Nica's Blog

Today I went to The Golden Compass movie ready to be severely dissappointed. In fact, most of the movie I was only slightly dissappointed, and sometimes I was actually enjoying myself. I am not of the school of thought that movie adaptations should be as exact a recounting of the books content as possible. Altering the plot and details with care makes sense at times when moving the story from the written page to the big screen. The Golden Compass has kept the basic storyline intact, and some of the changes seems thought out well enough, but there are alterations of the storyline which seem capricous. In the beginning of the book it is the Dean of Jordan College who poisons Lord Asriel's wine, not Fra Pavel as shown in the movie. While this makes for simpler exposition, it comes at a huge cost to keeping up the intrigue of the story. The story is inherently confusing in the book, and part of the fun is working your way through the books trying to sort out the mysteries.

The movie ends about seven eights of the way through the book. While I can see this might make a better place for a conventional ending, I worry that audiences will have less reason to see the sequel -- if the sequel is ever made. The book ends with something of a cliffhanger. Actually, it ends with a cliff-fall, sadness, and a mystery. The movie ends with only a vague sense of something to be delivered.

It was an honest effort to make the book into a movie. The acting is good, the special effects are generally effective. The watering-down of the anti-religous message was not as muted as I had expected. The movie rushes through the storyline too quickly, but at least it doesn't drag. Some say the second and third books (The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass) in the series are not as good as The Golden Compass. I disagree. I really hope to see the sequels made. If they don't make the sequel, all those other world's mentioned in the movie's introduction will never get a chance to CGI'ed by eager computer artists.