The Golden Compass Review

Well, my semester is 87/88ths done, so I can return for a moment to the blogosphere. Kudos to Dave for sending us on the holiday track with a Christmas movie feature that kicked the hell out of my half-assed Halloween themed one.

Last week at some point (it's a bit hazy) I saw Chris Weitz's adaptation of The Golden Compass, about a week after I'd read the book- not such a great idea, it turns out, since the book almost always wins in that scenario. It's stunning to behold, with CGI armored polar bears and extended Lord of the Rings inspired battles, but ultimately loses the depth and darkness of Phillip Pullman's book in favor of family-friendly fuzziness.

There's been plenty of religious controversy surrounding Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, and to be honest I wasn't clear about the furor after reading the first book- it's the next two which make the whole revisionist Paradise Lost theme explicit. The Golden Compass the film, however, one-ups the book to piss off the church, in a way- instead of morally ambiguous hero-figures and no clear nemesis, the film invents some black-clad, deep voiced evil "Magisterium" members to look menacing (played by the always menacing Derek Jacobi and Christopher Lee's evil voice (featuring Christopher Lee!)). In the books, the Magisterium is indeed a shady branch of the church, but it isn't directly seen being evil until book three.

It's not that any changes from book to film are bad- they're pretty much inevitable, unless you're the Coen brothers. But there are some major ones here that are inexplicable, like moving a chunk of the ending to the next film for no good reason, and minor ones that just keep adding up until you feel like they've missed the point. It has a lot to do with New Line Cinema, I suspect, trying to protect their $180 million dollar investment and make it safe for the whole family. This makes me doubt the next two films will ever be made, because what do kids care about John Milton?

And I'm not sure if New Line understands that you can't replicate Lord of the Rings success just by making other things look similar. But you can practically hear the executives making little "cha-ching" noises behind the scenes in this trailer, when the One Ring transmorphs into our titular Golden Compass. The movie even starts with a similar exposition-y voice-over from witch Eva Green, explaining exactly what's important and what we need to know.

And I'm not saying the Cate Blanchett monologue from Fellowship doesn't do the same, but at least she's actually telling a story about Isildur, Sauron, and the like. Eva Green is basically just listing things that will be important later: Hey, people in this world have animals called daemons that are their souls, isn't that crazy? Also, there's this sentient stuff called Dust, watch out for that later! Plus there are these golden things that sort of resemble compasses which are totally going to be important (not that the title wouldn't have tipped you off).

It's a bit too condescending. What am I, ten? And even though this film might be aimed at the younger set, I bet there are even some ten-year-olds saying "What am I, four?"

All that being said, it was still fun to see some of Pullman's ideas depicted on the screen (like the Polar Bear fight, and the daemons themselves), and this movie also had Sam Eliot at his Sam Eliotiest, which is always cool (Actually, if he had done the opening monologue in the voice of The Stranger I would have loved it). So it's only downgraded by the relative awesomeness of Pullman's trilogy, which would've been hard to match anyway (or at least to secure $180 million for).

When to See It: On DVD

Leftover thoughts:

• Kidman and Daniel Craig are actually really good, and well cast for their roles, but don't have much screen time because of the ending shift.
• Dakota Blue Richards was awesome, but even she couldn't sell the Pollyanna-ish monologue she was given at the film's abbreviated closing- it just wasn't Lyra to me.
• There was one scene the film had that the book didn't that was pretty cool: a short bit where Kidman slaps her own monkey daemon. Otherwise The Golden Compass was pretty light on deft character touches like that one.
• If you haven't read the books, you should. End of story. I finished The Amber Spyglass last week and I am mesmerized still.