I just watched "The Golden Compass" for the first time

I just watched The Golden Compasslast night. Lots of CGI special effects and I loved the airship and ground car technology. It was pretty clear from the first that organized religion was in for a whipping which made the film braver and possibly more interesting than most kid’s fare, but overall the whole picture was all dressed up with no place to go. Despite a fascinating front end “world of magic” setting the story meandered all over the place and the young female actresses character (for whatever reason) never really engaged me in the story.

I got the sense you really needed to have read the book to appreciate the story as the good guy - bad guy portrayals were (even for a kid’s movie) very clunky and un-nuanced black and white scenarios. The script (IMO) was just not that artfully written.

Beyond all this, and this is just me, one of the main points of the story that in this world each person’s “soul” is a autonomous magical animal avatar or “demon” that walks or rides alongside them was … well… kind of distractingly tiresome as the main character’s “demon” always had the “cute” cranked up to 11.

Anyway, kids may enjoy it but it’s kind of a (for me) a “meh” movie despite all the CGI flash and interesting context. In looking at the wiki entry for the film they mention “script problems” and I’d have to agree this was pretty evident.

My ability to enjoy films is quite broad and this film is included in that. I quite enjoyed it as a form of no-need-to-do-any-thinking eye-candy.

But I’ve read the books and the books are definitely make-you-think. Given the quality of the books, and a bit of bravery, this film could have been so much better - actually thought-provoking. And that would open the way for the second two of the trilogy to be made…

From the get-go I thought the actress playing Lyra was too old. Because I assumed they’d make all three I felt like this actress would be too old to be a convincing 13 year old by the time the third film was made.

I’m sure that was intended, there’s no way a sex scene with a 13 year old would have ever made it on screen. This is also why Daenerys from the Song of Fire and Ice has been aged a few years.

Unless my memory fails me, the ‘sex scene’ happened in private. It was merely implied. That sort of thing is, I imagine, very easy to do in film.
She didn’t have to be 13. Just younger than 18. [Edit: Which Is the age I assumed the actress would be by the time Amber Spyglass would be made]. The way Lyra acted and talked was NOT the way of an 18 year old (or even a 15 or 16 year old) so I would find that distracting from an 18 year old actress playing a 13 year old girl.

The book was equally dull, IMO. As an agnostic I had no problem with an anti-organized religion theme, but make it interesting.

I think it was the outright winner of the ‘Britain’s Best Book’ thing that happened a while ago. If not the winner then it was either in the top 3 or the top 10.
(ETA: When I say ‘it’. I mean the ‘His Dark Materials’ trilogy)

I don’t think even an implied sex scene with a 13yo would fly in anything short of an R rated movie

Alright, so they leave it out. It’s not as if they’ve set a precedent for faithfulness to the books already.

ETA: It’s been a while since I read the books. Is it (the loss of her virginity) integral to the plot?

Yeah pretty much. Its been a while for me but the way i remember it was that it was basically the whole point.

It wouldn’t surprise me. When I read books I tend to miss the overall point and get stuck into enjoying the details.

Or if I don’t ‘miss’ it I will often have difficulty getting it.
ETA: I don’t know the US rating system so I don’t know what R is. I assume it’s similar to PG.

I think we live in times where a PG movie can contain a very subtle implication of such things and get away with it. I could be wrong. I just think film makers can get away with more these days. We live in less prudish times.

Assuming, of course, that you consider “The Amber Spyglass” to have a point.

I personally perfer to believe that “The Subtle Knife” was a great book that desperatly needed a sequel, but sadly will never have one(because Pullman gave up writing, or died in a car crash, just after that). That’s how bad I thought Pullman dropped the ball with “The Amber Spyglass”.

Hell, it wasn’t even the incredible preachiness the last book indulges in that did it. It was just how poorly written it seemed in general. Huge battle between heaven and hell? Sounds Cool. Too bad I can’t seem to penetrate his writing to find it.

I haven’t read the books, but the movie needed to be less faithful to the book than it was. Saying, “Oh, okay, the book is a setup to one big battle, so what’s absolutely necessary is to include all of the allies that she makes through the book.” But of course she makes like 20 allies, at the same time as the movie has to introduce the world itself, get the main character started on the quest, introduce the villain, and show the asylum place in the North.

But so this makes it so that each of the 20 allies she makes, she meets them, they look at her and go, “Oh my! I’ve never met you before, but I love you and swear undying fealty to you even though you’re just a little girl!” And the little girl says, “Ah well isn’t that lovely of you.” And then goes on her way to meet another soon-to-be-ally who will again fall instantly in love with her and swear undying fealty.

They would have done better to slash out most of the characters and just accepted that they would have to work a bit at adapting the future books to put lines into the remaining characters mouths.

The movie was OK, however, now in any color illustrated dictionary, there has to be a pic of Nicole Kidman in one of her outfits next to the word “slinky”. :eek: Damn.

[Supressing urge to make a too-easy Roman Polanski crack.]

Not that it would’ve happened but a scene like that would likely push the movie into NC17 territory today.

Whoa, I am positive I read an interview where Pullman said this it not the case.

Let me look for it.

It was pretty disappointing overall. Captured some good imagery from the book, some superb castings in Nicole K and the girl who played Lyra (IMO), some outright laughable - Dame Ian Mackellen as Iorek? Fuck off. The film as a whole seemed a bit laboured with a dodgy script. Good effort I suppose at a difficult book to film.

I also remember thinking the polar bear cgi was really poor. Not sure if I could put my finger on what was wrong with it, but it seemed like a disney animation in the middle of a film.

The bears had dead eyes with almost no expression.

I saw the movie for the first time on TV a couple of months ago. I haven’t read the books either. Now, I enjoy fantasy books and movies and climactic battles can be a lot of fun. But in the final battle in this one, we a have a grand melee featuring Gyptians, Kulaks, an armored polar bear, a Texan in a hot-air balloon, a wild assortment of animal daemons, and who-knows-what-all, when suddenly a bunch of flying Finnish witches with bows and arrows arrive on the scene to join in the fray. It was so incongruous, I just burst out laughing.

Fantasies like The Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia work, I think, because the creatures are for the most part from the same mythic context. The author may throw in a few of his own inventions, but they are of kinds that consistent with the rest. When you’ve got talking polar bears, nineteenth-century anachronisms like hot-air balloons, and supernatural entities all mixing it up, the suspension of disbelief becomes that much harder.

I found the movie interesting, but having to sort out the hodgepodge of exotic characters, plus accept the whole daemon premise, was a bit distracting.

I can’t find the interview with Pullman about Lyra and Will sleeping together. Anyway, I’m not so certain that was the case.

By the way, was anyone else disappointed at the dramatically different ending the movie had? They cut the entire sequence that reveals…a lot about certain characters.

No *way *would a PG film show a 13 year old having sex. That would take it to a hard R or Unrated, if not NC17.

The ratings go:
G (general audiences)
PG (parental guidance suggested)
PG-13 (may be inappropriate for kids under 13)
R (Restricted. Those under 17 must have an accompanying guardian 21+)
NC-17 (No one 17 & under admitted.)
NR (Not rated. Usually used for foreign & independent films.)