The Golden Compass

Originally Posted on Quaestiones Quaedam Philosophicae on December 11, 2007

I was excited, hyped to see this movie. I followed its making, and was waiting for it for several months.

It seemed to have all the ingredients for a really good stew; Stellar source material - His Dark Materials is a trilogy I adore for being audacious and imaginitive. They roped in talent of the highest order - Daniel Craig, Nicole Kidman, Christopher Lee, Ian McKellen (the voice of the bear), and a (perfectly cast) Sam Elliott as Lee Scoresby. The movie had a good 'home' in New Line - the folks that made the LOTR movies. Budget wasn't a problem - as was evidenced by the high quality of art direction and special effects.

And yet I was extremely disappointed to see the final product. That (in my opinion) is because of two cardinal errors on the part of the director, Paul Weitz, and the author Philip Pullman, who was involved with the production.

The first was the decision to stick to a literal depiction of the book - only not the important parts (I'll explain this!). The decision made the movie a candidate for the "Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone" Award - a movie that mostly stuck to the source but is incapable of satisfying viewers new to the story as a movie because it lacks... soul. Cohesion. Qwan. Whatever.

The cardinal rule for movie adaptations from books is to capture the essence of the tale, at the cost of plot details. Here I thought they did the bang opposite. Nearly every detail, every character, every plot twist made it to the movie in some shape or form (excluding the last three chapters.

That made the movie feel like a badly paced/ hastily written role playing video game (RPG)... It even stuck to the classic RPG formula: Start adventure as a naive unknowing character, collect companions/ knowledge, complete some side quests, and the main quest has a 'cliffhanger' ending, promising a sequel.

Which brings us to the second big problem. Excuse the crudity - this movie lacked the balls to stick to the source material - in spirit.

The last three chapters in the book were omitted. I hear they were filmed, but Paul Weitz (the director) decided to include them in the next movie (The Subtle Knife). Pullman himself seems to have approved of the idea. The trouble is, without that ending, this is just another fantasy movie... and Lord Asriel remains just another tediously cliched father figure!

That wouldn't be as big a problem if the movie hadn't already been castrated by the god-fearing-people-fearing-studio-executivess in Hollywood. Not only did they conveniently skip the end when we find out what Asriel's real gambit is... They also removed from the story all the semi-explicit allusions to the Church and to God and the Original Sin myth which make the book so nice and blasphemous!

To take a trilogy that is first and foremost a spin on the basis of Christianity and Catholicism and to make it a red-America friendly bowl of gruel is beyond criminal - it is just plain sad!

Ah well... I would hope this movie doesn't turn off potential readers of the trilogy. It does have a few redeeming moments - the conclusion of the polar bear fight for instance is absolutely jaw-dropping (ok... that must be one of the most over-used puns in the blogosphere this week), and all in all I would've liked it as an average flick if I had no idea what the source material was about.

Go watch it, if you haven't the patience to go read it (and reading is preferable by a factor of 10).