The bear fight was awesome.
I read all the books and was looking forward to cutting out of work early to catch the matinée.
I enjoyed it, though it did feel rushed at times. The plot I think had to be rushed or the movie would have been LOTR-long.
Dakota Blue Williams was great, Kidman was terrifying - which I mean in a good way.
I saw it last night and enjoyed it a lot but I had the feeling that there was a lot left out for the sake of making a faster paced movie.
I intend to pick up the books soon and read them to see if I’m right.
I liked it, too. #2 son loved it–and has never read the books. We are going to read it together, starting tonight.
Yes, it was rushed. Yes there were weaknesses, but overall, it could have been so much worse and some of it was quite good.
Casting was excellent (except for Roger–that kid cannot act). Avoiding the whole religion thing sort of eviscerates the whole trilogy, but how they handled it does work. Kidman (whom I don’t care for) was excellent–scary, creepy and evil, but she also brought a more human side to this character. I loved the daemons although I pictured the golden monkey a bit differently (is that what they really look like? I thought their heads were smaller).
Dust was very obscure and not at all well explained, despite the expository done by Kidman. I actually thought they showed Lyra’s figuring out of the althiometer better than the book (IMS, she intuits how to use it). Intuition just does not film.
And there is (IMO) a great deal of the problem: these are different mediums and as such they demand different treatment.
Couple of complaints: Lyra’s costumes started out fine and ended fine, but what was that blue thing she wore for awhile? Was she supposed to look like Disney’s Wendy from Peter Pan? Also she runs away from the Magesterium sans althiometer. And then, like those hubcaps in that Steve McQueen movie, it regenerates miraculously!
There was one part (the second time Lyra and Iorek head out together) where I was just waiting for the Coke theme to play…
And the whole scene with Sam Elliot and his shoehorning himself into her adventure was ridiculous
But I forgive the film all of this for a few reasons. First, it did create a world that drew me in. Second, the acting by the majority of the cast was excellent and added to the creditability. And third, while I knew nothing of the desire of the target audience for a more upbeat ending, I can see why they ended it where they did. Afterall, in The Subtle Knife Lyra meets up with whatever the boy’s name is in book 2, and then fades from the plot. This way, her adventure is more fleshed out and the transition between the two films is solidified to a greater extent. I do hope they don’t screw up the casting for what’shisname…
Hmm…that’s not how I remember it.Pan grabs it from the monkey as they go out the window.
What I did have a problem with was how the bear appeared in the midst of the confrontation between the Tartars and the children and nobody noticed. Plus, he went all the way back to get his armor when time was of the essence???
Arizona
how did Pan keep hold of it? We see them running down the alley etc–Pan is holding nothing, carrying nothing. Nor is Lyra
I also wondered about Iorek at that point. But, what the hell, it’s a movie.
#2 son is enjoying the book so far (I’m reading aloud to him).
Werll, what did you think of the film? 
People who saw the film and liked it: 9
Thought it was OK: 2
Didn’t like it:2
Have not seen it but think it sucks:3. :rolleyes:
I have not yet seen it, but plan to. I liked the 1st book (daemons and armored polar bears! 
), but thought the next two were boring, trite and too damn obvious. I am keeping my mind open about the film until I see it.
I swear I am going to go all “the Critic” on every film I have not seen, until SDMB dudes see the damn thing for themselves before they decide “It Stinks!”. 
OK, rant over.
I do appreciate those who* have* seen a film and what to share what they liked and didn’t like.
My SO and I saw it today.
Never read the books and, to be honest, had never even heard of the movie until about two weeks ago.
We liked it.
Nowhere near LOTR, and not as immediately captivating as the first Harry Potter film, but as a nice fantasy film with some cools special effects, it was very entertaining.
We will go see the next part, when it comes out (any word if it is already in the works?)
Put us in the “good film, worth seeing” category.
Got back from the 10 pm show tonite (er, Saturday), and we all liked it. All 6 of us had read the books, and thought it was a pretty good adaptation.
I, personally, thought that the voiceover beginning really helped the story a lot. That was poorly explained in the book, and movies really don’t have as much time to engage the audience as a book can take.
Everyone noticed the tech of Lyra’s world was quite different from what was described in the book. General agreement was that it was an improvement, more visually interesting (important for a movie).
Loved the casting… except Gandalf the Panzerbjorn. His voice is just too damn distinct, and jolted me out of the moment every time he spoke.
The others were nonplussed that the Magisterium was being run by… Caligula, Saruman, and some random guy. Plus, their lacky with the bad comb-over. Derek Jacoby was good, as always, but Christopher Lee was really, really underused. And he’ll probably get annoyed at New Line for cutting his death scene out. ( 
)
Ok, so what is anbaric light? (#2 son and I are reading the book aloud now).
The movie had a Jules Verne feel to me–I liked it.
Anabaric is just HDM term for electric. Both terms come from a root word meaning amber…
Our whole family of atheists saw the Sunday matinee this a.m. in lieu of church. Seemed appropriate!
I was not a huge fan of the books - the first was the only one I liked at all. But I’ll support any mass media by an avowed nonbeliever!
Thought it was pretty much on a par with most such films like Narnia and (gasp) TLOTR. Reminded me of how little i like Nicole Kidman. Was there a reason her eyes were so bloodshot throughout the film? I wanted me more witches! Is there any actor who plays more similar characters than Sam Elliot?
Couldn’t have been more than 20 folks in the theater, but it was Sunday a.m. and we had had a bit of an ice storm the day before.
My husband and I saw it today. I had read the book years ago, and he hadn’t read it. Both of us enjoyed it, though we thought it was a little rushed. And I had thought that the movie ended in an odd spot, but after all of this time I couldn’t be sure where book one had left off and book two picked up.
I had a hard time divorcing my memory of the book from the movie and wondered if the sheer horror of what was happening to the children had been conveyed properly, but he assured me that it had come across.
I hope that The Subtle Knife gets made - it was my favorite book of the trilogy by far.
I went on Friday with a friend, and really enjoyed most of the movie (including a couple of excited squeaks when they showed parts of Oxford I knew, Nicole Kidman doing her evil bit, Iorek’s first appearance in armor etc…), but, my god, the ending just ruined it for me.
I couldn’t believe they actually “sailed” off into the fricking sunset, with Roger alive, no less. How much more saccharine can you get?
I remember loving the original ending because,
as a kid, I hadn’t really had an inkling that the story was much bigger than Lyra retrieving Roger, and then suddenly her father turns around and murders him and she leaves the world entirely.
This felt cheap, as if
the filmmakers didn’t have the guts to actually
kill him, rather settling for a “safe”, kid-friendly ending so as not to aggravate the religious right (teh children!) more than they already would.
Bah, Humbug.
Saw it, primarily to see the bits of Oxford.
Was not impressed. I think it’s a fantastic world, but this movie didn’t do it.
ThirdCultureKid–Upthread someone says that ending was chosen deliberately (due to a target audience), but also that Roger’s fate etc will kick off the second movie. I think that will work well.
I read the books a while ago and enjoyed the movie. My friends and I laughed out loud multiple times (like when they tried to make a galloping polar bear look graceful).
And then … it ended. That was pretty lame.
eleanorigby, I do understand, from their point of view, why they changed in, but from my understanding of the “flow” of the trilogy, it just felt… wrong. I can’t really explain it, other than that I felt the pacing in the books worked much better precisely because
Roger bites the dust and Lyra leaves this world.
That whole sequence, I felt, opened the book from what was essentially a self-contained story (Roger gets kidnapped, Lyra has to go to the rescue) to the wider, deeper, philosophical narrative Pullman introduces in the latter two books.
I have to admit, it did ruin my enjoyment of the movie, but as always YMMV.
I’d still recommend it to my friends though, because the majority of the movie was done much better than my low expectations had prompted me to believe they could pull off.
I realize that spoilers to the movie should probably be fair game by this point. Could you maybe use tags for things that didn’t happen in this movie, but are going to happen in a sequel?
RogueGF and I saw this Friday night. Both of us liked it well enough. We put it above last year’s Narnia movie. We haven’t read the book(s).
As soon as the movie ended my nine-year old said “The book was better.”
And it was. By a lot.
I’ve read it twice yet I was still confused by the movie. They changed just about everything. From the beginning where the Master doesn’t try to kill Asriel to the ending that wasn’t. What is in there is badly out of order from the novel, thereby destroying the flow of the story and the whole thing is beyond rushed.
The decision to take on such a grand and controversial trilogy is laudable, but the result actually seems really timid. They didn’t want an upsetting ending so cut it. They didn’t want to challenge the audience with a long film so they crammed everything together and rushed through the whole story. There are no quiet moments in the film. Lrya even talks while she is running. They couldn’t even take the time to have her duck into an alley, compose herself and then talk to Pan.
Other changes just seem arbitrary. The Magisterium is trying to destroy all the alethemoters? They are trying to control every world? Huh?
The brilliant playwright Tom Stoppard volunteered a script for this film. I can only imagine what that film might have been like. Instead we got the American Pie director’s take on it which was pretty much a slash and burn, though not all of it was his fault.
Why couldn’t they have allowed the story to unfold on the screen the way it did in the book? LOTR let the hobbits stay in the Shire for a good long time. The films succeeded anyway. Why couldn’t we have seen the same with Jordan?
And why did they seem to have undercut The Subtle Knife by simply making Mrs. Coulter aware of what the witches say about Lyra thereby removing the need to include the scenes in which she goes to horrifying lengths to find that out.
The visuals were decent, however, and I thought the cast was spot-on. The books are a hundred times better though.
Oh, and that was really weak the way they had that whole Darth Vader moment with Mrs. Coulter.