Movies We've Just Watched discussion
The Golden Compass
date
newest »

message 1:
by
Nicole
(new)
Jan 02, 2008 07:22AM

reply
|
flag

definitely finish the series if you can. it gets much more interesting as you go.

I haven't read the books but have been meaning to for several years. Now they are really on my to-do list.

The movie was beautiful, well-cast, and very well-acted, but I really wish they'd left in the dark, nasty side of the story. It would have given it much more punch and power.
I agree with The Discriminating Fangirl--I couldn't believe what they left out at the end of the movie. But I should have seen it coming because the rest of the movie was pretty PG. I loved how dark the books were and it was unfortunate that that element was left out of the movie. But I understand why. If the movie had been faithful to the book, its subsequent rating would have excluded children from seeing the movie. That leaves the adults, but I don't think the movie was marketed to adults. The book was adapted for the screen with a specific audience in mind (children) so they had to leave out the dark stuff.
That was my biggest beef with the movie. Instead of doing a faithful adaptation of the book, the movie makers buckled under pressure to make a "vanilla" movie. They were afraid of the controversy that developed around the movie. A week before the movie came out, I received an e-mail forward warning me not to see the movie because it tells kids not to believe in God. Which is total crap. I wanted a ballsy movie, but instead I got a neutered one. It will be interesting to see if they make the other two books into movies, and how they will handle those. They were far darker than the first one.
On another note, Nicole Kidman was an inspired choice as Ms. Coulter. I couldn't look away every time she was on screen.
That was my biggest beef with the movie. Instead of doing a faithful adaptation of the book, the movie makers buckled under pressure to make a "vanilla" movie. They were afraid of the controversy that developed around the movie. A week before the movie came out, I received an e-mail forward warning me not to see the movie because it tells kids not to believe in God. Which is total crap. I wanted a ballsy movie, but instead I got a neutered one. It will be interesting to see if they make the other two books into movies, and how they will handle those. They were far darker than the first one.
On another note, Nicole Kidman was an inspired choice as Ms. Coulter. I couldn't look away every time she was on screen.

And I agree with the both of you on the missing pieces. They kind of introduced the issue and then just left it hanging without addressing it further. Bugged the heck out of me and made the ending completely wrong.

I've actually heard the opposite. People who haven't read the books seem to like the movie more than those who have. Maybe you'll like the books more.

I am not -- no make that I was not a fantasy/etc reader but was led into some reading and finally ended up taking my daughter's advice to read these -- loved them -- loved this film.
I just don't get the controversy if one is really paying attention to the story. And then there's the fact that it IS a story.

I suppose putting the end at the beginning of the next film could work, but still it presents continuity issues and just comes off sloppily.
Did anyone else have a problem with how some of the names were pronounced? I always said Lyra's name completely differently when reading the books. For me it was Lee-ra Bel-la-QUA whereas in the movie it's Lie-ra Bell-LACK-qua. The last name really bothered me. The first name I can live with.


Going back to what you said, Dottie and Arctic, how could they put the ending at the beginning of the next movie? Talk about a dark way to start a movie off!!!!! I'm crossing my fingers that the next one will be true to the book, and much darker. So, that kind of beginning will be fitting.

And Artic -- was it you who talked with me about that awful end titles song Lyra? Ugh -- no offense to fans of this person who performed it and I think wrote it but that was one horrible song.

~Maddy

I will say though, that even just showing the daemons disappearing left and right during the fight scenes, especially the final fight scene, was pretty graphic if you think about it. Each flash of light was someone's soul blinking out of existence. With blood there's still the possibility that these people are just wounded, but with the disappearing daemons there's no doubt, they were definitely killed.
Her name was supposed to be pronounced Lie-ra due to how important lying was to her character.

Dottie - it wasn't me that you mentioned the end song to, but yeah it didn't really seem to fit very well. I've never been a huge Kate Bush fan, though. Tori Amos (similar voice) however is awesome. I suspect the song still wouldn't have fit even if Tori sang it though.




As for derivation from Latin ... well, I think the best guess of modern scholarship is that the "ae" dipthong was pronounced as in /ai/ ) but that even this is not totally consistent as usage appears to have actually morphed over the spell of the Latin empire ... so the pronunciation depends on what period of history it was being used in! So there is indeed some case for going with the construct "ae is Like ai in aisle" in actual Latin usage but this was not picked up in the English usage so isn't relevant to current debate.
I believe (but am not positive that my Latin teacher had not just embellished the story) that the folks at Cambridge and the Folks at Oxford had quite different "rules" for "proper" Latin pronunciation ... and there was a period of quite heated debate but examination of Latin poetry and comparative pronunciation of Latin words in many different languages have more or less settled the arguments.... for the linguists at any rate.
I think the "DAYmon" pronunciation owes much of its popularity to the word being hijacked by the Unix community ....

I haven't read the books it's based on, though, and was hoping someone on here who hated the movie could make an argument for me to read the books anyway. If you can, please let me know.


Read the first book a few years ago, and liked it, but not enough to immediately pick up the nest two.
So, seeing the movie, I could hardly remember the book going in, but the movie reminded me of much of it.
In fact my general review has been that it's the Cliff's Notes version of the book. Everything's there, but it's so condensed that I echo another poster's concern: does this make any sense if you haven't read the book?
I thought the daemons exploding into sparks was a nice way to show death in a PG way, but it was overdone. One shot, one shower of sparks. Apparently no one is ever just wounded in this universe.

The Orphanage! I didn't like it much and he disagreed with my review:
Per Joel:
"Just saw it a few nights ago, and I disagree with some of what you have to say.
1) Just because he CAN do awesome fantasy, doesn't mean he should have to when putting together a story. I liked this story just the way it was.
2) There were a couple good make-everyone-in-the-theater-jump scares in this one that were well worth the price of admission."


