The Golden Compass – 8/10
Just got back from seeing this movie. Apparently it has a million posters. I liked this one the best for some reason… coming in second is the one of Lyra with the Ice Bear.
Now on to the review…
This movie was a mixture of awesome badass scenes, filler, bizarre and creative concepts, and a bit of mediocre to awful music that cuts in at the regular old times and sounds like it was added in at the last possible second. All in all, I have nothing bad to say about the plot, acting, or polar bear fight sequences. Those were all okay by me, especially Dakota Blue Richards who does an amazing job in her tomboy role of Lyra who is a seriously messed up kid… in a very good way.
Spoilers…
I mean, she kills a person. At least that’s the way it looked. The polar bear was amazing. The concept of having a daemon in the form of an animal who was actually your soul living beside you was great. The idea of dust and travelling between various parallel worlds was also super.
No more spoilers…
The thing is that even though you have a great story with new and facsinating ideas, the filler, all the sections that seem to have been added on or drawn especially well from the lesser parts of the book are only really there to serve one purpose: to dull the movie down in spots and even it out to something similar to all the other fantasy Harry Potter-esque films we have going around right now.
Don’t get me wrong. I really enjoyed myself most of the time and some of the cinematography was really nice to look at, particularly a shot of the sun in the background with people climbing down an ice cliff in the foreground. But I just wasn’t 100% there 100% of the time.
The best part to me…
Spoilers again…
Everything about the Goblers and separating children from their souls. The machine, the place Lyra went to, finding Billy all weird because his soul had been taken from him… genius. Another thing, I loved how Lyra talked and used “ain’t” here and there like she was a dirty little servant girl. That was cool… could have used more of that honestly.
No more spoilers now, seriously.
So I definitely am intrigued, want to read the books right away, and can’t wait for the sequel. The movie ended with some serious possibilities lined up (the last bit of script was really the high point of the writing to me) and the last few lines and shots really got me excited about the future of the franchise. So I’m hoping they will make the next two in the trilogy and not get discouraged by the fact that about ten other people joined me in the theatre tonight for a peak showtime on opening night… let’s all just cross our fingers and await the next installment… hopefully.
Oh, and you know what’s weird? No where does it reference the fact that this movie is the first in the His Dark Materials trilogy. In fact, at the end of the film, a credit comes up that says something about the movie being based on the book “The Northern Lights” or something… and that book is by Philip Pullman, the writer of His Dark Materials, so now I’m wondering if this book was originally called “The Northern Lights”. Got some research to do now.
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