Movie review

[bladespark]

I saw the Golden Compass today. A few thoughts.

1. Understandably they dumbed it down a bit. Also understandably they left out Adam and Eve
2. Awwwwwwwwwwwwwww! Pantalmion was too cute for words!
3. Shiny! The special effects and the setting design were spiffy.
4. The latter half of the movie mixed up the events of the book quite a bit. I kept going "wait, that's not supposed to happen here!"
5. Holy crap! When I read that bit, I thought to myself "there's no way the movie will follow the book here!" But the movie did! Holy crap!!!!!
6. Uh... where's the rest of my story? The ended it before the actual end!

Overall I very much enjoyed it, and I think they made fairly good decisions on what to simplify and what to leave out. But I had a few "Say what?!" moments there.

Comments

[tarathene.livejournal.com]

If your 5 is referring to what I think it is, it caused the guy in his 40-50s behind me to yell out the S word very loudly in surprise and horror.

I think it could've done with 30-60 minutes more, and hopefully we'll get that on DVD. As to mixing up the latter half, they probably figured that the main driving story of the movie needed to end at the end of this movie, instead of 2/3 of the way through. I thought they did good over all, although trying to get so much in left it choppy feeling at times when thinking back to try to remember what was going on 10 minutes ago during the course of the movie.

Regarding 2, I'm really really glad they did so well with him! They made him an actual character instead of just someone dragged along. ^^

[coyoty.livejournal.com]

It was made by the same people who did the "Lord of the Rings" movies, so it's not surprising the ending was like the end of Fellowship. Maybe they thought the book's ending was too shocking a cliffhanger for the movie, though I think it would have been more effective and generate more interest for Subtle Knife.

[wolfmare.livejournal.com]

I liked the book, planning to go see the movie once Emi comes down for Solstice. Since I've already read *all* the books, I have a good guess as to where they ended the movie and such... It's been a while though since I read it, so I'm curious about where the movie followed the book to... But I'm sure I'll find out soon enough.

[coyoty.livejournal.com]

I think it's probably a question Lyra gets asked at one point.

[kyoshyu.livejournal.com]

Um, it's the first movie in a trilogy. So of course it's gonna end weird. :P

[bladespark.livejournal.com]

It ended completely DIFFERENTLY from the first book in the trilogy.