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| Viewing Page 1 of 1 (Total Posts: 7) |
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Thomas M. Wagner
Dec 8, 07 - 1:52 PM |
The Golden Compass movie: my thoughts
I know I don't usually review movies here, but I thought regular readers might be interested in my thoughts on The Golden Compass, the highly anticipated movie adaptation of a hugely popular book, and one to which a gave a rare 5 stars. The movie, if I were to rate it on the same scale, would get either a 2½ or 3. It's a respectable adaptation in a lot of ways, but at the same time exhibits a lot of the problems inherent in trying to compress the plot of a complex novel into a two-hour running time. Truth be told, writer-director Chris Weitz did a better job than I was expecting. He's clearly a huge fan of the book and strives to be as faithful to it as he can within the limitations he has to work under. I respect him for trying to do his best by Pullman and the book's fans. But what this means cinematically is that we get a movie whose story feels rushed, with Weitz doing everything he can to touch on each major plot point in rapid succession. The script just sails along, at such a pace that very little suspense is actually built. We establish the movie's universe, its heroine, and her quest — and then we're off to the races. Lyra, though extremely well played by a great little newcomer named Dakota Blue Richards (why is Dakota become the moniker of choice for preteen actresses?), never really feels like she goes through a character arc in the normal sense of the term. She learns to use the aliethiometer, decoding its arcane symbols with almost supernatural speed, just so the script can get the story going. Thinking about it, it isn't that the movie is too rapidly paced, so much as that it doesn't really have anything you could call "pacing." Its script just flings you from one scene to the next — boom, boom, boom — without much in the way of the dramatic peaks and valleys stories normally have to draw an audience in and give them a stake in the outcome. Part of me wonders just how much studio interference Weitz had to endure from New Line. If The Lord of the Rings taught New Line anything, it's that doing epic fantasy that already has a built-in audience faithfully, and putting the project in the hands of a dedicated filmmaker equals a major box office love-happening. On the other hand, with $180 million at stake (each LOTR movie cost right around $100m by comparison), New Line clearly wasn't willing to give Weitz a Peter Jackson level of carte blanche. Three editors are credited, leaving me to wonder just how often the infamous moviemaking mantra "We'll fix it in post" reared its little fuzzy head during dailies. I'm not saying that a three-hour running time would have been for the best, but allowing for, say, 140 minutes would have given the movie a little space to breathe, and bring some moments back from the book that the script either excised or truncated in order to stay focused on Lyra's quest alone. The cast is quite excellent. As Mrs. Coulter, Nicole Kidman is ideal. I like her as an actress anyway, though for this role I wasn't sure. Physically she's different from the novel, where she's a brunette, for one thing (when I read the book, I was picturing more someone like Catherine Zeta-Jones). But Kidman swans through the part looking about as glamorous as it's possible for a woman to look short of being sculpted out of ivory, and she conveys the character's seductive, fatal attraction to a tee. I also dug Daniel Craig as Lord Asriel. Craig, after proving himself the second best James Bond of all time (flame shields on), is turning into an actor I'll probably want to see no matter what he's in — wait, scratch that, I still have no desire to see The Invasion. Still, I like him, but of course, the script doesn't give him enough to do. Sadly, other supporting characters are given short shrift, especially Serafina Pekkala, who's barely in the movie enough to matter. (The script's treatment of the witches is an exemplar of how awkwardly the movie translates ideas from the book. In the movie, we really don't get much of an understanding of who the witches are, why they're involved in this, or anything. They're just there, presumably, because they were in the book.) LOTR veteran Ian McKellan lends his voice to Iorek Byrnison, the disgraced bear prince who becomes Lyra's guardian. And though the movie succeeds in building their relationship (it's really the only relationship in the movie with any substance), the script doesn't give Iorek the sense of tragic pathos he has in the novel. Another LOTR alum, Christopher Lee, is prominently billed (how many octogenarian actors are getting as much work as he is?), but he has exactly one line and about ten seconds of screen time. Sam Elliott made for a very good Lee Scorsby, though I was picturing Billy Bob Thornton when I read the book. Elliott is better suited, I think. (continued) |
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Thomas M. Wagner
Dec 8th, 2007 - 2:06 PM |
Re: The Golden Compass movie: my thoughts
(continued) As for the movie's whitewashing of the books' theological themes, well, this was interesting. The Magisterium is played less as a church than as a generic totalitarian governing body. But Weitz manages to keep in enough material about freethought (represented by Asriel and his scientific pursuits) versus dogma that I think fans of the book won't feel like the movie betrays the book's themes too drastically. How, exactly, any proposed movies of books two and three, though, will manage to slip around the whole "kill God" thing is a mystery to me. Weitz has said that he was willing to compromise certain things about this movie to fit them into more of an acceptable Hollywood blockbuster framework, so that its hoped-for box office success would mean he could take more chances with the sequels. I hope that wish comes true, because I predict that audience word of mouth on this movie will hover around "oh, it was okay, I guess," and TGC won't be looking at LOTR-level returns. Among fans of the book, the biggest letdown is the movie's decision to end a little early, so that the movie can happy a happy ending rather than the somewhat tragic one the book has. I think this is a choice that will backfire, not just because it's a mistake to think audiences only want all happy endings all the time, but because the happy ending we get here is so...well...bland. To have ended the movie the way the book ends (and I know I'm assuming you've read the book here, and if you haven't yet, then what are you doing reading this?) would have given the movie the one thing it utterly lacks: an edge, a willingness to take risks, to challenge its audience both intellectually and emotionally. You know, the very qualities the book is popular for. As it stands, the movie, while it stays true to the book's words as best it can, lacks its mind and its heart. And it lacks its truth. If only Weitz had had his own aliethiometer. So yeah, I guess it's 2½. I don't want it to be an Eragon-level megabomb, because it's a worthier effort than that. I'd like it to at least make its money back, so that perhaps Weitz gets to make The Subtle Knife after all and take the risks he says he wants to take. So I'll say TGC is worth a matinee. Fantasy cinema that at least tries ought to get our support, if only so we get a great one now and again. |
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Thomas M. Wagner
Dec 8th, 2007 - 2:21 PM |
Re: The Golden Compass movie: my thoughts
PS: Back to books for a moment: Some of you are doubtless wondering where the hell my review of The Amber Spyglass is. Actually, I'd like to know that too! Short answer: I'm working on it now and will have it up early this week. With all the books I read here, it may seem bewildering to think I actually sometimes lose track of what I've read and what I haven't. But I'm fallible, it must be said. (Yep, I've said it.) So it was a real headdesk moment to go through the "Authors: P" page and see it missing. |
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Joel Calhoun
Dec 12th, 2007 - 3:17 PM |
Re: The Golden Compass movie: my thoughts
I just got back from watching the movie and for the most part I have to agree with everything you said. There are however a couple of other things to mention... ****SPOILER WARNING***** The battle between Iorek and his rival & the destruction of the Gobblers' "experimental" base was reversed in the movie.(And yes, my explanation is in the order above.) 
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Carly
Jul 1st, 2008 - 9:33 PM |
Re: The Golden Compass movie: my thoughts
So maybe I am dredging this up from the depths of the SFreviews forum, but by strange coincidence I just happened to You, sir, are far more generous with your stars than I am. But objectivity hasn't ever been my strong suit when it comes to my favorite books' movie adaptations, so perhaps we're even. Most of my complaints are exaggerations of the good points made in your review, but I have to say I really don't understand what people see in Nicole Kidman. She's annoying to me as an actress in general (a fake nose does not a performance make [or a breathy voice, for that matter]), but I find her butchering of one of the most complex Madonna's in literature since the bible singularly grating. A new face wouldn't have lent the star power the movie probably needed to get off the ground, but somebody like Helena Bonham Carter could have given the film more credibility as a genuine effort to retell a story than as a genuine effort to hit a box-office home run. True, she's Tim Burton's wife and lends herself more towards the 'crazy Helena Bonham Carter as Bellatrix' roles nowadays than the 'lovely Helena Bonham Carter in Room With A View' type roles, and maybe she wouldn't be the first Mrs. Coulter to jump to mind. Don't get me wrong, she's pitch perfect as Bella and just about the only right move made in the OotP movie, but my point is simply this: not only can she do scary, she can do beautiful and scary simultaneously without looking as though she has a tic in one eye. Glamour is something the makeup and costuming departments can go a long way towards embellishing; communicating a certain quality of amorality and a penchant for torture, however, requires skills beyond the suggestive movements of eyebrows and achieving an adult height of 6 ft. |
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Thomas M. Wagner
Jul 1st, 2008 - 10:29 PM |
Re: The Golden Compass movie: my thoughts
I agree Helena would have been better. But then she probably would have played Mrs. Coulter as more of a firebrand, while Kidman gave her the ice queen treatment. I don't think Kidman has much range as an actress, but she did all right by the character overall, I thought. Now that I'm thinking of it, it would have been interesting to see what Eva Green, who played Serafina Pekkala, might have done in the Coulter role. When I was reading the books, I was picturing Catherine Zeta-Jones. |
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Carly
Jul 1st, 2008 - 10:44 PM |
Re: The Golden Compass movie: my thoughts
I don't know why they don't stick to hair color as given to the characters in the books in movie adaptations. I know it's a minor quibble, but still, it happens so often I'm starting to see it as a sort of deliberate form of disrespect. They have wigs as well as dye in Hollywood. I actually liked the job Eva Green did with Serafina, but why wasn't she blond? Why? It's so simple, it's so easy, and though Tom Cruise was some kind of epic cautionary tale against bleaching a brunette in Interview With the Vampire, our technology has improved since then! They even gave Robyn Tunney insta-blond hair in The Craft, no matter that the special effects made it look as though it was a separate entity from her head entirely. Nothing says 'my hair iz pastede on' like early nineties SE. But that's beside the point. Eva Green is fabulous, but she's a shade too young to be Mrs. Coulter, I think. And though I risk ringing all sorts of cliche bells, even Cate Blanchett would have made a far more thrilling Coulter than Nicole "I played every alien in Mars Attacks! and nobody noticed" Kidman. I'm sorry, you're entitled to your opinion of course, I just really hate seeing her paralyze characters with so much potential from the inside out. She does it all the time. |
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