The Golden Compass

Review by Loc

It’s pretty funny to see the commercialization of literature. It was only a matter of time before the Chronicles of Narnia saw the silver screen in modern times, and when The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe produced solid box office returns, you could just imagine the Hollywood executives frothing at the mouth.

“What’s another fantasy kid’s book that we can exploit?” And then they stumble upon Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials triology, see witches and armored bears, and say, “Sign me up, this one’s gonna be huge!”

It’s even more fun to see the next Narnia flick, Prince Caspian, on full display with a great trailer before The Golden Compass. For those who might not know, Pullman’s trilogy is largely considered the anti-Narnia and condemns the notion of organized religion and the Christian church. And to put it more bluntly, part of the thrust of His Dark Materials is the quest to ‘kill God’, in the simplest of nutshells. So it’s funny because these books may be ideologically opposed, but the films are little more than popcorn treats for the little kiddies. Leave to Hollywood to broker peace in the name of capitalism.

So, beyond this rambling preamble, what about the flick? What about The Golden Compass? Quick hit: the trailer for Prince Caspian was much more entertaining.
Ouch, that’s a rough way to put things, but it’s the truth. And in all honesty, The Golden Compass was a boring mess of mumbo-jumbo. Such a clutter of crap, The Golden Compass unleashed the vitriol within, and reduced this review to a fun session of Compass bashing.

The flick begins with a 15 second voice-over, explaining the basics of this alternate universe. There’s “dust” that links alternate realities, there’s a golden compass that can tell the past and the future, and there are “daemons” that are everyone’s souls. If there was this recap in the novel, it would have been much easier to understand.

So with its own “quick hit” recap, why does The Golden Compass end up so awkwardly confusing and disjointed? Well, that’s because the adaptation from the novel is done too well. Huh? Yup, the book is a jumbled mess of deus ex machinas, where crap keeps popping up to allow the story to progress. It doesn’t work because every major beat happens without rhyme or reason, stuff just falls into laps and we move on. Want an example? How about the child Lyra being constantly told to protect the golden compass at all times, to never let it out her sight, to guard it at all costs. Lyra does this with obsessive devotion, never letting it go, never leaving it unwatched…until she says, I’ll just hide it in this ceiling vent. Huh? Oh, well that’s good, cause she gets captured on the next page but they can’t find the compass, whew.

Unfortunately, the screen adaptation took no liberties in sculpting a smoother story. It only took the occasion to remove all references from the church and religion. Stupid writers.

So, that makes the flick difficult to watch. At least with the book, you can put it down and scratch your head, you can come back to it after you forget how contrived the last plot point turned out to be for the characters. Not with the flick, you just got to sit through that crap, from running away in the city to instantly ending up on a boat full of pirates who port at a place where Lyra can meet some wise air-balloon guy, who tells her to hire a bear, and she does, and so on. Lots to sit through, it’s tough.

Second, why does Nicole Kidman keep botoxing her forehead? It’s getting more and more difficult to watch movies when the actors can’t furrow their brow or display any emotion on screen. Sure, her character doesn’t necessarily need to display much anger or sorrow, but it still looks weird when her eyes move but her forehead won’t.
This is important because during a very important scene, Kidman’s lack of a brow may have helped her in an ironic sense. During a bigger blow-up with the little kid, Nicole decides it’s time to drop the bomb on her little ass. That’s right, it’s time to reveal the secret! Nicole turns to Lyra and says, you’re not an orphan, in fact, you’re no orphan at all. The next line should have been, “Lyra…I am your Mother!!!” and she could have been breathing through a scuba mask and Lyra could have said, “Noooooo!” That would have made me chuckle and at least kept me entertained for a second.

Oh, and a word to the Director of Photography. You did a good job, things looked pretty nice. But seriously, throwing in a fishbowl lens or tilting the camera crooked doesn’t make it a better, more artistic shot. It just makes things look weird and makes you look like an assclown. Sure, fishbowl when we need a weird, new perspective. Fishbowl when people are crarrying Lyra across a hall, uh, why?

Otherwise, it looked pretty good visually and the CGI worked mostly well. The armored bears looked cool, but in the end, you never forgot they were only CGI armored bears. However, the line of the movie belongs to one exhiled bear, the honorable Iorek voiced by Ian McKellen. Iorek was ousted from his kingdom by an evil bear, and found himself living amongst humans. They had stolen his armor and he turned to alcohol and menial labor, becoming a mere shell of his former bear-self. Why Lyra asks him why a bear is doing that, he says, “I drink spirits, I lift heavy things, arrrgghhh, I’m content.” I lift heavy things? I lift heavy things? Seriously? That’s the dialogue you came up with? But it did produce a chuckle, so that was good.

Lastly, Lord Asriel is played by one Daniel Craig. Looks like he’s off the juice from James Bond and just a normal looking dude now. He was one of the highlights of the flick, he contributed some personality and badassery for the time we saw him, all 5 minutes of him. He may be a central character in the upcoming stories, but this one really underutilized his presence.

Overall, The Golden Compass was a bore. The disjointed story full of convenient plot devices was difficult to sit through. The young Dakota Blue Richards was bordering on intolerable as Lyra. Kinda cute, kinda precious, but not enough to get past the bad acting. Just a badly constructed film from a poorly constructed adaptation. Out of 100 armored bears, The Golden Compass only fields a battle with 40 bears. I lift heavy things, like completing this review!