The Golden Compass: Saw It

Went to the late show Saturday. Observations in no particular order:

• It's good. It's not Lord of the Rings good, but it's good. The cinematography and sets are remarkable. The CGI is the best I've ever seen.
• Dakota Blue Richards and Nicole Kidman are perfect, and I mean perfect. Kidman does a fantastic job of tapping into the passion of the ideologue—which is to say, she's evil, but she believes what she's saying.
• The daemons are as good as expected. Talking animals can be a bit sketchy, but these are wholly believable.
• The filmmakers had to condense too much information, so the story seems hurried and frenetic at times. Readers of the book will follow easily. Outsiders will feel like they're watching an outline of a good story. Important details are left out, including important reasons why we should give a shit about particular plot points.
• Not sure which of the religious aspects were "watered down." You'd have to be an idiot to not get the critique. Rosin's piece, linked in the previous post, said that the Magisterium was portrayed as a totalitarian government. Not exactly. Totalitarian governments don't toss around words like heresy. It's possible that an adult could be so religiously illiterate that he wouldn't recognize the vocabulary and the costumes, but he'd have to be an utter dolt not to understand that these are churchmen.
• If this was supposed to be a movie for kids, and if elements were toned down for the kids, why does the ice bear fight include dismemberment? Can't you see little Johnny marvelling as the cgi bears fight it out, only to look horrified when the lower jaw of one goes flying? I was drunk enough that I laughed at the thought during the movie. Kids' movie, my ass.
• We took a bottle of wine into the theater with us. I recommend it. Yellow Tail Reserve Shiraz. 90 points from Wine Spectator. Don't be fooled by the "yellow tail" name. This is good stuff. I only wish I'd left it in the bag to feel more like a wino.
• It's worth seeing. Let me know what you think if you've seen it.

Comments

[bobstevens]

To be honest this movie didn't interest me at all until I noticed that Eva Green was in it. I have a feeling she's not worth the ticket price here, though.

Not saying it's bad, just not up my alley. I think I could watch Baron Munchausen and then read a Dawkins book and get the gist of this.

[greg]

Bob,

Eva Green plays Serafina Pekkala, the queen of the witches. She does a decent job with the very few minutes she has on screen. That was one of my complaints about the film: excellent and/or beautiful actors and not enough screen time for each.

[M.Corley]

I like yellow tail, but I'm a beer snob, not a wine snob.

[cheek]

I thought the casting was outstanding, and I agree with you about the toning down of the religious aspects being way overblown. What did you think about them leaving the unhappy ending for the next film? I'm betting it never gets made.

[Dallas Tim]

Cheek,

Hollywood hates Christianity... it WILL get made.

[Joe]

Tim,

How does hollywood hate Christianity? Seriously, is it posted on a website somewhere? I am getting sick of people saying that crap because they make a movie based on a BOOK, and because the author is an athiest, hollywood hates Christianity.

Hollywood loves whatever will make it money and that includes Christianity.

[greg]

Yeah,

They hate the church so much they went ahead with the Passion of the Christ snuff film, and then followed it up with a sequel that tanked: the Nativity Story. Oooh, all that hatred.

[Leighton]

I vaguely recall that the Narnia books had some Christian themes, and yet the first movie did well enough that they're making the second one.

I still haven't seen the first one. One of my roommates brought home Narnia chapstick, and I decided to boycott the damn thing until I find out that someone I know owns it on DVD for me to borrow. Freaking capitalist machine.

[Dallas Tim]

I stand corrected. Hollywood loves money. They will pander to anyone who will shell out a buck. Other than that, most of them would rather just relegate all the "Jesus" stuff to the "nice idea but realistically nonsense" category.

[Dallas Tim]

BTW,

I could not believe the suck factor that was "The Nativity Story."

Luke records "A Heavenly host" announcing Christ's birth, but there was only one angel movie. Maybe they meant "host" like Merv Griffin... "Well, I'd like to welcome Joseph and Mary this evening. She's pregnant and he swears it not his..."

[cheek]

Does it seem to anyone else like there's a good comedy sketch somewhere in the idea of innerrantists being pissed off at a bad film adaptation of some Bible story a la Tolkein and now Pullman fans? It wouldn't be mainstream enough for SNL or anything, but perhaps somewhere on the net?

[emergentninja]

i watched it last night at 8pm, w/ 3 other friends, and we were the only people in the theater. the biggest church in town is boycotting this movie and preaching against it from the pulpit, so i don't know if the low attendance was due to that. honestly, i felt a little disappointed. i was expecting something at least as grand as LOTR, and i was left wanting. however, my interest was sparked enough to want to read the books and get lost in the story. i did feel that the implicit (most of the time, even explicit) critique is both valid and poignant. there seems to be an abundance of examples throughout history showing the Church to be a suppressor of our "god-given" free will, even to the point of killing those who are deemed heretics. it seems the church/christians would be far better off if they would view this as a critique/warning instead of ignorantly boycotting it. i give the actors and A and the movie as a whole a B-. i wish the studio would had let the movie's lenght be comprable to any of the LOTR movies, it seemed somewhat rushed. i hope that part ii will take the time to let the story properly unfold.

[sepherim]

My wife, my son, and his cousin and I went to see it Tuesday afternoon. When we walked in, we tripled the size of the audience and no one came in after we did. I'm not sure about the box office numbers, but it doesn't seem to be packing them in. After seeing it, I can really add nothing new to the analysis that has already been posted, except that I didn't think the ending to the bear fight was any more gruesome than lots of things on the high dollar childrens(?) channels. I'm not sure I would have realized he knocked his lower jaw off if I hadn't read the book. The movie reminded me of the introduction to an old Paul, and Mary recording announced as the perfect children song.

[Mike in PA]

Your blog inspired me to read the book. Bought it Tuesday, read it by 6am this morning. The book is of the best fiction I have ever read. I'm loving the second book just as much.

Saw the movie this afternoon. My wife thoroughly enjoyed it and is looking forward to reading the book, now. Me, well... I thought the movie pretty much sucked. The eye candy was great, and I agree with your assessment of the actors. I thought the bear fight scene was anti-climactic.

Because I just finished the book this morning, I was also upset of the rearranging of the scenes. As far as the whole Magisterium/Church thing, well, they added more to the movie than was in the book. They kept putting the church as the enemy, but that isn't accurate at all in the first book or the first half of the second book. The church is only mentioned like five times in the TGC, and except for the explanation of original sin/dust, there is no more than a paragraph (maybe two) in the book per reference. In the movie, you could tell the magisterium are the "bad guys". In the book, it seemed like Asriel was just as evil as the Mrs. Coulter and the Church. Granted the last scene that shows Asriel's evilness is deleted from the movie.

I know book to movies lose a lot in translation, but it almost seems that they did want to bash the church - at least more than Pullman did in the book.

I also thought the casting for Asriel was horrible. He didn't have the aura or demeanor of the character in the book.

The eye candy made this movie better than the script was, so I would give it a 6 out of 10. The book, 10/10.

Peace.

[cheek]

You are right about the moral ambiguity of all the adult characters (even the bears and witches who are hopelessly violent and amorally detached respectively) in the first book. For those of us who read the series some time ago, it's hard to remember how slowly the anti-religion--I'm convinced the books cannot be fairly construed as anti-G-d regardless of the opinion of the author--theme developed over the course of the narrative.

I actually thought Daniel Craig did a decent job with limited screen time and character raped of depth by production company squeamishness. The character who disappointed me was Eva Green as Serrafina Pekala. Nevermind that my wife and I emphasized the second syllable instead of the first when we read them aloud to one another, I thought she looked the part but failed to capture the palpable gravity of the witch in the book.