The Golden Compass

29.12.2007

Went to see The Golden Compass, all in all I liked the movie but I felt there was something wrong, something that did not make it a competitor for The Lord Of The Rings trilogy, at the time I could not tell really the only thing that was obvious to me is some computer generated graphics were not done well, for example Nickole Kidman's demon the monkey looked horrible! and fake, unlike the bear and other computer generated characters.



When I started to write this post I looked for references to use in it and imdb is the first place to look for movies and then comes Yahoo movies for me. In imdb I found the exact and very true review about this movie, although I wouldn't be this harsh on it since I liked it but what he said is true, the highlight of the review is:

"The blame starts with Chris Weitz and goes north., 12 December 2007
Author: Luke Ewing from Bristol, England

The opening scene was the very first clue that this film was going to be the barrage of formula drudgery that it ultimately turned out to be. Weitz began by unveiling all the information which the reader isn't even aware of by the end of the first novel in a horrific attempt to follow the footsteps of The Lord of the Rings with an opening prelude............

I really have to say that the first mistake made was the same one made by Walden Media with the Chronicles on Narnia: making a children's film out of something that wasn't child-material. His Dark Materials are not for children, Narnia wasn't either. They fit into a genre of literature clearly not understood by Newline, Walden, and film studios like them: Novels. Just because the main characters are children people readily assume they are children's stories, but Pullman's work, more so even than Narnia, is written with an intelligent, imaginative, but somewhat cynical audience in mind .... "

note: you can find the comment here, I also hid his e-mail from this post for the sake of his privacy :D

What I mostly liked about this review which is very different from what I think & what I saw in the movie, however it is true and a very nice prospective, its always a joy to see things from different angles!

The opinion of Mr. Erwin is very correct when it comes to the assumption people hold when watching a movie with the main character being a kid! the movie is kids material, which is not true and is the exact thing I was thinking of when I saw the number of children who were in the movie, asking my self "do they really understand the concept of the demon in this movie?" and many other things that I think are not so easy on a child's mind.

The other point that attracted me is the revealing one, having the story blank from mystery, it was wrong, sometimes sending information visually is better than verbally especially in a movie .

To me the movie was cute, pretty nice and entertaining, when I went out of the movie later that day, I felt that I enjoyed it and will see the whole trilogy, however there is something wrong with it which I was not sure what was it, so I gave it a 4/5 at the time, after giving it a thought & reading Luke Ewing's review it bacame a 3/5 but I guess this cute tongue and the lovely bear made me be less harsh on it?!