(no subject)
Saw The Golden Compass today. I really wish it wasn't flopping, especially because it means the second movie probably won't get made now, and this movie would do much better if the other two were made.
But it does suffer by being too faithful to the book, and the book just having too much *stuff* in it. It might have been a calculated ploy to get cut the ending and hope to open the second movie with it, but at least that was one less piece of plot that needed to be crammed into two hours. Plus when you need to establish a world, and all the details about daemons, and convey it all to an audience that needs to understand them...during the first half of the movie, I was going, "Wait, they've left Oxford already? Wait, she's left Mrs. Coulter's already?" Once they got up north, things slowed down enough for breathing room and the director got to work, and I was pleased with the number of things they got right. The scene where they find Billy Costa filling into for Tony Makarios for instance-you could feel your blood run cold, and that it was Billy Costa here was heartbreaking-I wanted to kill the writers in a good way for that one. Nicole Kidman was perfect, of course, but Sam Elliot stole the movie as Lee Scoresby
But it does suffer by being too faithful to the book, and the book just having too much *stuff* in it. It might have been a calculated ploy to get cut the ending and hope to open the second movie with it, but at least that was one less piece of plot that needed to be crammed into two hours. Plus when you need to establish a world, and all the details about daemons, and convey it all to an audience that needs to understand them...during the first half of the movie, I was going, "Wait, they've left Oxford already? Wait, she's left Mrs. Coulter's already?" Once they got up north, things slowed down enough for breathing room and the director got to work, and I was pleased with the number of things they got right. The scene where they find Billy Costa filling into for Tony Makarios for instance-you could feel your blood run cold, and that it was Billy Costa here was heartbreaking-I wanted to kill the writers in a good way for that one. Nicole Kidman was perfect, of course, but Sam Elliot stole the movie as Lee Scoresby