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First things first: be warned. The Golden Compass is the first movie of a trilogy, and I found the ending very unsatisfying in itself, enough to take off half a point from my review score. There is very little closure to be had. In addition, many critics say that some of the original books' themes have been watered down considerably for the movie. I have not read the books, so I can't comment further on this. It does feel, however, that some of the themes brought up in the movie could have been explored far more thoroughly and satifyingly. The usual book-to-movie conversion woes are also evident: some plot points seem rushed and out of context. One final point of criticism: the movie's music, while mostly unobtrusive, was occasionally jarringly bad. A certain chase scene comes to mind, where the director apparently felt that my appreciation of the danger the protagonist was in would be enhanced by what sounded like extremely loud, high-pitched bursts of noise in glorious Dolby Surround. And the song played at the ending credits was simply terrible. Now the good news. Notwithstanding all its faults, The Golden Compass is a solid movie, with occasional flashes of brilliance. The cinematography is consistently good, and occasionally breathtakingly awesome. The plot is, at its core, very tried-and-true (there is, in fact, a plot revelation about halfway in that had me laughing from how obviously it paralleled another well-known movie), but well-executed. It is the details of a movie that make or break it, though, and The Golden Compass' details are extremely compelling. The CG "daimons" could easily have been excessively annoying and cutesy, but they weren't. If anything, they often stole the show from the human actors. I was surprised to find myself actually caring about a cast of what can only honestly be described as CG furries; I think the last time that happened was the first Shrek movie. In short, a good movie that's very close to being great. We left the theater feeling that we got our money's worth. This, for me, puts it in the top 30% of movies I have seen this year. 3.5 / 5, and I honestly think (and hope) the sequel will be a 4, at least.
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Dec 18, 2007 15:21
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| # ? Apr 25, 2024 05:19 |
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Golden Compass is not a bad movie, but it has some major flaws. The whole thing is beautiful to look at, the daemons are excellent, and the casting is nearly perfect (Dakota is exactly how I pictured Lyra). On the other hand, the score is forgettable, and the entire movie feels very rushed. It's the latter that bothered me. Having read the books, there's very little that can be cut out without damaging the story. The movie manages to keep all the important bits in, but only by running at a frantic pace for 2 hours. A side note about the religious content: I've heard Christian groups up in arms about the movie, and I've heard reviews that say that the movie wimped out by softening its anti-religion message. In fact, the first book is not particularly anti-religion and the movie remains true to the book. Later books are strongly anti-theistic, and I can't imagine what the filmmakers plan to do if they get to make a sequel. 3/5 for the ADD-feeling it gave me
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Dec 20, 2007 18:46
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I went into the movie preparing myself for the worst, but not actually knowing a lot about the subject matter. The few things I did know were random bits I snapped up here and on tvtropes. However, I was positively surprised. The characters are endearing, the acting is decent, the technical stuff is decent usually and awesome occasionally. I saw this dubbed in German, so I'm really looking forward to seeing it with the original voices. While the movie clearly suffers from adaptation syndrome (as there are a great amount of things I would have loved to know more about, and it is obvious that there are things only hinted at that a book would have explained in greater detail) we found it a thoroughly enjoyable experience. 4/5. Entertaining, somewhat lacking, but enjoyable. (Edit: This is the first part of a trilogy. If you expect closure at the end, well, you will get some. I knew about this, my friend didn't, I was ok with it, he was gutted. We will definitely be watching parts 2 and 3 if they come out.) sam.freak fucked around with this message at 22:55 on Dec 20, 2007 |
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Dec 20, 2007 22:53
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"The Golden Compass" is the most highly-polished turd of a movie I have ever seen. Though the movie centers around a golden compass (a sort of tarot-stopwatch that answers any question you ask it), it seems almost like the movie's plot was written first, then the golden compass was added at last minute as a device designed to cover some of the forehead-smacking plot holes you will see (Hurry! We must rescue Billy, because somehow I know they're doing dreadful things to him!). It's clear from the outset that this movie was trying to reach as broad an audience as it could, and that the makers really really wanted to get rich like those Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter guys. The main character is Oh, and they're all furries. As detailed by the narrator at the beginning of the movie, every character has a daemon, which is basically their inner-animal/soul that serves as a companion. The animals talk, too. It's convenient, really, because all the bad guys in the movie are animals that hiss and roar, like snakes and bugs and hyenas and wolves, while all the good guys are things like puppy-dogs, cats, ferrets and other cute animals. In short, every character in the story is a stereotype lifted from another movie, with about as much depth as a postage stamp. The entire plot is superficial, meaningless, and riddled with holes. Still, the special effects were terrific, the cinematography was beautiful, and the music was inoffensive. As stupid as the story was, there's something cool about watching polar bears in plate mail tearing poo poo up. The take-home message the film-makers wanted to leave you with is pretty much this: gently caress the church, and embrace your inner animal, man! 2/5
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Dec 21, 2007 07:05
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While it does sorta follow the book (and I really do love His Dark Materials), it doesn't do it well. The visuals are wonderful but the movie seemed to be in such a hurry to blow through as much plot as possible with a bunch of pan shots of neat scenery with CG painted on top of it. I mean, that movie just chugged along as fast as possible to make sure it touched all the major points. The book seemed much slower pace, allowing you to absorb the back stories that the movie tosses out in passing. And this could have been fixed a bit if the movie had been longer than 2 hours, like Lord of the Rings. I can't help but compare it to the book because if I hadn't read it, the movie wouldn't have made much sense. My boyfriend had never read it and outright hated the movie, saying that if the book was that unejoyable and confusing then he would never read it. Also, the overacting of the people when their daemons were hurt. When Lyra escapes and the monkey gets his hand shut in the window, Mrs. Coutler has time to hurry inside the room, pause, and then grab her hand in pain. What? A friend noticed an odd thing: All of the bad guys were surrounded by Art Deco and all the good guys were set in places of Victorian and semi-Medieval architecture. That seemed a little odd because it feels like it should have been the other way around. And I'm so disappointed by the ending. Goddammit, there was only 3 pages after that and it would have felt a whole lot less cheesy and set up well for the next film! Pros: -Everyone was pretty much spot on character wise for the book. -It's so pretty! -Awesome and violent bear fights... Well, basically, anything to do with the bears. Cons: -Extremely mediocre music -The ending -Poor acting at times -Super fast paced plot on steroids! 3/5
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Dec 22, 2007 05:32
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awful I was expecting Lord of the Rings, and I got Neverending Story. mod edit: this is a good example of how not to write a review (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Dec 24, 2007 00:33
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Everything about this movie seemed to scream to me "I want to be Chronicles of Narnia when I grow up!". It has the feel of a movie that was designed by committe specifically to touch upon every major plot point that 'needs' to be in a fantasy movie, but in the end all that accomplishes is a movie that is a long string of soft-fantasy cliches. The CGI was impressive, but the plot thudded along incredibly predictably, with every major plot turn being clumsily foreshadowed. I was not the only one who thought so: moments before a certain revelation towards the end of the movie, someone else in the theatre shouted out Luke, I am your father!, and not 10 seconds later his "prediction" was proven to be correct. I haven't read the books, but based on the movie I have no desire to. It seriously reeks of a "Me Too" desire to cash in while fantasy is still One star, for bears in plate mail loving poo poo up, and that's only because of the jaw dropping moment at the end of the fight.
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Dec 28, 2007 14:15
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I just saw this movie today and I was sorely disappointed. Being a lover of the books maybe I am somewhat biased, but the whole movie felt rushed, like "this scene from the book, then this scene from the book, and then this scene from the book!" I could follow it, based on having read the books, but I seriously doubt anyone who hadn't read them could follow it. There were the minimal amount of exposition between scenes to keep the audience up-to-date. The acting was fine, with Dakota Blue Richards standing out as the perfect Lyra from the books. Just as I imagined her, with the right mix of toughness, smarts, and mischievousness. Computer graphics were cool, none of them stood out in an obvious way. The ending ... oh god, the ending. It sucked. Taken on it's own it didn't make any sense - Roger has been rescued and now they're off to ... where? Totally unsatisfying, we hadn't been made to care about Roger in any meaningful way, so why now? Oh, and he dies in like 10 minutes anyway, so who cares? All in all - 3/5, 1 for CG, 1 for Dakota/Lyra, and 1 for actually making the trilogy into film!
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Jan 10, 2008 02:00
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From my site (possible spoilers) “The Golden Compass” is both whimsical fantasy and serious minded religious allegory, and like all things that occupy opposites it tends to fall in a middling gray zone somewhere in between. Based on the Philip Pullman novel “Northern Lights,” the film takes place on a parallel Earth where humans wear their souls on the outside in the form of animals (or daemons in the book’s parlance), Polar bears forge armor and intone heroically, and the world is dominated by the totalitarian Magisterium. Our hero in this world is Lyra, a rebellious tomboy played with durable aplomb by Dakota Blue Richards. A ward of Jordon College in England, she scamps around campus, occasionally helping her uncle, Lord Asriel (Daniel Craig) spy on local political figures, especially those representing the Magisterium. It turns out that our man Asriel has stumbled on his very own Corpernican Revolution in the form of a substance called Dust, a theoretical particle that the Magisterium considers heretical. After an agent of the Magisterium fails to poison him, Lord Asriel takes off on an Arctic expedition in Norway to continue his Dust research. The indomitable Lyra wants to tag along, but Asriel would rather she stay out of the Dust controversy. While he’s away, Lyra is visited by the icily beautiful Ms. Coulter (the typically fetching Nicole Kidman), who asks her to accompany her to the north as her assistant. Right from the start we know something’s wrong: Ms. Coulter’s daemon is a vicious and mute monkey who immediately takes to harassing Lyra’s, the willful but physically weak Pantalaimon (voiced by Freddie Highmore). On her journey north, Lyra encounters fantastic creatures and locations, including an exiled polar bear warrior, Lorek Byrnison (voiced by Ian McKellen), an airship pilot with a southwestern drawl and cowboy gear (who if not Sam Elliot?), the swashbuckling leader of the seafaring Gyptians (Jim Carter), a kindly witch (Eva Green looking pretty hot) and the dark agents of the Magesterium called the Gobblers. The setting is the best thing about the film, a Victorian-Edwardian steampunk hodgepodge, a world as advanced as our own but with a nineteenth century emphasis on craft. Of course the major problem with the story is the problem with fantasy epics in general these days. Too much content, not enough time. So many characters and locations are introduced in such a short span that the film forfeits character development and a strong story arc for event after encounter after action sequence- the wheels keep turning, and the film never slows down to explain anything. One minute a cowboy befriends Lyra, the next she inspires a polar bear to nearly fight to the death for her. Either directors need to learn to cut scenes in the writing stage and the editing room, or studios need to start approving longer running times, because these fantasy films are getting overstuffed, and the speed is killing the very things that root us in otherwise silly fantasy settings: believable and sympathetic characters. There are interesting characters and ideas floating around in this fantastical world, but they’re never allowed to crystallize into something we can believe in. The controversy surrounding the film, which may or may not have killed its box office chances, comes to us via the film’s religious content or lack thereof. Fans of the book have complained that the film version cuts out references to organized religion. In the book, the Magisterium is an explicit take on organized religion (especially the Catholic Church), but since the film is being pimped to the precious family market, it never refers to the Magisterium as a church. However, the allegorical message remains brazenly clear. In the last act of the film, which I have no interest in revealing, the story veers into its riskiest material, involving the great lengths organized religion- and let it be stated for the record that an attack on organized religion is not the same thing as an attack on faith- will go to protect young and old alike from sin and sexuality (or Dust if you will), up to and including mutilation. Think of it as “Why I’m Not a Christian” for children. The last third of film is electrified a little by its daringness. Political statements are permitted in mass marketed films when they neatly align with partisan squabbles, but questioning religion in a family film is still taboo. And yet it would be pretty hard to miss the underlying ideas here. One ultimately wonders if there was any reason to censor its content at all. The film left religion alone and tanked in the United States. Perhaps taking the papal bull by the horns would have made the movie an event, something worthy of discussion. Instead we’re left with an often entertaining but mostly high minded mess, Kate Bush song notwithstanding.
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Jan 15, 2008 08:36
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I really want to say I enjoyed this movie. I had finished reading the book and then watched the movie. I found a lot of plot holes in comparison from the book and found the movie kept jumping ahead and then returning back from the books plot. The cast and the movie looked great, but for example Lyra breaks the kids out of the camp before Lorek fights to become King in the book, which it's totally reversed in the movie. Overall the movie is great if you just watch the movie I still really enjoyed it but the conversion from the book story to the movie story makes me vote a 3/5 For Book to Movie plot rearrangement.
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Feb 14, 2008 14:03
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I get the feeling from watching this movie that a lot of the scenes must have looked good in the studio being shot, and that the production team just had to cover every major plot point because, dammit, it was all just so good. I can sympathize with them in that respect, too, because most of the performances are if not top notch, at least very respectably professional. Dakota Fanning especially seems as if she stepped though a portal out of the book's world and onto the screen. Nothing can match the images a careful reader can brew up in their own minds while reading a book like The Golden Compass, but the art team did a serviceable job. The world itself is a good example of the typical conceptart.org contiributer's wet dream, and what the film produced was the bare minimum of what I would expect. My two major complaints are that some very compelling developments were given too cursory a treatment at the expense of utter completeness, and that the visceral impact of the book was severely softened. Seeing as how the screenplay framed some key expositions in very different ways than the book, much of Lyra's travel from Anglia to The North could have been cut out in favor of the wonderous tension and action that happens later in the book. Adventure is the meat of a fantasy story, and the exploits and ordeals of Lyra are what's going to keep an audiance captivated. Sure the gyptians are endearing, and its importent to properly frame them, but it could have been done much more efficently. If the bear were introduced earlier, and the bear fight placed closer to the end, that would have produced a much stronger motivation for auidence involvement. The scences in the intercision center could also have been extended for much of the same effect. As it stands, the progression is simply mechanical. You can tell the director didn't have a favorite part of the book, and that's what really disappoints me. Also, since the movie covers up so carefully any direct refrences to religion, would it be totally wrong for it to at least approach some of the more serious and terrible things that happen in the book but get smoothed over in the movie? Bloody bear fight and Mrs. Coulter's fetish for watching children getting their daemons excised, I'm talking about ya'll Final Verdict: Awesome book, lovely movie. SMERSH Mouth fucked around with this message at 06:56 on Feb 22, 2008 |
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Feb 22, 2008 06:54
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Finally got around to watching it and it wasn't as "awesome" as my friends said it was. The highlight of the movie for me was definitely the alcoholic, homeless polar bear. It was such a good parody of other movies. I wish he hadn't developed out of that phase so quickly, because that could have made for some good comedy material. Lyra was well-acted, and well-written. And Nicole Kidman was delicious. I did NOT know it was a trilogy coming into this, so I was pretty upset at the ending and it really soured things for me. Would it have been hard for them to put "part I of III" in the beginning credits? I felt pretty cheated. The visuals were great, though. They did not try to save money on this movie. I'll give it a 3/5. ^^ Also, that was not Dakota Fanning in the title role.
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Aug 2, 2008 19:05
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Picture this: Peter Jackson makes Lord of the Rings as a single film, cramming all three books into just two hours and eliminating half of the characters. That's how I felt as I struggled to make sense of this movie. I haven't read the books, but I have heard that they are very good, and I could tell that this film didn't do the books justice. Everything was just so drat rushed. I felt like I was watching a "refresher" at the beginning of a serial tv show: "Previously on The Golden Compass..." - that's how much detail seemed to have been glossed over. My recommendation is to avoid this movie. While it was fairly entertaining, the hurried pace annoyed me. Read the books first if you're really interested, and possibly skip the movie entirely. It is by no means a classic. 3/5 plushpuffin fucked around with this message at 08:08 on Aug 10, 2008 |
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Aug 10, 2008 05:40
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| # ? Apr 25, 2024 05:19 |
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I had never read the books but I had high hopes for this movie, maybe I was just in the mood for a fantasy action/adventure like Stardust or Chronicles of Narnia. I was sorely disappointed though. The storyline felt rushed and the pacing was horrible. I never got that whole anti-Catholicism vibe that a lot of people complained about, but really people complain that every movie made is racist or derogatory towards someone. The premise of the movie was interesting but they never expanded on the parts that interested me, and I don't feel like they did a very good job of portraying certain characters as good or bad, it felt like too many shades of gray for a film like this. What really killed it for me though was the ending, I was unaware that it was the first in a trilogy but gently caress, give us some closure. If the next sequel was coming out in a few months I'd be more forgiving, Matrix Reloaded to Revolutions for example, but they really Halo 2'd the ending and expect people to wait years in anticipation for another film. They should have just made this one longer or found a better stopping point then "Big battle, monologue about all this awesome poo poo we're going to do..... end." Overall a pretty big let-down, I wouldn't have been that impressed with the film as a whole but the ending was a huge nail in the coffin. 2/5 Pros Well cast with good actors, interesting premise Cons Horrible ending, the pacing was off throughout most of the film, poor characters
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Aug 15, 2008 21:16
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