Summary:Crap!
Bamf here rematerializing from the void..
When I walked out of the theater in 2001, after seeing Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, I recall thinking the story was interesting, wondering what happens next. I had yet to be captured by the books of Rowling, and to that point really the only exposure I had were bits done on The Daily Show mocking it. It was in 2003 when HP: Prisoner of Azkaban came out that I left with the feeling that I had to know what happens next. The Golden Compass did not illicit from me either reactions by story’s end. In fact it was one of those rare times where mid-way I thought if I got up and left right now, I really wouldn’t mind.
Heads will roll after the dust settles from this one. What I see is a director who has all the resources needed to make a great adaption story, but failed to coherently produce something that would ignite the populace into wanting more. The production on The Golden Compass is truly well done. Costuming, hard sets and CGI rival even the standards set by Pirates of the Caribbean. In my minds eye I could see a figure of numbers like ones set on a cash register in the corner of the screen. With each passing minute I could see the numbers rise like a Grad student’s debt in spring time. The money was there for this, so why doesn’t it work?
At two hours long, the pace of the film is reckless with the amount of information it attempts to inject into the audience—it plays like the longest prologue I have ever seen. I am very much interested by detail-rich plots, and dimension-shifting realities, so this story should be right up my alley, but what it misses on is a character to connect to. I never felt any personal investment in Lyra*, her lost friends, or lost narrative. Nicole Kidman’s** most sensuous Ms. Coulter is the only character that really jumps out at you, and gives a very mature To Die For performance. Other than that, I have not much good to say about the The Golden Compass.
The film cuts both ways; if you are a fan of the series, then most certainly you will be put off by five chapters being truncated into two minutes of dialogue, and if you know nothing of the series then you will be left cold, confused, and possibly wanting a Coke. Neither are a win, and the Box office shows it because word of mouth is the only thing that will get the film legs. Just over 26 million came in for opening weekend, that’s Wild Hogs booty there—err—that’s second week of Wild Hogs booty there. At a 180 million dollar price tag, these are dire looking numbers. My guess is the opening take barely covered advertisement costs; someone is going to be fired if the world gross isn’t able to pick the slack.
And they probably should be, they created a picture that alienates the fan and the newbie. Maybe the distilment that was accomplished on most of the Rowling books is a task that cannot be cloned when dealing with such an ambitious tale of dæmons, barely present Christian subtext, and cross dimensional travel. My entire negative reaction may very well be that my interest in Fantasy has waned. Perhaps I have become too cynical about the genre when all I can think about during the buildup to the clash of Iorek Byrnison and Ragnar Sturlusson was the Action News Team from Anchorman yelling “Bear Fight!” Is this how sci-fi fans felt a year or two after Return of the Jedi came out? If the film breaks even, then the trilogy will be completed, but this is a time when I would encourage one to pick up the books, and create the world for yourself.
*The performances you got from these kids with this sort of heavy handed dialogue should make it very clear why Enders Game can never be done as live action.
**Expect a lawsuit in the future from the Kidman camp. When she is incapacitated on the ground, an extra reaches down to pick her up and in a very quick shot you see someone copping a feel on poor Nicole. But your honor, they seem so round and pert...