The Golden Compass

The Golden Comapss came out on DVD last week, and I finally made myself see it. The movie is based on the first book in Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy. The book in America is called, "The Golden Compass" while in the UK it's known as "Northern Lights." Interestingly, Pullman refers to the trilogy as "The Golden Compasses." What follows is my impression of the movie.

The Golden Compass

An Impression

I suppose it would have been hard to please me with any adaptation of the movie since I've read the series many times. However, I don't think I'm being a book snob here.

There was a line in one of the The Lord of the Rings movies when Legolas turns to the Dwarf after observing (along with the audience) an obvious feint by the goblin forces and says, "It's a diversion." Well, the audience sort of already knew that. Across movie theaters, audience members could be heard responding, "No, duh!" or just laughing out-right.

The Golden Compass suffers from weak dialog like that. It seemed that the people in charge of making the picture felt the need to quickly get the audience up to speed on the basic plot by spooning it to us. It was almost as if they were saying, "These people are good. These people are bad. These people are witches. These people have daemons. These bears have armor. The monkey is creepy."

On top of the simplistic dialog, the screenplay takes the basic plot and jumbles it all up for no apparent reason. Whole chunks of the story are roughly spliced into completely different parts of the movie with little rhyme or reason. Why does the bear go fight for his land before the children are rescued? By taking that course, he runs twice as far, not that distance seemed to matter. It was almost as if the screen writer did it because, well, it could be done.

Speaking of distance, the whole movie suffered from compressed distances. Everything seemed to happen within a few feet from everything else. Instead of

at the great distances explained in the book. Iorek can zip from the torture station to Svalbard and back in a blink of an eye. In fact after he battled the "King" and defeats him, he picks up Lyra and heads right back to the torture station. Another Legolas moment.

So many things were written out of the movie. I wish they had spent more time developing the delicate position Lyra was in when she came to the torture station and how she escaped. Most of all, I missed seeing the cliff-ghasts, horrible bat-like creatures that smelled death in life.

The final insult was the ending. The movie just sort of stopped about 80 pages from the end of the book...before the climatic final scene. Again, there seems to be no reason for it. The movie wasn't especially long, so that couldn't have been the reason. Instead of excitement, peril, and doom all rolled into one riveting scene, all we get are two dopey-eyed kids looking lovingly into each others' eyes for no apparent reason.

The Golden Compass was a disappointing movie, a shame really for the book is an incredible read.