When I went to see this movie yesterday I had my hopes set high having read the whole series of books and having seen the trailer which looked amazing. It was luck that I got there coming screeching in with only minutes before the movie started. And not to far into the movie my opinion of it was this; watch the trailer, it it better and free.
"The Golden Compass" is a hollow version of what the book is, an adventure with fantastic fantasy that layers gnostic beliefs with a myth from our time in another universe. The movie captures some of the world with dignity and faith and has its own stunning visuals but is otherwise unworthy as a movie and as an adaptation of a better work.
Lets take this movie apart. Good things would be its use of color. It was great, reds stood out and cold halls of white spread dotted with only the pale pigments of skin. There was one scene that I wowed at and that was when they walk into this room at this hospital place (Bolvangar for those who have seen it or read the books) and there are all these kids sitting in rows looking like comatose and there is the big palm tree mural on the far wall and it looks really cool, I wish I had a picture.
Another good thing about it would be the effects. They continue to go leaps and bounds with creature effects. They have always annoyed me because I don't think they really look real but it is amazing the things they can do. Maybe one day it will just be people in silly jump suites on a green screen and that will be how they make movies. I sure hope not. I kinda doubt that will happen.
Thats it really for the good things in the movie. there were some other good things like how when the daemons (the manifestation of the soul that walks side by side with the humans in the universe portrayed) die and the effect just kinda added to the chaos of any battle scene. But now for the bad things.
There were two categories for bad things mostly. There were righting bad things and there was the editing bad things (it's not really editing bad things thats just what I am calling it for now, it will be discussed in some detail later).
So the writing bad things. Well in the book it at first is hard to parse out wether or not they are in a different universe or not, allot seems the same, they start in Oxford (a very real place). They have all the geography that we have i.e. Norway is up, Texas is down and to the left of there. All this becomes clear over the corse of the book as you read. In the movie, however, they have to say it just flat out. It's like somebody comes up and just says "Hi this is who I am, this is how I got here." or "This is what you need to know before the movie starts and now I am just going to tell you in a monotone so that you know." This is called explication and is a necessary part of any narrative. But in this movie they go about it in such a way that it almost kills you to hear. Characters pause and take chunks of time just to explain everything to you. As opposed to letting the audience see it and let it flow.
This explication is really annoying just thats all. It shows that the writer didn't really know how to craft a movie. In a book he might get away with it, although in the series none of the explication is like that and it works well all the same. It slows down the plot of the movie so that the rest has to be rushed through so that we don't loose time. The movie could have been the same length and better all around if they had just left out the long monologs of people telling you their history.
Now for the other half of the problems. And this is far more subtle than the first. I would maintain that it is more problematic and shows a greater lack of ability from the writer than the first although the first problem lends him no credit.
Let me start by laying it down like this. If you are Dakota Blue Richards, Nicole Kidman, or a neat particle effect then you are good, you are set because you have more than two scenes. If you are anything else then woe is you your talent goes to waste since you only have two scenes in the whole movie. I looked forward to seeing Daniel Craig do his thing and since he was one of the first billed I assumed that he would have some cool things going on. Same was true for other actors like Christopher Lee and Eva Green, they are A-list actors that I would go to see in a movie and they only have two scenes cause they were not one of the three things that has more than two scenes.
Now there were other things in the movie that were of disappointment. As a fellow movie goer said to me after the movie "I felt the ships [the boats and balloons] looked fake, like they were just pasted there." All I could say was "Thats true, for all two scenes that they had."
What does all this tell one about the movie? That it is poorly done is the only conclusion. What is good in it is drowned out by things that curl the movie goers toes. It makes me not want to read the books. If that is the case with any adaptation then you know you have failed. So I give it its three of five stars, but in my red teachers correction pen, I slap a big F in a circle with the note see me after class on it.