The Golden Compass Film WTF?

[Ginger]

Cunts Cunts Cunts Cunts. I can't be bothered to say any more. They ruined this great book. Have nothing to do with it, go for the audio book instead.

[DanJW]

Aww, shame. It was looking to be be a pretty good adaptation

[vimes]

Haven't read the book but loved the half hour following the cheesy first 3 minutes. The beginning of the movie has an interesting cold, nearly sadistic tone and I could sense the fairytale going wrong... but then the gypsies come to the rescue and it all goes to hell. The rest of the movie suffers from the same problems plaguing other book adaptations : it's a fucking mess on a narrative level. There are tons of characters, events and reference which are obviously included so that further sequels can be made but in the scope of the movie don't make any sense (why the fuck is Eva Green's character supposed to be important). And there are sequence like the bear duel that are emphasized only because they are cult to a part of the audience thus felt weird to people like me, because it seems like it's been directed and edited for another film altogether. And because the material is so rushed and we don't spend enough time with the important characters, most of the dialogs sound wrong... so there's a high deal of greatness that is lost because of the need to make this piece the beginning of a saga.

[LOPcagney]

Does anyone else think they should have used real bears, like they would have in the 90's? People over-estimate computer animation in a live-action movie. We've gotten to a point where inanimate objects can be rendered realistically, but animals still fall into uncanny valley. It was the same with Narnia.

[Nachimir]

I feel mixed on that. You're right, CGI animals can't convince us where CGI objects can, but shots of real animals can't be used to convey drama as easily as CGI.

I was very impressed that the sequence of the car crashing into the helicopter in Die Hard 4 didn't use any CGI. All the same, I was watching Groundhog Day this morning, and it was strange, watching such recent pre-cgi cinema, where a spectacle still consisted of a car smashing through a gate There's only so much you can do without it.

[LOPcagney]

Yeah, I see that.

I'm just one of those people who's prejudiced against CGI because it so frequently misses the mark. Some part of me wants to say that they should use animatronics over CGI in the case of the bears even if it adds a certain camp aspect to the movie. Somehow it's easier for me to suspend disbelief when the animal at least looks like something out of our physical world, even if neither CGI or stop-motion have been proven to be able to realistically render movement.

It might be something to look at on a case-by-case basis. The CGI didn't bother me in Jurassic Park, but it did 12 years later in Narnia (and 13 years later in The 300).

[twmac]

They should have got the guy who choreographed the bear fight scenes in the Anthony Hopkins film 'The Edge' to do it. They used a combination of puppets, animatronics and a real life bear to make very convincing and dynamic animal scenes. Would have been better, perhaps?

[LOPcagney]

Just watched that scene on YouTube, and yes, with some CGI to make it more spectacular (but not enough to give it away) that could work really well.

[DanJW]

Just saw the film. Yeah, it was pretty bad. A lot of good stuff went into makiing it - some good actors, excellent visuals and so forth. What ruined the film was the screenplay.

You know how there is an outcry when a film adaptation cuts out sections of the book? Well this film proves why it is necessary. It visits every location and character from the book, but only spends about 5 minutes on each. As Ginger told me, there is not a trace of character development. The dialogue and acting could have turned out well if it had time to develop, but it doesn't.

Most annoying is the way the characters self-narrate everything. Every tiny thing that happens, every plot development and motivation, is made explicit by someone saying "lets do A because of B". At no point are the events allowed to speak for themselves. You know this is going to be the problem right from the first scene, some kind of magical scene-setting montage that is teeth-grindingly clumsy.

The bears were good.

[Nachimir]

Damn.

Never heard of the books before, but the trailer made this look like it might be interesting. Sounds like it will annoy me in exactly the same way the pacing did in X-Men 3.

[Scrobbs]

Don't bother with the movie, just read the books.

[Ginger]

The audio books are really good. I've really become a big audio book fan recently; they allow u to enjoy books while doing something else.