The Golden Compass

Lyra Belacqua, a 12 year old ward of Oxford University's Jordan College, is given a special instrument that allows her to find the truth and travels north to rescue her friend who is being held at a facility where children are being experimented upon.

Review by Ben Barrett, from Arcata, California, on 03-Jan-2008

What can I say? I really, really wanted to like this movie. I'm a such huge fan of the novels by Philip Pullman, on which this film was based, that I was salivating over it's release from the moment I saw the first trailer. Sadly the film failed to incorporate the immense scope and complexities of the book. Obviously in any novel to film adaptation things will have to be cut out, but The Golden Compass simply leaves too much out to drive the plot home. First off let me explain that the novel is extremely dark. Much more so than any of the Harry Potter series or even The Lord of the Rings. Parts of the story at Bolvanger are very, very disturbing in the book. New Line Cinema made two errors. One is that they should have marketed to a wider demographic and advertised it as a movie more for young adults than children. They other is that they caved in to fundmentalist protest groups and glossed over the Magisterium's true roll (They're basically a representation of the church.) I'll briefly point out some important things left out of the movie that would have made the plot make more sense, flow better and probably could have put this film closer to on par with Lord of the Rings or Star Wars. The first is that the full extent of the relationship between a human and his/her dæmon is poorly represented. A person without a dæmon in Lyra's world would be seen as an abomination, much like a zombie. For instance, the boy that Lyra finds in the shack who had his dæmon cut away actually dies in the book shortly after she rescues him, as his soul has been essentially torn away from him. In the film they treat this not nearly as seriously. The second, was that the major plot line of what Lord Asriel (Daniel Craig) was truly trying to accomplish was hardly mentioned at all, except briefly at the beginning. The extreme importance of the aurora to him, and the story, is barely touched on at all (The original title of the book was Northern Lights after all). The final point I'll make and the most perplexing aspect of this movie is that the ending was effectively cut out completely. Although it is still a cliffhanger it would have brought the plot more full circle, even though the ending is fairly tragic and young children might have had a hard time with it. They even went through the trouble of filming and creating it. From a special effects point of view it was by far the most challenging to make and would have been nothing short of spectacular to watch. Even more frustrating is that the trailers show footage of this and it's not in the film. This incidentally was New Line's decision, much to the chagrin of the the production crew. In all, almost 40 minutes of footage was cut from the film at the very last minute, effectively making the movie seem disjointed and somewhat confusing to movie goers who did not already know the story.
After that rant I'll focus on the good. Despite all these flaws the movie does have saving graces. It is fairly engaging as purely an adventure film and the visuals are decent enough to make at least me marvel at Lyra's world. Children are going to love this movie even if adults don't. The casting was superb. Nicole Kidman is fantastic as the seeming kind but duplicitously cold Mrs. Coulter and Daniel Craig makes a convincing Asriel, even though he is given far to little screen time. Dakota Richards was picked out of 10,000 girls and make a great Lyra. The best performance, however comes from Sam Elliot who plays the character of Lee Scoresby as the quintessential cowboy perfectly. I'm going to give this film a higher rating than I probably should because even the mmovie can't stand alone, if the sequel is made The Golden Compass will lead into it well.

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