DVD : The Golden Compass [2007]

Rating: - Confused At What It Is
The basic problem with all films that Walden Media bring out, post middle-Earth, is they want to capture the same magic by plotting the film around an formula, the same mistake they made with Narnia. Introduce the characters, have a few adventures, and then all get tooled up for a rumble at the end. Northern Lights, or as it is now known The Golden Compass, is forced to adhere to this formula even though the story is completely different. It has more in common with the piece of crap that was Narnia or Star Wars Episode I than it does anything else. A huge mess of great ideas thrown together with some good actors and great special effects. I had read the book and was VERY dissappointed, although had I not read the book I'm unsure whether I'd have had any bloody idea what was going on. Its obviously made for fans of the book as it throws in recognisable characters every five minutes, but then completely alienates them by pulling the story apart and putting it together again in the wrong order. How in the hell they intend to follow on with The Subtle Knife I don't know, as the last half of the book was missing from the film. Great for kids who will all want cuddly Daemons of their own after watching it, but bad for anyone who has an IQ of over 35.

---

Rating: - Too silly for words
OK, I confess that I haven't read the book, so I approach this as a piece of cinema. It is nicely filmed and the visual effects are lush and pretty (even though some of the daemons don't look that realistic some of the time). However, I just couldn't accept the plotline, such as it was. It is, as I said above, too silly for words. Now I know that the books have come under considerable fire from the loony US evangelical community for the atheistic views that Mr. Pullman is said to have built into them and which, they said, he was trying to inculcate into children. Perhaps this explains the dilution of the story from the book into a rather insipid kids' adventure yarn. The one highlight for me was Nicole Kidman's chilling villain. Nothing else.


The comments of some of the other reviewers have persuaded me to read the book, to see what might have been.

---

Rating: - Honey, I Killed The Film.
I feel I should start with the obligatory justification for beginning a review of a film such as this: I am a great fan of the His Dark Materials series. There is much I can say about this film; little that hasn't already been said in previous reviews. My addition is a criticism of the argument that seems to be used to explain away any problems in the film: the dreaded 'it is a children's film'. For example, (and please note while these are arguments that can be, and have been made, they are not direct quotes) 'the script had to include obvious explanations of this fictional world so that the younger audiences could understand it', 'the film had to end on a high note to please the children and thereby appease the film companies', 'the scarier details have been removed because it is a children's film'.

No. The series are not children's books; they were a Young Adult series. The beauty of His Dark Materials is that they were thoughtful, scientific, questioning, philosophical and intelligent pieces of work that were exceedingly well-written. I am not saying that they were gritty, exactly, but in order to create such an authentic exploration of the universe and its possibilities there were some aspects of life that couldn't be - and weren't - cut out. The series may feature a child protagonist, but the reason for this was to explore the loss of innocence; something the film-makers are now trying to avoid affecting their target audience with.

Why then, was the film made to be primarily aimed at the audience that the series explores the corruption of? That is to say, what essentially is the reason for all that is wrong with the film? The answer for that is both easy and predictable: money. There is little doubt in my mind that film company wanted to make the book into a nice family film that children could obsess over, parents could enjoy with their children and would rake in money from lovers of the books (the mistake here was that they presumed support from the latter consumers). The irony is that had they not simplified the plot and script so much, it would have had the potential to be a real work of art - one that may not have been suitable for the younger audiences, but would be a classic that they, and generations after them, would watch when they were older. Instead we are left with a bog-standard children's adventure tale only this time with a bitter aftertaste of wasted potential.

2 stars given for a good cast and expensive special effects; I'm feeling generous.

---

Rating: - Far from golden
Watching the first adaptation of Philip Pullman's excellent trilogy is one part admiration and two parts disappointment. First off, you have to admire the courage of director Chris Weitz, who took in the scope and ambition of these novels, stepped forward from the pack and bravely took the wheel of this vehicle into his hands. Unfortunately, once we were done patting him on the back for that, there's no avoiding the bitter disappointment of realising that our drive has bitten off far more than his ability can chew, and we are being catapulted, arms up and screaming, off of the road.
The truth is that there is so much wrong with this movie that its hard to keep your chin up for it. First off, Ian "if its fantasy I'm compulsory" Mckellen is disgracefully miscast as key character, Iorek Brynison. As Pullman presented him, Iorek is a young, energetic prince that has lost his way, desperately in need of the inadvertent guidance Lyra (our heroine) offers. Mckellen (inevitably) presents Iorek as an aging, disposed king looking to reclaim his long-lost kingdom. This is far enough off the mark to make the character practically unrecognisable to fans of the book (or at least to me) though this of course will not be an issue for those coming to the film without preconceptions.
Secondly, the script is just awful. Hollywood fat-cats only know how several previous rewrites were discarded in favour of this nonsense. Granted, there are a sea of concepts to convey, but so much of the dialogue is descriptive that any attempt to suspend disbelief is broken long before it can gather steam. For example, Lyra bangs her knee and her daemon, Pantalaimon, protests "Careful Lyra, Don't you know that if you get hurt, I hurt too!" Of course she bloody knows! She's twelve years old!! Is this the first time she's experienced any sensory perception whatsoever!!? honestly. This sort of thing could have been done so much more subtly and the film is so rife with similar examples that by the time two hours was through I was raw from it.
Needless to say this has a direct effect on the performances, which despite the talent on show are almost uniformly wooden and poor. The audience in the cinema were made so uncomfortable watching the cast wade through this verbal tripe that my first viewing of the second matrix film was brought to mind. The actors on the screen before you so clearly don't believe in their dialogue or environment that you are left with a brutally clear perception of a series of short set pieces. As the camera fades from each moment you can almost here the director screaming "Cut! Alright lets do it again." In short there is no fluidity at all and no possibility of getting swept along in the performances.
Finally, even the direction manages to strip Pullmans' world of much its grandeur and scope. You get no sense of the majesty, spritualism and influence of the witches (the actually well cast Eva Green is criminally underused as Witch-Queen Serefina Pekkela) and the set piece battles lack any urgency or sense of scale whatsoever. Remember when the orks marched on Helm's deep in the two towers? It was absolutely terrifying. I was crawling up my chair. Contrast that with the battle at the end of the Golden Compass and its easy to see how far this film has fallen from the required mark. The battle here lacks any sense of scale, importance or consequence. Worst of all the frame is so sparsely populated, driven and focussed that we are sadly given the sense that this is more of a mere skirmish, helping Lyra to escape. It looks like a fight in an alpine pub car park. Again, bitterly disappointing.
I won't even get started on the decision to play down the religious aspects or how on earth the producers intend to make this work in the second and third books where this emerges as the overriding drive of the plot. How on earth the death of god and the acsendancy of Metatron can be reinterpreted escapes me entirely. I sense an almighty fudge coming.
Its sad because there is otherwise much here to be admired. Lyra's world is for the briefest of moments through out the film beautifully realised and the animation of the daemons at least is a triumph. There's no doubting the effort. Casting man of the moment Daniel Craig was also a clever decision and hopefully he and Nicole Kidman can combine for something of a success story in the second and third films- assuming they are ever made.
The truth is that this film has been on it way for years, riding a fever pitch of anticipation, and there is no hiding the sadness and disillusionment of the Pullman faithful to see what has become of the first instalment. Forget lord of the rings- think phantom menace. And how sorry I am to say so.

---

Rating: - The Golden Compass
I haven`t seen the film yet, but have read all 3 books in the series. As soon as I started reading I found it was one of those books you couldn`t put down. I hope the film is as good as the book of the film, can anyone give me a run down, not in too much depth, I would like to buy the DVD when it`s released but don`t want to be too disappointed if it doesn`t fit the book. I`ve seen a few trailers but you can`t always tell because they show good bits to boost your appetite.