Okay, so the real meat on the bones of this blog lies in the books and the novels and the literature. That was covered in one my first posts here, though said literary collection has grown since then. But for anyone who made it through my formidable The Golden Compass 2007 Retrospective - first off good job, and second off, you might be able to wring some enjoyment out of this as well.
Above is a nice 11x17 poster I secured on Amazon via a third party seller. I'm growing increasingly fond of 11x17 for film prints. But anyway, it was a great deal, came in mint condition, and also arrived considerably early. When I finally cobble together a full on His Dark Materials book shrine, I sensed this would be a solid edition. I would recommend without hesitation, to be purchased here.
And while I thought I had forever misplaced my series of TGC bookmarks that came out alongside the film - a couple of which I got on killer sales back when they had bookstores in malls - low and behold I did some serious holiday cleaning and they presented themselves in splendid fashion.
And if one simply has to have a Dakota-Blue-Richards-as-Lyra-Belacqua bookmark, well once again, Amazon comes to your aid here. I must say, it does work quite well in my multiple editions of The Golden Compass.
Next up is one of those wonderful little media tie-in books that are sadly being published less and less. Starting with Star Wars, I would always take a pilgrimage to the local bookstore and pick up any supplementary material for a movie I loved. While tooling about on Amazon not long ago, I found The World of the Golden Compass as seen below.
Originally I thought it was the same as a certain book that had been published in the U.S. at the time of the movie release, but no, this hails from Britain, and is actually quite neat.
The first thing that nabbed my attention was the intro page, which featured a wonderful little map of Lyra's alternate world, inspired by the one she saw at Mrs. Coulter's when she was dreaming of the North. Not sure how "canon" it is, but I haven't seen it many places, so this is cool.
The table of contents provides a good overview of the book for any interested parties, outlining all the different characters, places, institutions, and technology dominating the film.
This is the basic layout of the material, with the main characters and things like daemons and the alethiometer warranting a nice two page spread.
Curiously the World of the Golden Compass must have been planned and published well before release, because it niftily (and depressingly) ends with a little overview of the pivotal events to come in those final scenes that were ultimately cut.
The last pages feature concept art for a city, presumably the parallel one in the sky that Lyra would have travelled into for the sequel! Have I mentioned guillotining the ending was a really, really bad idea?
Lastly, well, I just thought this was really cool. It has several pages of stickers, and as the book is over a decade old, it is impressive they were all intact. I particularly like the one with a surly looking Lee Scorseby that advertises "Aeronaut for Hire."
While this is about ten dollars more than I remembered paying for my copy, it is still available for purchase on Amazon here.
And of course, we have to talk about the blu ray. To be honest, if anyone is interested in this film adaptation at all, at this point it would quite frankly be ludicrous not to go all out and purchase the two disc special edition. The film still looks good on a big TV screen, so let's get that out of the way. It will be curious to see if they ever release a 4K special edition or something - preferably with the notoriously aforementioned cut ending.
Not exactly likely, but we can hope.
I for one grew up gorging my senses on all the behind-the-scenes and making-of documentaries on such films (yet again, such as Star Wars), and that left me with a lifelong fascination concerning how films are made. And now such a fascination has long since been coupled with the creative process and storytelling in general.
As I frequently noted in my retrospective, writer-director Chris Weitz does a very admirable job on the full-length movie commentary. It would have been interesting to hear some of the other stars have their say - particularly Dakota Blue Richards - but he steers the ship very well through the oftentimes choppy waters of film narration.
Particularly back in the day, some directors would simply narrate Every Single Event for you as it played out on screen, leaving you with no insight or even charming anecdotes about the filming process. Not so here. It was invaluable for my retrospecive, and I feel proves that the man did truly care about this project.
But even better is all the truly cool and in-depth documentaries on display here. This is not a simple cut-and-paste job, nor is it just a fluff promo piece where all the actors get together and compliment each other. This is a full-on, in-depth examination of everything that went in to making this film. It had been years since I'd reviewed all of it, and I for one was wildly impressed with the quality of the material here.
The first screen is posted above. It features some of my favorite documentaries. I positively loved the ones that talked about the process of adapting the film from the novel, and Philip Pullman was interestingly all over this thing.
The next round features fascinating looks at the more technical part of the production. The documentary on the alethiometer is inspiring, and each one features photo galleries one can surf through at their leisure. And just kudos in general for addressing the alethiometer as such, as opposed to a Golden Compass ...
It's always nice to learn about film scores, armored bears, and what the anticipation was like before the official release. However, the standout for me here was the featurette on Oxford, a place I grow increasingly eager to visit. Assuming things get back to normal. Actually, I will be doing a post on a potential Pullman-inspired pilgrimage to England later.
I also can't fail to mention out of 1,178 reviews, The Golden Compass enjoys a rating of 4.6 out of 5 stars, so there's that. It can be purchased for a very reasonable price here.
Hopefully all this has left one with a renewed enthusiasm or a possible interest in revisiting the film, as I have enjoyed getting all my own thoughts out there finally. I will leave on this note, as apparently at some point even play sets were produced based on the film, including this one I just happened across here. Who knew?
If the Lyra Belacqua of His Dark Materials could be successfully captured or distilled into a single scene - or even gesture - said scene shows up in the final act of the 2007 Golden Compass film.
To set the stage, the action is taking place outside of Bolvangar, the dreaded hidden laboratory in the deep Arctic. The authoritarian Magisterium has been experimenting on kidnapped children, which our young heroine has just freed. Upon escaping the facility, Lyra and the kids find themselves confronted by rows and rows of fully grown, ferocious Tartar soldiers and their fully grown, even more ferocious wolf-daemons.
In the film, our brave little Lyra defiantly steps forward and spits at the feet of the heavily-armed, war-loving mercenaries, expressing her bravado and contempt.
It is moments like this that persistently edge this film into my heart, and this very scene can be viewed in the first forty seconds of this clip here.
Most of us know at least some of the behind-the-scenes drama and eventual fate of The Golden Compass film adaptation. No doubt looking for another British fantasy trilogy to step up to the plate after the enormous success of The Lord of the Rings, New Line Cinema acquired the rights to bring the His Dark Materials novels to the big screen.
At this point, the books had won award after award, sold millions of copies all over the world, and were quickly becoming classics of children's literature. While producers like Deborah Forte seemed to be genuinely passionate about the potential of a serious and sincere adaptation, in the end New Line was unfortunately rather oblivious regarding what exactly they had on their hands, and never fully understood or appreciated the property.
Still, the first novel in the series, respectively known as The Golden Compass in the U.S. and Northern Lights in the U.K., was successfully filmed and then released in December of 2007, but many feel it never lived up to its literary potential. The reasons are complicated, as this post will explore. For one, while TGC performed well overseas, the studio was banking on a huge stateside box office, which didn't materialize. Overall, it opened here to what was considered lackluster ticket sales and mixed reviews.
This wasn't helped by the controversy surrounding the film, particularly its perceived irreligious sentiments. As overblown as it may seem now, various conservative groups managed a fairly competent boycott, at least in the U.S. I personally remember the tone of the discussions on the Bridge to the Stars fan forums at the time, which were not short on irony or humor.
They rightly called out the most belligerent of these groups, the Catholic League, for its rather blatant hypocrisy. The League's primary message seemed to be that they believed the film had an agenda, and that children should never be exposed to anything with an adult agenda because they weren't intellectually or emotionally mature enough to recognize the truth for themselves.
Just ponder that one for a second, as well as the normal institutional attitude toward children and agendas. Ironic indeed.
Though famed writers like Tom Stoppard were originally attached to the production, Chris Weitz was eventually hired to write and direct the film. It is also sadly necessary to point out here that the studio ultimately took the movie away from him though, insisting that the ending be cut and finally omitted altogether. As some of those scenes are the most powerful in the novel, in my opinion this went the furthest in finally sabotaging the film, and leaving many with an unsatisfying experience.
This likewise ensured the two other books in the trilogy would not be adapted on the big screen, and left fans and filmgoers alike with a truncated movie within a truncated epic.
As for the author, Philip Pullman has always appeared quite congenial and easygoing when it comes to adaptations of his work. At this point, His Dark Materials has been translated into everything from graphic novels to stage plays to audio narrations. And as he is fond of pointing out, his original, unaltered novels are still right there on the book shelf, waiting and primed to be read.
In the years to follow, Pullman has criticized TGC as a "movie without an ending," and I recently discovered an interview in the Guardian in which he faults some of the design elements as too "twiddly" or fantastical for his tastes, particularly the armor of the ice bears. Other than that, he rarely comments on the film now, and when he does, it's primarily to still praise the "excellent" cast.
But more on all of this later. As should be clear, there is no shortage of opinions on this particular work of film, and it is time for me to explore mine. I do feel the film is owed a genuine reevaluation, and one by a sincere devotee of the books.
As my readers know, much of the imaginative real estate of this blog is rooted and grounded in poetry - therefore it is only fitting and honest fitting to admit how I sometimes work as a consumer (and even connoisseur) of content and narrative. Once I had to articulate this to someone else, I understood it much better myself. I call it the EDP, and it is perhaps quite relevant to my own enjoyment and evaluation of The Golden Compass film.
Emily Dickinson once famously said that she intuitively knew something was poetry "If I physically feel as if the top of my head were taken off." I have adopted that sentiment, and have taken to using it to describe the way I feel about certain works of popular art or fiction. It's a little bit more memorable than maybe saying something as potentially trite as "You know it when you see it."
In other words, even if something may be flawed, even if it can be easily criticized .... well, I sometimes don't really care, simply because it feels so right. It matches up thoroughly with my own interior geography, and something in me reflects something in it, or vice versa. And much like with Emily, I don't think it's simply an emotional response, because it seems deeper and more intuitive and truer than that.
So while it may not entirely take my proverbial head off, I retain a very soft spot for TGC film. Imperfect or no, it simply feels very much likethe world(s) I fell in love with while reading the book(s). Therefore I must strongly invoke the Emily Dickinson Principle in this case, as the images splashed across the screen are so similar to the ones conjured up by Pullman's prose. At least in my head and during my reading experience.
All the flaws in the world can't truly compete with that, but still I will try to make a reasonable case for why the film is worth the time of other book lovers.
While I seem to recall that the person I went with that opening week wasn't all that taken with the movie, to this very day I can remember what a little thrill it was for me to finally see Lyra and Mrs. Coulter and Lord Asriel and Lee Scorseby and Serafina Pekkala all brought to life on a magnificently big screen.
Obviously, condensing an almost four hundred page novel into a two hour movie was always going to be a formidable task, but still so many elements are there. And while the shape and structure may get a little wobbly, the novel's story is there too. All of it is framed with the necessary cinematic shorthand, but I feel even some of the basic themes and such are illustrated fairly well.
From the visual prologue alone, audiences win some neat deep space images courtesy of the Hubble telescope, tying in the story with the deeper cosmic mysteries of Dust. Then the camera glides from one alternate world to the next, guided through several veiled and flickering passages presumably cut with a subtle knife and hanging on the fabric of reality itself. And then a brief introduction to Lyra's world, a corner of the multiverse teeming with beings like daemons and witches and sentient ice bears.
While Pullman made later comments critiquing some of the film's heightened look or fancifulness, at the film's premiere at the Odeon, he was very free with his praise. He unhesitatingly said the film looked "wonderful," and on the special features he repeatedly complimented things like the costuming choices. For me, the film's imagery of an alternate Brytain is largely what I envisioned whether the author or other readers did or not.
First off, some of the the cinematography is really rich and lush and beautiful, from the buildings and rooftops of Oxford all the way to the icy, frozen plains of the North. This is a film unafraid of color and lavish hues, and for me it helps establish the slightly-alternate style of the world, a world with a history that occasionally forked left when our own veered right.
I personally do not see a lack of color or visual splendor as a plus when I view a film, so maybe that's another reason I fall so easily under this one's spell.
Granted, even I could probably have done without the whimsical, so called "anbaric carriage" Lyra rode in to Mrs. Coulter's home in London. Still, some of the framing and establishing shots inch toward painterly at times, and my eye naturally gravitates to that sort of thing. And something like the great airships are really pretty impressive (one can't really have an alternate world without zeppelins, am I right?).
Though His Dark Materials is set in its own late twentieth century, the design the filmmakers embraced was largely that of a Victorian aesthetic and architecture, only pushed forward a century or two. With some sprinkles of art deco and art nouveau scattered about for good measure. To me, it produced a charming and unique hybrid of the higher tech with the older fashioned, with a world still rooted more in the hand crafted than in the mass produced.
The production design really shines when boiled down to specific objects or artifacts, most notably the alethiometer, the signature truth-telling device capable of "interrogating the universe," as Pullman has put it. As props go, it is undeniably the most important, as it even incorrectly ties in with the very title of The Golden Compass, a mistake that seems to haunt every U.S. adaptation.
Here is a nice clip as Lyra and the gyptians explore its strange, numinous qualities.
Clearly, the end result in the film is an ornate, unique, captivating instrument - and again, an imaginative marriage of the mystical and the functional, the digital and the real. It was very important to writer-director Weitz to imbue the alethiometer with a weight and a tangibility, with a style scoured from medieval books, and engraved with Latin inscriptions and alchemical symbols.
Perhaps most impressively, the alethiometer was narratively forged in Prague in the 1600s, so the real world prop makers ensured it was marked out with symbolism unique to that region.
Another crucial piece of this cinematic puzzle is the daemons, the animal representations of a person's deepest self or personality. Visually bringing all of this to life was a daunting task, and Weitz was adamant he didn't want any of the scenes turning into a zoo. Though the CGI by Rhythm and Hues is maybe growing dated, again, the basic feel and integrity of the human-daemon bond is very much represented and on point.
Pullman memorably noted in the small novella Lyra's Oxford that if a cat encountered a cat-daemon, they would not see another cat - they would see a human being. This is hard to convey cinematically, but part of the horrors of "severing" and the Oblation Board is that daemons are not separate creatures, much less animals. A human and a daemon are one complete being. Therefore I was impressed to hear Weitz remark on the movie commentary that he didn't see daemons "as effects but as people."
The challenge of relating all this information visually had to have been daunting, but the human-daemon interactions in the film reflect this reality surprisingly well. One early scene at Oxford opens with Lord Asriel's snow leopard-daemon Stelmaria carrying Lyra's daemon Pantalamion in its mouth, the pair immediately being followed by Asriel pulling Lyra into frame by the arm. Seconds later, Asriel and Lyra have a verbal confrontation, while their respective daemons snarl and growl and Pan adopts the form of an angry cat.
And I'll always be fond of the visual cue later in Trollesund as Lee Scoresby and his hare-daemon Hester both inquisitively and simultaneously cock their heads to the side.
The unnamed Golden Monkey is another standout in the daemon department. The scene in the Jordan dining hall with Mrs. Coulter seducing Lyra above the table while the Monkey strokes and manipulates a slightly wary Pan under it comes to mind. As does the scene where Lyra later escapes into London, slamming a window shut behind her, catching the Monkey's paw and Mrs. Coulter storming into the shot while massaging her own clearly wounded hand.
But aside from the production and the sets and the effects and all the rest, let's move on to the one feature of the film that gets almost universal acclaim - or at least sometimes grudging admiration. As referenced earlier, even now, barely can a mention of the film be made around Pullman without him singling out and soundly praising the magnificent cast.
From my own perspective, it is as if the characters effortlessly strolled off the pages of Northern Lights and onto the screen of TGC. And as they have consistently been some of my favorite characters in literature, that was no small feat. Forget the prodigious talent of the actors on display - for me it was largely about the simple embodiment of said characters in another, profoundly visual medium.
There is only one real place to begin, as newcomer Dakota Blue Richards basically steals the show. Though a mere twelve years old at the time, she carries this movie, and barely a scene goes by that doesn't heavily feature her prodigious talents. She doesn't just play a character named Lyra Belacqua - she channels her throughout the story.
The little whirlwind of life and energy that is Lyra is one of the most beloved characters in young literature, and Richards spins through her scenes with a kind of inexhaustible energy. Like her fictional counterpart, she is at times childish, adolescent, adult, wild, savage, sweet, loving, furious, loyal, devious, petulant, rebellious, brave, daring, cunning, or whatever the script and the story calls for. But as Lyra she is always animate and aware and keenly alive, and was repeatedly singled out for her acting by such critical heavyweights as TIME magazine.
Despite having no more acting experience than a school play or two, Richards impressively holds her own against the rest of the cast, whether it be with Daniel Craig and Nicole Kidman or a stuffed dummy standing in as her on-set daemon. We so believe in all the daemons and alethiometers and talking bears because she does.
And if someone disagrees, well, they probably haven't made it down this far anyway.
One scene in the third act particularly stands out, as Lyra is confronting the fraudulent bear-king Ragnar Sturlusson (and Ian McShane does such a fun and ferocious job with the growly voice I don't even mind the name was altered from Iofur Raknison). As the king is clearly infatuated with Mrs. Coulter, Lyra channels some of her mother's endless wiles, and essentially seduces him.
Weitz remarks on the commentary that it's kind of an odd scene, with a "young girl flirting with an adult bear," but Richards plays it out as flawlessly in the film as Lyra did in the actual novel. Check out the clip of the scene here.
Speaking of Mrs. Coulter, Nicole Kidman is equally as perfect in her role. Naturally beautiful and beguiling, Kidman brings the perfect aura of charm, grace, mystery, complexity, and straight up evil to the part. She plays the role with the same cool command and icy demeanor as her character, breaking that persona only when she needs to twist and manipulate, as she is capable of doing with basically everyone. Her passions and emotions are rarely outwardly channeled through anything but her terrible, mute monkey-daemon.
Apparently Kidman had already read the trilogy years before being cast, as she had been tipped off early regarding the interest already building in her playing the role. True, she is blonde rather than brunette, but when everything else is this perfect, I'll have to invoke the EDP again. And actually, Pullman himself voiced his desire for her to be cast as Coulter, and has since admitted his deepest film regret was that Kidman was never allowed to follow the character through her dramatic growth and surprising transformation in later books.
Interestingly, Pullman even penned a new scene in the script when Coulter slaps her own daemon in a moment of personal turmoil while searching for Lyra.
Just as not many men could be intellectually and emotionally powerful enough to partner with Mrs. Coulter, so few actors could be capable of holding their own in scenes with Nicole Kidman. Fortunately we have Lord Asriel in that regard, and Daniel Craig to play him.
Lord Asriel is often described in the books as someone too overpowering for any room he's in to adequately contain, likened to an animal too small for its cage. As we see in his interactions at Jordan College, he dominates his stage. Mrs. Coulter accomplishes the same feat, albeit with attraction and manipulation, whereas Asriel manages it with the sheer power and force of his personality.
Craig embodies this well, despite not having enough screen time. I've often thought of Asriel as a man who - if he took a single step toward someone - they would automatically take two steps back. This is a person unafraid of challenging any authority, be it earthly or ecclesiastical. Weitz appropriately described him as a "Byronic or Miltonic character," which made the English major in me quite happy.
Not to mention Craig was already a big fan of the books and even sought the role out, as seen in this nifty interview here.
At the other end of the emotional spectrum is Lee Scorseby, the fan-favorite Texas aeronaut, perfectly brought to life by the iconic Sam Elliot.
Pullman consistently uses the adjective "laconic" to conjure up the cowboy-balloonist. Elliot pretty effortlessly captures this tone in his scenes, falling into manners and mannerisms that seem quite natural and even secondhand. Obviously well-versed in the Western genre, it was nice to see that behind the scenes he had very specific ideas regarding what kind of revolver Lee would carry in his holster.
And as for the character's cowboy hat, well, Elliot provided that from his own wardrobe. Hard to get much more authentic than that.
Technically in-universe he may have been a bit older than Lee Scorseby, but he had a real affinity for him as evidenced in this article from the Chicago Tribunehere.
Also, that legendary drawl is on formidable display in the clip here.
Of course, there's iconic, and then there's Iorek Byrnison, the exiled armored bear, one of the feared panserbjorne.
Of all the voice acting in the film, Iain McKellen's deep, gravelly baritone is one of my favorites, one that kind of just lodges in the mind. Admittedly, the role of Iorek was always going to be an interesting one, because the bears in His Dark Materials are not the simple, anthropomorphized talking animals often found in the pages of children's literature. While he is able to form a real, tangible bond with Lyra, and we do get that classic "ecstatic moment" of him allowing her to ride him across the snows, there is nothing really fundamentally cute and cuddly about him.
A key plot point in the books is that of bears trying to become human or something other than bears, even establishing a court of their own. But as Weitz says, their truth is more "in the bones" littering their icy lair than in any civilized pretense. An ice bear is still a bear, and McKellen appropriately maintains a level of ferocity or wildness throughout most of his voice performance.
And of course, there's the bear fight as seen in the clip here.
And yes, that is all.
Chris Weitz rightly admitted on the commentary that the cast all the way through was a veritable "embarrassment of riches." While the roles may have been unfortunately reduced in some cases, we still have and can enjoy Eva Green as Serafina Pekkala or Derek Jacobi and Christopher Lee as the Magisterium puppet masters. That goes for most of the voice acting as well, with even the animal-daemons not being overly cute or sentimental. Honorable mention should probably go to Freddie Highmore for his work as the heavily featured Pantalamion.
Which leads us back to the overall direction of the film itself. The Golden Compass can certainly be nitpicked in that area if one is so inclined, particularly some of the framing and editing and general structure. One could argue this is inherent in adapting a reasonably long and complex literary work, but yes, perhaps the whole project could have been benefited from a more skilled and certainly more experienced person behind the camera. There is admittedly a sense such a huge production sometime squirmed and struggled to get away from Weitz, particularly one demanding so enormous a crew and so high a budget.
To his credit, Weitz had his own doubts regarding his suitability. While he did initially petition the studio for the chance to work on it - even going so far as to write an unsolicited forty page treatment of the film - many writers and directors were considered and shuffled about.
Even as he had stayed on as a scriptwriter, he temporarily did step down long enough for Anand Tucker to briefly take the director's chair. In the end though, Weitz seems to have been motivated to shoulder the cinematic responsibility, and apparently out of no small amount of sincere devotion and/or connection to the books.
I personally feel this is evident during the commentary he gave for the DVD and Blu Ray. He notes the whole team "borrowed like magpies" when it came to all the various production elements - I bring this up because Pullman has always said his daemon would be something from the corvid family of birds, as befits his own writing style. So a nice little inadvertent tie-in there.
As far as Weitz goes, lots of little lines from the book's dialogue do nestle their way into the script, like Farder Coram's advice on reading the alethiometer or Iorek's description of how a bear's armor is like their own daemon or soul (Incidentally, I haven't had a chance to examine it, but someone did dig up the original first draft of TGC that Weitz wrote and can be read here).
There are also little visual metaphors scattered throughout the film, such as the use of circles to represent the more holistic world of Lyra's Jordan, as contrasted with the ovals used to illustrate the more warped iconography of the Magisterium. This is most clearly represented by Bolvangar, and the "broken circle" of the intercision machine. The symbol is "severed" just as the children would be from their daemons.
Weitz's favorite scene is between Lyra and Mrs. Coulter after the near intercision, when mother and daughter finally have to confront each other as such. Interestingly, audiences do get some vague references to Adam and Eve and original sin, most of which were originally provided by Asriel at the end of the novel.
Weitz interestingly remarks of how "condescending" the Bolvangar staff is to the captured children, something children's writers from Pullman to C.S. Lewis have soundly condemned. At any rate, this is the scene where he believes Lyra begins to ask questions about her world, the implied and most immediate being, "Why is it the way it is?" He feels this is an incredibly important step on the road to responsibility and adulthood which is the theme of the series, though not one everyone voices.
(During the writing of this post, I did come across a fascinating article in the Atlantic back in the day, which neatly chronicles the entire making of the film. It does cite Weitz's note in his original treatment that he himself attended an Oxford-like school, Trinity College, Cambridge, and studied 17th century literature, and of course the seminal Paradise Lost. I see a study of literature as critical to any in-depth understanding of His Dark Materials, and I also like how Weitz felt "That this thing about the books being irreligious is a bit of a canard. They are, in fact, very spiritual." Touché. My feeling is that this too is vital to reading and understanding Pullman. The entire article can be read here)
Reviewing the DVD/Blu Ray extras, it is fascinating to see the attitude and potential on display among those involved with the film's launch at the end of 2007. Had things lived up to expectations, The Golden Compass would have been a springboard for the Next Big Thing, possibly even on the Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter level. The promotion for the film was largely uneven in my opinion, even the trailers, but this probably stems from the studio's aforementioned inability to understand the books and truly see the pure gold they potentially had on their hands.
Of course, their ill-advised fear of possible controversy concerning the book's more challenging philosophical ideas didn't help either.
Oh, and no retrospective would be complete without at least a mention of all the usual promo boxes being ticked, from a soundtrack to even a video game release. While I'm a bit of a movie score lover, Alexandre Desplat's music never fully captivated my ear. It is serviceable, and it is neat to hear it as a standalone work, and to that end, the whole soundtrack is available on YouTube here.
As for the game, I never personally played it, hearing it was rather boring and lackluster, as games based on movies all too often are. Still, the people in this YouTube comment section seemed to have enjoyed it, and an entire game walkthrough can be watched here.
But as noted at the beginning, if the film is remembered at all, it's usually as a rather big disappointment. Yet it is important (and only honest) to recall that it performed extremely well in places like England and even more so in Japan - Variety went so far as to label its international ticket sales as "stellar." Just not in the U.S.
Unfortunately New Line Cinema optioned off much of the overseas revenue to help offset the enormous budget as alluded to at the beginning. This wound up costing them even more in the long run. Wikipedia has a really solid article on the whole affair here, which is well worth checking out for those interested.
As far as critics go, I may not have always agreed with Roger Ebert - or his famous film rating thumb - but he did seem to genuinely love The Golden Compass. I was delighted to see that he not only felt it might become something of a classic, but that it was "a darker, deeper fantasy epic" than Lord of the Rings. As a whole he praised it as "a wonderfully good-looking movie, with exciting passages and a captivating heroine." His review can read in its entirety here.
(In point of fact, Ebert felt so strongly about the film, he even wrote a rare second article in its defense, which I just had to include here)
Provided anyone has been determined enough to make it this far, clearly your humble Jordan blogger was honest about providing a reappraisal of this movie, and sincerely attempted to craft one. Even after two seasons of the HBO His Dark Materials series - or maybe even because of them. More on that later. But while the series undeniably has its devotees, I think TGC still stands as a film worthy of more appreciation and less grief, both online and off.
So to address a final few of the concerns and complaints beginning some ten plus years ago, fans have criticized the "Disney-fied" elements of the film, and how the proverbial "dark materials" were lightened up and made too family friendly. As I've already made clear, the look and tone and feel of it mostly falls in line with the Northern Lights reflected in my own mind's eye, so this is just not a problem for me. It actually remains something of a delight.
But let's get real. New Line was never going to not market a film with talking animals to a younger audience. And lest we forget, the movie's plot still revolves around children being abducted by nefarious adult authorities, shuttled off to the remote Arctic, and effectively spiritually lobotomized. Not really that "Disney."
Also readers of the books have criticized Weitz for honestly admitting that some of the original, more overt controversial elements would be toned down. This started with a discussion when he engaged with the fans at bridgetothestars.net. Well, duh.
Again, let's get real. A $180 million dollar movie launching a potential franchise for kids during the Christmas season was never going to begin by seeming irreligious, much less by overtly attacking an (albeit alternate dimension) Catholic Church.
There is some religious iconography scattered throughout the film, but it is true that is pretty much the extent of it. It's never really clear whether the sinister Magisterium is a secular or religious organization. But I would argue, since there is not that much emphasis on religion in the first novel, New Line would have been much more comfortable financing the later two books had the first movie done extremely well commercially. So in my opinion, some of the fans turning on it even before its release was ultimately short-sighted, and did genuinely injure chances for potential sequels.
Lastly, as noted earlier, the very real problem plaguing the final result of the film itself was the ridiculous corporate decision to eliminate the already filmed ending, and releasing it with a wildly disjointed conclusion. If it can even be considered a conclusion. Losing the climatic confrontation of Lyra and Coulter and Asriel where a hole is torn through the sky and into another universe was a critical blow, and can sadly only be glimpsed in some of the final trailers.
Jeff Goldblum famously remarked in the first Jurassic Park sequel that attempting to take dinosaurs off the island was "the worst idea in the history of bad ideas." But there was also the decision to leave TGC without its original, inevitably more powerful ending.
But to be honest, when I watch the film now I just kind of mentally and automatically edit around the closing scenes. This is easier than you might think, partly because I recognize that this was not a creative decision, no matter what the press surrounding the release may have offered at the time. This was strictly a corporate decision from the word go, where a cluess studio stepped in before the film launch and demanded the ending be cut out and restructured in some ill-advised and arbitrary hope of providing a happier ending. Or something.
Weitz tried to spin positive about it, but has long since admitted the film was more or less taken away from him at the least second by New Line. Allegedly there is a two-and-a-half hour cut of the film collecting dust (and not the good kind) in a studio vault somewhere. While Weitz has expressed keen interest in working up an ultimate director's cut, the effects cost would now be prohibitive (to the tune of $17 million).
A fan edit lovingly tried to recreate the original ending here, cobbling bits and pieces of film together. Which seems to me a very Dusty thing to do, so I appreciate the effort.
In closing, other adaptations of His Dark Materials are currently and will continue to be produced and made, but none with this cast and crew, which was a rather poignant realization for some of us. Uneven or no, The Golden Compass was nonetheless the first big budget, big screen attempt to capture and memorialize what I consider to be one of the best and most important novels of the late twentieth century.
That alone makes it special to me and, to bring the Emily Dickinson Principle home, it still just feels so completely right and familiar, the casting and imagery and special effects bringing to visual life so much of what I'd envisioned imaginatively.
Well, hopefully this retrospective was an enjoyable read, and I do encourage any Golden Compass film fans to take the time to follow and read and watch all the links provided. As someone on YouTube commented, they liked to believe there is an alternate world somewhere that managed to adapt and release all three books, not just the first, and that is an idea I enjoy very, very much.
So let's end on a 2007 Philip Pullman interview with the BBC's Lizo Mzimba, where he ruminates on the possibilities and potentials of the film pre-launch. All was so optimistic then.
P.S. Obviously all pictures and clips are the property of New Line Cinema or Warner Brothers.
While I am almost done with my ever-growing The Golden Compass film retrospective, I couldn't resist posting here that the Illustrated Edition of The Golden Compass novel is finally going to be available in the United States!
This is the write up on Amazon -
An over-sized, lavishly illustrated, full-color edition of Philip Pullman's beloved classic.
Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass has been changing the world for twenty-five years.
We are delighted to offer this new edition of the classic, with more than 100 full-color illustrations from acclaimed illustrator Chris Wormell.
A masterwork of storytelling and suspense, The Golden Compass is the story of Lyra and her dæmon familiar and their dangerous journey to the cold, far North, where witch clans and armored bears rule, and where her fearsome uncle is trying to build a bridge to a parallel world...
Fans and newcomers alike will be drawn into the story as never before by Wormell's thrilling illustrations.
Which sounds pretty exciting to me. As I'm currently reading the British version of Northern Lights, I would prefer that illustrated edition to the U.S. one. But still, this book should have an honorary place on any His Dark Materials bookshelf.
