Now a review from someone who just finished the book a second time last Friday...
First of all, the actors were not convincing. Not one time did I feel like any of the characters really knew what they were talking about. They were throwing the term "Dust," "Intercision" and the phrase, "It's just a little cut!" around without any meaning. Almost like someone told Chris Weitz, "Hey look, this term Dust...that sounds cool! Make sure you use that as much as possible!" I was waiting for the band Kansas to kick into the soundtrack at any moment.
The meanings in the novel are slowly revealed during the course of the book were part of the discovery and suspense. Lyra had no idea what they meant until later in the book. They explain them during the first 15 minutes of the film, and they suddenly become arbitrary and over-used. No mystery, no sense of menace that the novel had...
Also, the dialog was overly expository. People saying things along the lines of, "I must tell you this because something related to it comes up later in the story, so even though its out of character for me, the audience must know what's going on." Case in point, when Mrs. Coulter explains about how the King of the bears wants to be human to Lyra at the beginning of the movie for no apparent reason at all. Everything else was so glaringly obvious that it wasn't for Lyra's benefit, but for the benefit of the audience. It's lazy writing. Rather than maybe flesh out that part of the story where Lyra learns about it on her own, some character just decides to randomly blurt it out. Even worse, none of this dialog really tells the audience anything because it's too fast and doesn't say enough.
Then there is this whole, "If your Daemon gets strangled, you're getting strangled" thing. When a Daemon gets hurt in the book, the hurt the person has is a very emotional one. It's like your heart literally being broken...an overwhelming sadness as if you're most dearest friend is literally being torn apart from you permanently...a sense of loss. So if someone is slapping your daemon around, you're not going to feel a slap in the face. Mrs. Coulter is seen belting her own Daemon across the face, and using their logic, makes no sense as we should at least see her flinch as if she slapped herself in the face.
Related to the above issue is the fact that none of the character's relationships that they have with their Daemon is ever realized.
Then this dialog came up: "Don't worry Billy, we'll get your Daemon back." At that point, I knew the screenwriter just didn't understand this novel. The whole point is people taking the souls from children is a permanent, horrible thing. There is no getting your daemon re-attached. In the novel, it's a heart wrenching, emotional sucking, worst-thing-that-could-possibly-happen to you experience. In the movie, they're just like..oh well, it happens. We'll fix it. How ignorant can a screenwriter be?
The kid who really lost his Daemon in the book was Tony Markios in a very sad part of the book where he's holding onto a dead fish because it's all he has left while asking, "Have you seen ratter?" in a very zombie-like state. He eventually dies because of it. A very haunting part of the book that has absolutely no weight in the movie. The haunted city where the boy was found in the novel was replaced by this little shed out in the middle of nowhere. A person without their Daemon is also very repulsive to the people in this world. A lot of them kinda kept their distance from Tony at first, almost like they were disgusted until someone yells at them to help the kid.
They also took out the scenes that showed how they tricked the children into coming with them. Without that, there really was no feeling that children were being taken. It was just "said" in an off-the-cuff sort of way. No scene with the children outsmarting their dimwit captors with Lyra's help either. In other words, The Gobblers is just another cool term that Chris felt he should use that seems to have no meaning in the movie....glossing over the whole Oblation Board while he was at it.
The story itself was rushed. We meet Lyra and 10 minutes later she's already been with Mrs. Coulter and is on the boat with the Gyptians. They yanked out a lot of necessary character and story building aspects that really needed to be in there. Showing the Gyptians as just this sort of rag-tag group when there were meetings and planning in the book that showed just how well organized they were...and how much they loved their children. Grumman's head...the whole, "You can't trick a bear" conversation. Too much of the soul of the story was left out.
I know the argument that they cant put EVERYTHING from the novel into the movie, but you can at least try to keep the spirit of the novel in the movie and not change the novel's meaning. If you cant explain why a character is the way he is, then at least let the actor keep that as a motivation and let it be conveyed in the acting. A 5 minute conversation with Iroek and Lyra to help build their relationship isn't asking too much.
The Golden Compass is a dumbed-down picture-book version of the novel with simple characterizations of the people in the novel. Its a bunch of characters going through actions who don't seem to have any motivation or reason for what they are doing and the only reason why they are doing what they are doing is because a script tells them to.
First of all, the actors were not convincing. Not one time did I feel like any of the characters really knew what they were talking about. They were throwing the term "Dust," "Intercision" and the phrase, "It's just a little cut!" around without any meaning. Almost like someone told Chris Weitz, "Hey look, this term Dust...that sounds cool! Make sure you use that as much as possible!" I was waiting for the band Kansas to kick into the soundtrack at any moment.
The meanings in the novel are slowly revealed during the course of the book were part of the discovery and suspense. Lyra had no idea what they meant until later in the book. They explain them during the first 15 minutes of the film, and they suddenly become arbitrary and over-used. No mystery, no sense of menace that the novel had...
Also, the dialog was overly expository. People saying things along the lines of, "I must tell you this because something related to it comes up later in the story, so even though its out of character for me, the audience must know what's going on." Case in point, when Mrs. Coulter explains about how the King of the bears wants to be human to Lyra at the beginning of the movie for no apparent reason at all. Everything else was so glaringly obvious that it wasn't for Lyra's benefit, but for the benefit of the audience. It's lazy writing. Rather than maybe flesh out that part of the story where Lyra learns about it on her own, some character just decides to randomly blurt it out. Even worse, none of this dialog really tells the audience anything because it's too fast and doesn't say enough.
Then there is this whole, "If your Daemon gets strangled, you're getting strangled" thing. When a Daemon gets hurt in the book, the hurt the person has is a very emotional one. It's like your heart literally being broken...an overwhelming sadness as if you're most dearest friend is literally being torn apart from you permanently...a sense of loss. So if someone is slapping your daemon around, you're not going to feel a slap in the face. Mrs. Coulter is seen belting her own Daemon across the face, and using their logic, makes no sense as we should at least see her flinch as if she slapped herself in the face.
Related to the above issue is the fact that none of the character's relationships that they have with their Daemon is ever realized.
Then this dialog came up: "Don't worry Billy, we'll get your Daemon back." At that point, I knew the screenwriter just didn't understand this novel. The whole point is people taking the souls from children is a permanent, horrible thing. There is no getting your daemon re-attached. In the novel, it's a heart wrenching, emotional sucking, worst-thing-that-could-possibly-happen to you experience. In the movie, they're just like..oh well, it happens. We'll fix it. How ignorant can a screenwriter be?
The kid who really lost his Daemon in the book was Tony Markios in a very sad part of the book where he's holding onto a dead fish because it's all he has left while asking, "Have you seen ratter?" in a very zombie-like state. He eventually dies because of it. A very haunting part of the book that has absolutely no weight in the movie. The haunted city where the boy was found in the novel was replaced by this little shed out in the middle of nowhere. A person without their Daemon is also very repulsive to the people in this world. A lot of them kinda kept their distance from Tony at first, almost like they were disgusted until someone yells at them to help the kid.
They also took out the scenes that showed how they tricked the children into coming with them. Without that, there really was no feeling that children were being taken. It was just "said" in an off-the-cuff sort of way. No scene with the children outsmarting their dimwit captors with Lyra's help either. In other words, The Gobblers is just another cool term that Chris felt he should use that seems to have no meaning in the movie....glossing over the whole Oblation Board while he was at it.
The story itself was rushed. We meet Lyra and 10 minutes later she's already been with Mrs. Coulter and is on the boat with the Gyptians. They yanked out a lot of necessary character and story building aspects that really needed to be in there. Showing the Gyptians as just this sort of rag-tag group when there were meetings and planning in the book that showed just how well organized they were...and how much they loved their children. Grumman's head...the whole, "You can't trick a bear" conversation. Too much of the soul of the story was left out.
I know the argument that they cant put EVERYTHING from the novel into the movie, but you can at least try to keep the spirit of the novel in the movie and not change the novel's meaning. If you cant explain why a character is the way he is, then at least let the actor keep that as a motivation and let it be conveyed in the acting. A 5 minute conversation with Iroek and Lyra to help build their relationship isn't asking too much.
The Golden Compass is a dumbed-down picture-book version of the novel with simple characterizations of the people in the novel. Its a bunch of characters going through actions who don't seem to have any motivation or reason for what they are doing and the only reason why they are doing what they are doing is because a script tells them to.