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The Golden Compass movie SUCKED (spoilers inside)
- Thread starter Surgo
- Start date
hahaha this is so dumb. I searched on a portuguese online book store for the author 'philip pullman', so I could get the names of the books in portuguese, and it turns out I already have 'The Amber Spyglass' BUT i sent it to the attic the last time I cleaned my room and now I don't have any patience to go search for it upstairs. I guess i'll order a new one, they're cheap and we're on christmas anyway.
I just thought I'd say I have yet to read the book, so ignoring anything they missed out and taking the film as a stand-alone, I actually thoroughly enjoyed it.
I can't wait to read them now.
Also why the fuck do Americans have to change the name of books for no real reason? I mean changing Harry Potter 1 from the Philosopher's stone to the Sorcerer's stone is a bit odd (american's don't know what a philosopher is?!) and now (ok ten years or so ago when it was published in the usa) changing Northern Lights to the Golden Compass, because it is a bit more obvious? I dunno...
I can't wait to read them now.
Also why the fuck do Americans have to change the name of books for no real reason? I mean changing Harry Potter 1 from the Philosopher's stone to the Sorcerer's stone is a bit odd (american's don't know what a philosopher is?!) and now (ok ten years or so ago when it was published in the usa) changing Northern Lights to the Golden Compass, because it is a bit more obvious? I dunno...
They did leave out important things in the film. It therefored sucked. For this reason, I only find the Harry potter films average.
They left out how the gobblers get the kids, the whole flat party, which was for me the only reason that Lyra left Mrs. Coulter's flat, the prison on Svalbard, the bear fencing, the bit with at Lord Asriels house (which includes splitting open the worlds). And WTF about Billy Costa being the severed ghost? They decided to have Tony Makarios' demon name, Ratter. I mean, just WTF were the producers smoking when they made the plot?
They left out how the gobblers get the kids, the whole flat party, which was for me the only reason that Lyra left Mrs. Coulter's flat, the prison on Svalbard, the bear fencing, the bit with at Lord Asriels house (which includes splitting open the worlds). And WTF about Billy Costa being the severed ghost? They decided to have Tony Makarios' demon name, Ratter. I mean, just WTF were the producers smoking when they made the plot?
This name change actually makes sense, though. All three books are thus named after the important artifact in question that is found / used / focused on in the book.Sir Spanky said:
For the people who haven't read the book, I'm gonna post the book's version of the severed child scene as soon as I can find my copy. It makes Lyra a lot more...heroic... (did it seem to anyone else that a lot of her true heroism was cut out of the movie?) and shows the utter horror that the movie was supposed to depict.
Ahh, here we go...the act in question!
There. You can see the difference for yourself. It's for butchered scenes like that that I really, really disliked the movie.
Code:
At the center of the little village there was an open space next to the jetty,
where boats had been drawn up, mounds under the snow. The noise of the dogs was
deafening, and just as Lyra thought it must have wakened everyone, a door opened
and a man came out holding a rifle. His wolverine daemon leaped onto the woodstack
beside the door, scattering snow.
Lyra slipped down at once and stood between him and Iorek Byrnison, conscious
that she had told the bear there was no need for his armor.
The man spoke in words she couldn't understand. Iorek Byrnison replied in the
same language, and the man gave a little moan of fear.
"He thinks we are devils," Iorek told Lyra. "What shall I say?"
"Tell him we're not devils, but we've got friends who are. And we're looking
for...Just a child. A strange child. Tell him that."
As soon as the bear had said that, the man pointed to the right, indicating some
place further off, and spoke quickly.
Iorek Byrnison said, "He asks if we have come to take the child away. They are
afraid of it. They have tried to drive it away, but it keeps coming back."
"Tell him we'll take it away with us, but they were very bad to treat it like
that. Where is it?"
The man explained, gesticulating fearfully. Lyra was afraid he'd fire his rifle
by mistake, but as soon as he'd spoken he hastened inside his house and shut the
door. Lyra could see faces at every window.
"Where is the child?" she said.
"In the fish house," the bear told her, and turned to pad down toward the jetty.
Lyra followed. She was horribly nervous. The bear was making for a narrow wooden
shed, raising his head to sniff this way and that, and when he reached the door he
stopped and said: "In there."
Lyra's heart was beating so fast she could hardly breathe. She raised her hand to
knock at the door and then, feeling that that was ridiculous, took a deep breath to
call out, but realized that she didn't know what to say. Oh, it was so dark now!
She should have brought a lantern....
There was no choice, and anyway, she didn't want the bear to see her being
afraid. He had spoken of mastering his fear: that was what she'd have to do. She
lifted the strap of reindeer hide holding the latch in place, and tugged hard
against the frost binding the door shut. It opened with a snap. She had to kick
aside the snow piled against the foot of the door before she could pull it open,
and Pantalaimon was no help, running back and forth in his ermine shape, a white
shadow over the white ground, uttering little frightened sounds.
"Pan, for God's sake!" she said. "Be a bat. Go and look for me...."
But he wouldn't, and he wouldn't speak either. She had never seen him like this
except once, when she and Roger in the crypt at Jordan had moved the daemon-coins
into the wrong skulls. He was even more frightened than she was. As for Iorek
Byrnison, he was lying in the snow nearby, watching in silence.
"Come out," Lyra said as loud as she dared. "Come out!"
Not a sound came in answer. She pulled the door a little wider, and Pantalaimon
leaped up into her arms, pushing and pushing at her in his cat form, and said, "Go
away! Don't stay here! Oh, Lyra, go now! Turn back!"
[...]
She lifted the lantern high and took a step into the shed, and then she saw what
it was that the Oblation Board was doing, and what was the nature of the sacrifice
the children were having to make.
The little boy was huddled against the wood drying rack where hung row upon row
of gutted fish, all as stiff as boards. He was clutching a piece of fish to him as
Lyra was clutching Pantalaimon, with her left hand, hard, against her heart; but
that was all he had, a piece of dried fish; because he had no daemon at all. The
Gobblers had cut it away. That was intercision, and this was a severed child.
[...]
Her first impulse was to turn and run, or to be sick. A human being with no daemon
was like someone without a face, or with their ribs laid open and their heart torn
out: something unnatural and uncanny that belonged to the world of night-ghasts,
not the waking world of sense.
So Lyra clung to Pantalaimon and her head swam and her gorge rose, and cold
as the night was, a sickly sweat moistened her flesh with something colder still.
"Ratter," said the boy. "You got my Ratter?"
Lyra was in no doubt what he meant.
"No," she said in a voice as frail and frightened as she felt. Then, "What's your name?"
"Tony Makarios," he said. "Where's Ratter?"
"I don't know..." she began, and swallowed hard to govern her nausea. "The Gobblers..."
But she couldn't finish. She had to go out of the shed and sit down by herself in the
snow, except that of course she wasn't by herself, she was never by herself, because
Pantalaimon was always there. Oh, to be cut from him as this little boy had been parted
from his Ratter! The worst thing in the world! She found herself sobbing, and
Pantalaimon was whimpering too, and in both of them there was a passionate
pity and sorrow for the half-boy.
[...]
In Lyra's heart, revulsion struggled with compassion, and compassion won. She
put her arms around the skinny little form to hold him safe.
[...]
"He's called Tony," she mumbled through frozen lips. "And they cut his daemon away.
That's what the Gobblers do."
The men held back, fearful; but the bear spoke, to Lyra's weary amazement, chiding them.
"Shame on you! Think what this child has done! You might not have more courage,
but you should be ashamed to show less."
[...]
"Lyra, I'm afraid to tell you this after what you done, but that little boy died an hour ago.
He couldn't settle, he couldn't stay in one place; he kept asking after his daemon, where she
was, was she a coming soon, and all; and he kept such a tight hold on that bare old piece of
fish as if...Oh, I can't speak of it, child; but he closed his eyes finally and fell still, and that
was the first time he looked peaceful, for he was like any other dead person then, with their
daemon gone in the course of nature. They've been a trying to dig a grave for him, but the
earth's bound like iron. So John Faa ordered a fire built, and they're a going to cremate him,
so as not to have him despoiled by carrion eaters.
"Child, you did a brave thing and a good thing, and I'm proud of you. Now we know what
terrible wickedness those people are capable of, we can see our duty plainer than ever.
What you must do is rest and eat, because you fell asleep too soon to restore yourself
last night, and you have to eat in these temperatures to stop yourself getting weak...."
He was fussing around, tucking the furs into place, tightening the tension rope across the
body of the sledge, running the traces through his hands to untangle them.
"Farder Coram, where is the little boy now? Have they burned him yet?"
"No, Lyra, he's a lying back there."
"I want to go and see him."
He couldn't refuse her that, for she'd seen worse than a dead body, and it might calm
her. So with Pantalaimon as a white hare bounding delicately at her side, she trudged along
the line of sledges to where some men were piling brushwood.
The boy's body lay under a checkered blanket beside the path. She knelt and lifted the
blanket in her mittened hands. One man was about to stop her, but the others shook their heads.
Pantalaimon crept close as Lyra looked down on the poor wasted face. She slipped her hand
out of the mitten and touched his eyes. They were marble-cold, and Farder Coram had been
right; poor little Tony Makarios was no different from any other human whose daemon had
departed in death. Oh, if they took Pantalaimon from her! She swept him up and hugged
him as if she meant to press him right into her heart. And all little Tony had was his pitiful
piece of fish....
Where was it?
She pulled the blanket down. It was gone.
She was on her feet in a moment, and her eyes flashed fury at the men nearby.
"Where's his fish?"
They stopped, puzzled, unsure what she meant; though some of their daemons knew,
and looked at one another. One of the men began to grin uncertainly.
"Don't you dare laugh! I'll tear your lungs out if you laugh at him! That's all he had to cling
onto, just an old dried fish, that's all he had for a daemon to love and be kind to! Who's
took it from him? Where's it gone?"
Pantalaimon was a snarling snow leopard, just like Lord Asriel's daemon, but she didn't
see that; all she saw was right and wrong.
[...]
Then an idea came to her, and she fumbled inside her furs. The cold air struck through
as she opened her anorak, but in a few seconds she had what she wanted, and took a
gold coin from her purse before wrapping herself close again.
"I want to borrow your knife," she said to the man who'd taken the fish, and when he'd
let her have it, she said to Pantalaimon: "What was her name?"
He understood, of course, and said, "Ratter."
She held the coin tight in her left mittened hand and, holding the knife like a pencil,
scratched the lost daemon's name deeply into the gold.
i've also read the books. all three in one go, 1104 pages in 6 hours, my fastest read ever:naughty:
judging from what i've read, i can just skip the movie and keep viewing the movie in my fantasy :( shame, they really could've made this a A++ movie, but from what i hear, they didnt
judging from what i've read, i can just skip the movie and keep viewing the movie in my fantasy :( shame, they really could've made this a A++ movie, but from what i hear, they didnt
Best part of the movie, after the "You want to ... ride me?" scene. But its sad that two things so inconsequential to the book are the best part of the movie.
I have to say, I waited after the credits expecting the real ending, like in Pirates and X-Men 3. But no, they couldn't even give the real ending to the dedicated fans of the book. They basically made it a generic feel good story. Hello, major spoilers coming:
ROGER FRICKING DIES IN THE BOOK! Why couldn't he die in the movie? Is it because the little five year olds couldn't handle it? WTF? The entire point of this book was to get Lyra into another dimension, and to introduce the Aliethiometer and Dust. If you leave out the one scene that explains everything, well, why bother?
Why do movie directors do this? They also did this with Dodgeball. The Purple Cobras won in the directors version of the movie. This ending did so bad at the previewings or whatever they're called, they went back and filmed an ending where the Average Joes won. Why do you think it was called Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story? Because most underdogs lose!
Gah. I love the contrast between American literature and filmography. Almost all American literature has a depressing sad ending. Yet the movies are all yay! the good guys win.
does that even count as reading?
well of course, buts its such a bad way to start. The Subtle Knife starts out with the male lead (can't remember name) lost in an empty world. I just feel like the book was massacred to make it more family friendly. Uh noes, the little children who will make up the bulk of our audience becuase of the way we have marketted this will be upset if we do that. Okay, lets not do that because it will have this movie make more money. People will pay to see the sequel even if they don't like it as much.
I'll still the sequel, just because I want to see what they do with it. But yah, this is another case of director not understanding author. At least they didn't remove as much as Eragon did, that was butchered.
I'll still the sequel, just because I want to see what they do with it. But yah, this is another case of director not understanding author. At least they didn't remove as much as Eragon did, that was butchered.
*buzz*
Is it Will?
I agree, Eragon was lol'd at by taking out 2/3rds of the book from the movie.
I love it when Eragon just walks in and they go "It's time to fight" or how Saphira turned from like super small to fucking huge in 8 seconds.
Seriously, wtf.
I believe part of the reason the movie was such a diluted form of the book was that the producers didn't want to offend the Christian right (a huge segment of the U.S. population). If the movie had been entirely faithful to the book, it would have been a box office disaster even if it would have been more enjoyable for those who did go to see it.
An anti-religion Christmas season movie release wasn't the best idea in my opinion. I'll still probably see it though. :)
An anti-religion Christmas season movie release wasn't the best idea in my opinion. I'll still probably see it though. :)
Aeolus, I see what you're saying, but my problem with the movie was not the removal of the anti-religion (or anti-authoritarian, depending on how you view it) pieces (which are still there, just more subtle). My problem is the removal of all the scenes that make Lyra, well, Lyra. The scenes that show her to grow from a leader of rascals to a hero. The scenes that show her growing in intelligence, cleverness...Bolvangar, one of the most important scenes in the book for this, was cut to about 5 minutes and in the movie displayed Lyra as nothing more than a somewhat lucky child, not the leader of the escape. And worst of all, pretty much the complete removal of the scene that I posted above.
This is worse than diluting the book to be nonoffensive. This is a case of not understanding the book at all.
This is worse than diluting the book to be nonoffensive. This is a case of not understanding the book at all.
i didnt read the whole thread due to my lack of experience with the movie/book, so i hope my opinion hasnt been covered already!!!!!
im not going to go the route of 'oh well they just put together what they thought would make the most money', as that is rather obvious. they are an industry; they care about money, not about pleasing the hardcore fans.
but i am going to have to disagree with you a bit! books are art. you know this probably much better than i do. art, as we all know, is subjective. people will take it many different ways, and while some probably make more sense than others, you cant really say that there is only one way to 'understand the book'.
obviously the author intended a certain conclusion to be drawn from the book, but when you get down to it, that doesnt matter. what matters is how YOU look at it. it is a work of art, and as such, there is no concrete meaning to it. if the author wanted you to adhere to his viewpoint, then he would not have used metaphor, which is obviously what a novel is.
if someone made a movie out of an essay, THEN you could accuse the writer or director of said movie of not understanding the source. but really, no matter how much it pisses you off as a fan of the book, you cant accuse anyone of not understanding it.
and obviously, the money making thing is the REAL reason the movie was done the way it was, but thats not as interesting to debate over i dont think.
Having watched the preview today when we (the people who control the college theater) were deciding on what movies to play next semester, I noticed a number of scenes in the preview that didn't make it to the final product...I wonder if that means we'll have a Lord of the Rings-style extended edition? If so, that should make it much, much better. So getting it on DVD might be worth it!
Also, seriously, a DVD is about as cheap as going to the movies these days. That's ridiculous, but it's true.
Also, seriously, a DVD is about as cheap as going to the movies these days. That's ridiculous, but it's true.
I just saw it tonight.
It sucked. Horribly.
They left no freaking room for a sequel, and if Roger is still alive, what if they use him instead of Will? That would basically destroy a HUGE portion of the plot of the third movie.Also, they paint Asriel as a good guy the whole time, when we know he isn't by the end of the book. I also hate how no one cared when BILLY COSTA (wtf?) came out without a daemon. It was kind of funny when Mrs. Coulter was petting her monkey and cooing, "Lyra, I will fight you. I will fight you," when the next time she sees her, she saves Lyra's life. The only good part of the movie was the bear fight. They didn't really explain Serafina Pekkalla enough ; she only showed up twice. BUT that's enough for Lyra to want to take her with her and Robert to other dimensions.
They screwed up, and there is no way they can make a subtle knife movie out of this dung hole. The movie is PG-13, it shouldn't have a forced happily-ever-after ending on it. a 13 year old should be able to handle a main character dying.
It sucked. Horribly.
They left no freaking room for a sequel, and if Roger is still alive, what if they use him instead of Will? That would basically destroy a HUGE portion of the plot of the third movie.Also, they paint Asriel as a good guy the whole time, when we know he isn't by the end of the book. I also hate how no one cared when BILLY COSTA (wtf?) came out without a daemon. It was kind of funny when Mrs. Coulter was petting her monkey and cooing, "Lyra, I will fight you. I will fight you," when the next time she sees her, she saves Lyra's life. The only good part of the movie was the bear fight. They didn't really explain Serafina Pekkalla enough ; she only showed up twice. BUT that's enough for Lyra to want to take her with her and Robert to other dimensions.
They screwed up, and there is no way they can make a subtle knife movie out of this dung hole. The movie is PG-13, it shouldn't have a forced happily-ever-after ending on it. a 13 year old should be able to handle a main character dying.
I suppose that for every widely bought book, its movie must be widely watched. Sadly, that's where the similarities of the two collapse :(. Such a shame their destinies were forced to turn out this way... imagine how awesome it would be if a book were to be converted into a movie, retaining its most of its beauty with the exchange of visual interprention for visual enjoyment.
I'm still seeing the movie though.
@Hyra: Spoiler: In the next movie, Roger will actually be sent to the Shadow Realm.
I'm still seeing the movie though.
@Hyra: Spoiler: In the next movie, Roger will actually be sent to the Shadow Realm.
