The Golden Compass

[MacGuffin]

Kidman plots path to "Compass"

Nicole Kidman is in final negotiations to star in "The Golden Compass," an adaptation of the first installment of author Philip Pullman's best-selling "His Dark Materials" trilogy.

Dakota Blue Richards already has been cast as Lyra, a girl who discovers she is at the heart of a hideous conspiracy and that the fate of many children rests with her. She embarks on a journey to the far north to save her best friend and encounters shape-shifting creatures, witches and a variety of otherworldly characters.

Kidman will play Mrs. Coulter, a sinister scholar and socialite with a mysterious past who has a secret link to Lyra.

Chris Weitz ("About a Boy") is directing for New Line. Production on the film, budgeted at $150 million, is scheduled to begin September 4 in the U.K.

Kidman last was seen on the big screen in 2005's "Bewitched." Her upcoming films include the Diane Arbus biopic "Fur" and the sci-fi thriller "The Visiting."

[MacGuffin]

Trailer here.

Release Date: December 7th, 2007 (wide)

Starring: Nicole Kidman, Dakota Blue Richards, Eva Green, Daniel Craig, Nonso Anozie 

Directed by: Chris Weitz (About A Boy)

Premise: Lyra Belacqua is an orphan who lives happily in Jordan College, Oxford, playing with local boys and terrorizing the professors. However, when Lyra overhears scholars discussing a plot against her uncle, Lord Asriel, centering around a mysterious substance called Dust, her curiosity is roused. Soon Lyra is in over her head as she uncovers a frightening plot and a whole new world of possibilities.

[Pubrick]

the first part of the trailer plays like an obvious set up for The Hobbit, only to be offered a completely unrelated story.

i don't give a shit about the hobbit but i imagine some ppl will feel a little cheated after like the first 10 seconds.

and i don't buy that kid as dakota.

[cron]

orphans? again?

[Redlum]

Ileen: You have to see the movie, because what we do, we take it in a direction that I think you'll be very very happy with, that also Philip was very happy with. Because one has to define their terms, about what Original Sin is, what Dust is, what Dust does, and how it acts as a motivator. From Philip's point of view, and what Philip has said, in fact Philip has written certain scenes for us; that he's been involved with, that Chris has then rewritten. For us Dust is wisdom. And that's why the Magisterium wants to separate it. What the Magisterium wants is little automatons to do exactly what they want. They don't want free thinking individuals who challenge their authority: nothing different than what we come across in this world.

Does this seem slightly watered down to anyone else? I mean the last chapter of the book - the big pay-off and explanation - a central character is talking about Genesis (of the biblical not musical variety) and castration. It also occurs to me that the above studio interpretation is just a re-hash of one of the central themes of Lord of the Rings.

Right now, I don't think this film is going to pull a Narnia but I think for those who have a read the books it might feel like a bit of a mess.

[MacGuffin]

New Trailer here.

[Redlum]

That trailer is far less clunky than previous outings which bodes well. VFX heavy films are a nightmare to produce trailers for.

Ian McKellen, though.... Why are they so desperate to live in the shadow of Lord of the Rings? It will be extremely annoying to watch this if it becomes an Over-the-Hedge- voice-talent-fest for everyones daemons. Hopefully Craig and Kidman can elevate it

[Ravi]

http://www.catholicleague.org/release.php?id=1342

"THE GOLDEN COMPASS" SPARKS PROTEST
October 9, 2007

Catholic League president Bill Donohue discussed the league's reaction to the upcoming movie, "The Golden Compass":

"New Line Cinema and Scholastic Entertainment have paired to produce 'The Golden Compass,' a children's fantasy that is based on the first book of a trilogy by militant English atheist Philip Pullman. The trilogy, His Dark Materials, was written to promote atheism and denigrate Christianity, especially Roman Catholicism. The target audience is children and adolescents. Each book becomes progressively more aggressive in its denigration of Christianity and promotion of atheism: The Subtle Knife is more provocative than The Golden Compass and The Amber Spyglass is the most in-your-face assault on Christian sensibilities of the three volumes.

"Atheism for kids. That is what Philip Pullman sells. It is his hope that 'The Golden Compass,' which stars Nicole Kidman and opens December 7, will entice parents to buy his trilogy as a Christmas gift. It is our hope that the film fails to meet box office expectations and that his books attract few buyers. We are doing much more than hoping—we are conducting a nationwide two-month protest of Pullman's work and the film. To that end, we have prepared a booklet, 'The Golden Compass: Agenda Unmasked,' that tears the mask off the movie.

"It is not our position that the movie will strike Christian parents as troubling. Then why the protest? Even though the film is based on the least offensive of the three books, and even though it is clear that the producers are watering down the most despicable elements—so as to make money and not anger Christians—the fact remains that the movie is bait for the books. To be specific, if unsuspecting Christian parents take their children to see the movie, they may very well find it engaging and then buy Pullman's books for Christmas. That's the problem.

"We are fighting a deceitful stealth campaign on the part of the film's producers. Our goal is to educate Christians so that they know exactly what the film's pernicious agenda really is."

[Redlum]

There's a line in the film where Lyra tells Iorek the armoured polar bear how long she'd been looking forward to meeting an ice bear, scared even, and now that she'd finally met one - how disappointed she was.

The Golden Compass has unfortunately ended up being in the same league of beloved literary adaptation as Narnia and the early Harry Potter films rather than delivering the same calibre of film as The Lord of the Rings, which it deserves. Do not think that I am some whinging devotee of the source material - my problem with the film is not a cumulative complaint from nit-picking the minutia of detail or even omitted scenes (barring one). My assessment of the films root-problem is firstly a Director out of his depth and therefore lacking the conviction of his vision, and secondly a studio mandate to blunt and distort the controversial elements of the story.

Barring these fundamental problems (which I'll get to in more detail) practically every other aspect of the film is excellent. The whole film rests on Dakota Blue-Richard's (Lyra) shoulders and she and Sam Elliott give real colour to the characters as well as an excellent, understated performance by Tom Courtenay. The supporting cast of CGI demons are solid like the rest of the effects work. The sets and production design are all top notch. The design and execution of the polar bear confrontation and its awesome coup de grace, was so good it actually made me forget for a brief moment that I was watching a film that had no balls.

The script is so clunky and unnecessarily expositional that it pays greater compliments to the actors whom managed to do such a good job.
There are portions of dialogue from key characters that belong on a title card. People repeat full names over and over in casual conversation, make exclamations of the inferred meanings of things they observe and generally buckle under the weight of being forced to tell the story rather than be a part of it. In one scene of exposition we even cut to an insert of the location being talked about.

The not-entirely-successful muting of the anti organised religion elements of the story clouds the themes of film and trickles down to spoil everything. Sometimes it's like a party game where the names of famous historical figures are written on the films forehead and it walks around asking - who the hell am I? In one scene, Nicole Kidman's character gives us a cunning hint by referring to 'our ancestors, a long time ago, disobeyed the authority'. By our ancestors she means Adam and Eve and by the authority she means G-O-D. Identity crisis solved. There has been an intercision of this film from its balls.

The weight of the clunky, stunted ending of this film is, for the first time, too much for Dakota Blue-Richards to deal with. Her final monologue of exposition appears to have been shot a few weeks ago, against a fur rug (to stand in for Ioreks belly) to con you into to believing that the film has ended. Chris Weitz takes a whole page to divulge what Peter Jackson and co said in one line - "Let's hunt some orc!". That is just indicative of how poorly paced and handled, the narrative is.

In the place of this pitiful ending there should have been the final confrontation with Asriel, Coulter, and Lyra.  We can see snippets of this in the trailers so we can be sure it was shot and visual effects time invested in. This is the pivotal scene of the story where Daniel Craig got to do something, the meaning of Dust as a manifestation of original sin and interscision as a type of castration are all explained in properly.

There is no way that this compromised approach to making the film will be able to prevail in light of the complexity and further controversy, that is waiting for whoever replaces Chris Weitz (the poor guy).

[Redlum]

Spoilers....

"We shot the last three chapters of the book, which are really quite ambiguous in the ending and quite harsh and dark...It became clear that audiences who were not familiar with the books were confused and appalled by the end of the movie, and in order to protect the character of these last few chapters, I thought, 'Well, it can work at the beginning of a second movie.'" - Chris Weitz

He's right about it being harsh and dark but if he thinks that its any more ambiguous than what he replaced it with, he is severely mistaken.

Here is a crude version of the ending that can be pieced together from the trailers:


Asriel escapes from his prison and starts his machine to create an opening into an alternate universe.


However in order to do this he requires the power created by the dust that is released by a childs demon when they are killed. When Lyra and Roger show up he chooses to kill Roger. Lyra tries to stop this but gets knocked out by the blast of Asriels machine starting.


Mrs Coulter, who had been following Lyra, shows up and it is reveiled that Asriel is actually Lyras father. He tries to convince her to come with him to explore alternate universes and find the origin of dust. He fails and leaves.


Lyra after overhearing all of their conversation, chooses to follow Asriel into the Northern Lights abandoning Coulter.


All this would have resulted in a great twist and a cliffhanger ending to match Empire Strikes Back.

[Ravi]

The movie did feel like the exposition to a longer story, and, like Redlum said, the ending felt short.  I'm sure a sequel would be better.  Daniel Craig, Christopher Lee, and Derek Jacobi are in this film for a reason.

I haven't read the books, but I knew that some of the anti-religious aspects would be blunted.  If I hadn't known the books were anti-religion (anti-Catholic, more specifically?) I might not have pieced that together from the film, even though the guys from the Magisterium look like Cardinals.

[Pubrick]

redlum: review of the year.

i loved the reconstructed ending, the reasons why the movie failed THEMATICALLY, and generally giving me an excellent impression of what the experience (of disappointment) was like.

[Sleepless]

I haven't seen this yet, or read the books. Truth be told, for everything I've read about this, the more it makes me want to read the books rather than see the film.

Has anyone read the aricles on this in EW this week? I'm quite interested in the whole atheist aspect which is supposedly causing controversy. From what I've read about the author, it seems that the books are more concerned with taking a position against the institution of the church, rather than against the faith itself. Has anyone actually read the books have any thoughts on this?

[Ghostboy]

I haven't seen this yet, or read the books. Truth be told, for everything I've read about this, the more it makes me want to read the books rather than see the film.

I feel exactly the same way. I think I'll give the book a try over the holidays, although it sounds like they get especially interesting in the latter part of the trilogy.

[Redlum]

redlum: review of the year.

i loved the reconstructed ending, the reasons why the movie failed THEMATICALLY, and generally giving me an excellent impression of what the experience (of disappointment) was like.

Thanks, P. Although, I owe the balls motif to you.