(no subject)

[sapote]

Alright, so I could have put together the first half of The Golden Compass better than the directors/producers did. The atmosphere was all wrong - they're not playing in golden fields, they're playing in the industrial filth of steampunk London, and they do not see themselves as children playing anyway - and the exposition was rushed and clumsy. I am sick of movies being accessible. If children in the audience are mature enough to see a talking, thinking character get his jaw ripped off his face, they are mature enough to think while engaging with the narration. Anyway, I don't think the movie succeeded - my roommate read the book three days ago for the first time, and she reported, as was my feeling, that someone who didn't know what was happening would have been confused.

It should have been about two hours longer.
They are going to fix Roger, and the daemonless children, and that PISSES ME OFF. It's not reparable. It's a movie about the destruction of innocents in the name of preserving innocence, dance with those who brought you or go home.

There were many good bits - Serafina Pekkala was fierce and beautiful, and the girl who plays Lyra is not bad and does an excellent determined face. My absolute favorite part was the friendship between Lee Scoresby and Iorek Byrnison. It was the only thing that didn't get explained but just was, and it worked beautifully.

I cannot wait to vid all of this.
Also, the clothes were way too revealing. There is nothing wrong with cinematic Victoriana! I will call Miss Coulter Senorita Sparkletits from this point forward. That is all.

It has been pointed out that I need to explicitly state here that I didn't hate the movie. I rather liked it! Yes, this is a twist ending on that, isn't it?

Comments

[chibimuse.livejournal.com]

I generally liked it, many peeves but overall I liked the actors and the quality of the visuals (mmm pretty coach and zeppelin).

The most disappointing thing to me was how they treated the Billy Costa scenes. It didn't come across anywhere NEAR as heartbreaking and horrifying as it should have been! I was dreading that scene, and then we got to it and it fell totally flat. Ooh, pan is kind of scared, and look, Billy is a bit frostbitten! Lame. It should have been absolutely terrifying, and there was no 'fixing' him!

That kind of ties into the whole tone of the movie thing, there was too much happy go lucky, not enough dread and malice. (like making Iorek 'defeated' instead of a murderer! And not indicating that the adults at Bolvagangar had been separated from their Daemons)

I kind of loved Senorita Sparkletits, at least they consistently went with that time frame, not just sticking her sparkley sluttyness in with typical victoriana.

The Roger ROGER roger ending just HURTS if you know what comes next! Harsh.

Generally it felt like they watered down everything, and tried to make it all less frightening and harsh, so it was still good, but way less intense. I understand that they wanted it to be okay for kids, but they just lost so much of the emotion of the thing! Like the total wrongness of the King and the bear court, trying to live like people, and the aforementioned Billy Costa.

[sapote3.livejournal.com]

It's the Zeppelin World from Doctor Who season 2! No, seriously, tell me Alternate London wasn't actually a Pullman homage.

Re: Billy, I really think they're going to try to fix it. There is the tiny molecule of a chance, somewhere in the galaxy-sized nebula of my doubt, that they might pull it off without it being Disney and horrible.

See again the metaphor for scale.

The adults at Bolvagangar were creepy, but they could have been creepier! In fact, now that I think about it, what they needed were a couple of crowd scenes.

I didn't think Coulter was bad, I just - I loved how book Coulter, in my head, was unimpeachably covered, showing the barest flash of wrist, in no way overt or challenging, and yet she showed up in the middle of all those poor celibate scholars and it was this Huge Thing. I suppose sparkly breasts is a convenient shorthand for that effect, I'm just planning to remain committed to how it looked in my head. Also, I don't know, something about how people's souls walk around outside their bodies made me want their bodies to be more covered.

Maybe the watering-down was intentional! I thought it was just clumsy overexposition - making everything known, where suspense and horror are achieved by keeping the audience from really knowing what's happening. Also, I am continuously surprised by how many people are unable to narrate children in a way that doesn't have some cutesy in it, that takes for granted that inside their heads they are full people whose concerns and thoughts and lives are as valid as everyone else's. This is why an Ender's Game movie is probably unmakeable - the authors get it, but I don't know if enough other people do to make a movie.

[kuwdora.livejournal.com]

he adults at Bolvagangar were creepy

The reason they were creepy (specifically think about Lyra being led into that one room at Bolvangar and there was that person standing guard outside, with his golden retriever looking very very zoned out?) is because the adults were also experimented upon. They had their daemons sliced from them, but they didn't die; they were in fact, walking death because they had their soul sliced from them.

I hated the movie mostly because it infantalized the entire thing. Asriel was suppose to be showing the scholars of Jordan Grummon's head as well as that picture of Dust in the north. Lyra was fascinated with the head and all.

I'm not going to spare paper-writing time ranting about this, though. you heard my flaily tirades last night anyway.

[sapote3.livejournal.com]

I remember from the book *g*. And I mean, a couple of scenes of nurses walking down the hall, crisp, British, their little daemons trotting after them, and something just icy and vacant about them, like zombies or ghosts. And yes, I was pissed at the lack of head-in-jar. Go write your paper! You will feel better.

[phnelt.livejournal.com]

...She kind of hasn't seen those episodes. I keep meaning to, but you know, things come up. But dude, now that you mention it, totally is. Somebody better fess up so I can hug them. Not connected: we're sitting watching the movie and it's the end, and chibimuse is squealing, oh no, this is dreadful, oh Roger, and I'm with her the first two times and then I started to laugh. That was definitely on the scale of feeling like a terrible person for laughing, since obviously other people did not feel like that was a brick that they were being bashed over the head with.

You know what I worry about now? Instead of being a murderer, Will will have just lost to some guys in combat! It'll be sweet, gah.

I totally should have said something about Billy Costa and that, since it totally feeds into my point, since completely what she said.

Also, I don't know, something about how people's souls walk around outside their bodies made me want their bodies to be more covered. win

Children, why are they so hard? Also, children lie, and they're mean. They're not sweet visions of Edwardian purity. Why is this so hard to get?