brother" a la Orwell's 1984, or to Stalinist Soviet Union. It felt like a bit of a cop out to me, actually.
Along with this, I won't spoil anything, but they completely cut the last bit of the book out. I suppose they wanted to end on a happy note or something, but without the ending Lord Asriel's character was flat as cardboard. I also think that the ending in the book is a lot more intriguing and would be much more apt to have me come back for more.
Okay, that was the ugly. Now for the good. I thought the girl who played Lyra was pretty much spot on. They have a great, very cool character in Lyra and they didn't let it go to waste. Lyra was well developed, as was Mrs. Coulter and Iorek. Everyone else basically gets their five minutes. Anyway, I'm supposed to be talking about the good, so I'll say that Iorek was completely kick ass. He made me want to have an armored bear of my very own. He's voiced by Ian McKellen so I was getting flashes of Gandalf all over the place. There was one bit where Lyra was crossing a skinny ice bridge and he was behind her and I kept expecting him to go "Fly you fool!" Man, that would have been cool. The fight scenes were also really cool and even portions caused Christine to duck behind her coat though there was literally no blood. She's just a pansy. It was oddly beautiful actually, because when the person died, their daemon would vaporize in a puff of glittering gold. Kelly and I both agreed that Lyra had adorable outfits throughout. I coveted a little knitted bonnet hat she wore in Norway, just in a different color.
Anyway, it was a bit clunky, but overall fairly entertaining. I'm just really picky and it really just didn't blow me away like I'd hoped (but didn't actually think) that it would. I think I was better able to understand and see depth in things because I'd read the books, too. I think they could have done a less ham fisted and artless exploration of the humanistic ideas that are inherent in the books. It also occurs to me that the people who are so frightened of this movie and the books and who wish to censor it are acting exactly how Pullman accuses the Church of acting in His Dark Materials. Like I've said before, if you can't read Pullman without giving up your faith, then maybe you didn't have any to begin with. It's not about how Christianity is evil. It's about the corruption that is bound to occur when flawed humans are given something as powerful, strange, and beautiful as faith.
Interesting article on it all HERE.
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