Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A passable adaptation of an excellent book, 5 Jun 2008
This is certainly a beautiful looking movie, and looks wonderful on blu-ray, no doubts there. However as an adaptation of Philip Pullman's excellent novel it falls rather short. Much of the commentary of the terrible evils of religion and their attacks on freedom, science, and knowledge, and specifically the catholic church have been removed or dulled hugely, changing the story from a multi faceted and complex tale into a simple adventure yarn.
Also, and this is particularly agregious, the final chapter was completely omitted, robbing the story of any closure at all, and given how this performed in the US box office, thanks to religious nut cases running a smear campaign against it I doubt the two sequels will ever get made.
My advice - read the books instead.
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Is this Philip Pullman's Northern Lights ?, 3 Nov 2008
Philip Pullman's Northern Lights is a wonderfully written book. Packed with great imagination and depth. The characters, particularly Lyra's are well thought out and have a richness about them. The story line is challenging and in many parts takes a different path, than you're expecting. It takes on contentious issues cleverly and weaves a magical and dark storyline out of them.
Not since Tolkien's Trilogy has there been a series of fantasy books that have been acheing to be put on the silver screen.
Then the first film arrives, with it's American book title name 'The Golden Compass'. Visually the film is stunning especially on Blu Ray and if it was a Walt Disney film we'd all say aaaaww great swash buckling action.
But it's not it's suppose to be the reproduction of a masterpiece of fantasy. Is it possible to betray a book more than the film makers have done here, I think NOT !! All the parts of the storyline that really gave this book a real edge and made it stand out from the rest have been omitted. A gourmet meal turned into a happy meal. The storyline loosely ( and that's being kind )follows the book.
The film ignores the end of the book completely and rounds off any sharp edges that I'm sure they thought might damage the rating.
Director Chris Weitz, you should hang your head in Shame.I can't help wonder why you didn't stick to directing films like Antz and American Pie and let someone like Peter Jackson breath life into this book.
And Philip Pullman how could you stand back and watch them do this to your wonderful book.
The only hope is that Weitz strayed that far from the storyline he can't possibly make the second book and they'll have to remake The Golden Compass' again.
Devotees of Pullman must have physically wept when they saw this Disney style adaption.
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A quality HD transfer, shame about the movie, 19 Jun 2008
The high definition transfer to this Blu-ray disc is excellent: rich saturated colours and awesome levels of detail. Sound quality is equally good and although I don't have the ability to play the uncompressed DTS HD soundtrack the dynamic rangeis apparent even in standard stereo. In this respect it's one of the best Blu-ray discs I've seen so far.
That was the good news (and reason for the 3 stars); if only the conversion of book to movie had been even remotely as good. The special effects are very good and Lyra's Oxford is well realised; Mrs Coulter is also subtly played by the excellent Nicole Kidman and...unfortunately that's about as far as I can go with compliments.
The strengths of the book(s) are Philip Pullman's expert story-telling, allied to a complex - but accessible - plot and wonderful characters.
Of course condensing everything from the book to a 2 hour film would be impossible but what we are presented with is a series of action sequences linked by ham-fisted exposition. For example, the episode with Billy Costa (who has merged characters with Tony Macarios), once found separated from his Ratter, should emphasise the relationship between human and daemon and build the requisite tension to what is happening at Bolvangar but the opportunity is wasted. Then there is the pointless re-naming of Iofur Raknison to 'Ragnar' (one can just imagine the Focus Group brainstorming a generic scandinavian name: "Ooh I know, how about Ernest Borgnine's name in The Vikings!") and the weakening of Iorek Byrnison (why not rename him too: Erik the Ice Bear, anyone?) by having him (1) expelled from Svalbard as a coward and (2) almost killed and only just saved by Lee Scoresby. Iorek's character is supposed to be the practically indestructible rock that underpins Lyra's (and, later, Will's) resolve for what follows. Those are just 2 examples of many.
The removal of the true ending of the book from the film and the general watering down of the religious undertone sums up what many fans of the book feared would happen: Hollywood has chickened out (again). The bar for intelligent fantasy book transfers to film has been raised by Peter Jackson, and this movie falls woefully short of that level.
The BBC Cover to Cover talking book, read by Philip Pullman with a cast providing the dialogue, is vastly superior to the BBC Radio dramatisation (I've got both) but even the latter is better than the film. If you haven't read the books, I encourage you to do so - the film is passable in a Dark Crystal/Hawk the Slayer action-fantasy genre but the books have so much more depth.
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