The Golden Compass-- SPOILERS

[holli]

So there was a sneak preview tonight of the Golden Compass movie in Silver Spring, and I went with my roommate and a couple of other people. And, um, well.



It... looked really good? Like, visually. So there's that. And they got Lee Scoresby right! But I was vaguely dissatisfied the whole way through, and when it got to the end my dissatisfaction became VERY SPECIFIC.

Because the ending, you see, is a happy one, of Lyra and Roger and Iorek and Serafina Pekkala all in Lee's balloon, sailing off to rescue Lord Asriel. Which, just-- what the HELL? The ending is kind of the POINT, people.

Not to mention that they combined Tony Makarios and Billy Costa into one person, who gets his daemon cut away but survives. And everyone has a horrible case of expositionitis, with awful leaden "As you know, Bob..." dialogue everywhere you look. And Mrs. Coulter is crazy people to a ridiculous exaggerated degree-- she *smacks her daemon in the face*. And The Master isn't the one who poisons the Tokay. And the two most important parts of the story are out of order-- Lyra tricks Iofur (who isn't named Iofur) and gets him to challenge Iorek *before* she goes to Bolvangar to rescue Roger.

So... not what I was hoping, really. And unless the next movie *starts* with Asriel killing Roger to open a door, how are they even going to do the story? One of the people I saw it with speculated that this means there won't even *be* a Will, that Roger will take his place. But that would be HORRIBLE BEYOND WORDS, and they *did* seem to be foreshadowing Roger's death-- Lyra has a line about the alethiometer telling her she was bringing Asriel what he needs, which is Roger, so. I don't even know. I'm really disappointed.

Comments

[tsiankiio.livejournal.com]

But, but, ARMORED BEARS!!! I think I may have been distracted by the gorgeous. I would get mad if there was no Will. Also, I was confused about Iofur being Ragnor.


My understanding about the ending, is that they need this one to stand on it's own, as the next one won't be made if this one doesn't make enough money.

[holli.livejournal.com]

I guess, but will the movie make enough money with such a shitty ending? Because I see that being a problem.

[veejane.livejournal.com]

That's -- on the general point of "screwed with the story just because" -- not a surprise. On the specifics, I, yeah, got to wonder what #2 is planning, with that wrong-y ending. Even the British stage version, which changed the plot around a lot (mostly to avoid needing to build puppet-motorcycles for the last third of the story), still killed off Roger, and introduced Will at the proper moment.

How were the voices of the non-human characters? I'm curious how clearly they signalled that a daemon is the opposite sex of its human. Also, I think that a big part of how Iorek comes across has got to be his voice.

[holli.livejournal.com]

The daemons had good voices, actually. The one thing that really stood out was that Mrs. Coulter's daemon doesn't talk-- he doesn't in the book, either, but I guess it stands out more on film.

Iorek's voice... I love Ian McKellan, of course, but I don't think he was the right choice. Iorek needed to sound rougher, somehow, that Ian does.

Dialogue was just a problem in general, though. So, so clunky and leaden.

[derryderrydown.livejournal.com]

*headdesk*

Admittedly, I have no idea how they're going to film the rest of the books anyway, considering I've read reports that they've taken out the anti-religion stance. I mean, the books are about the death of God. Having the Magisterium as a (from what I've read) general bureaucracy is utterly pointless.