The Golden Compass

zoomar

Anyone see the trailers for this film? Apparently based on a trilogy of young adult fantasy novels set in an alternate earth within a multiverse of worlds all slightly different from each other - and possibly including our own. Stars Nicole Kidman, Daniel Craig and others Trailers show a fantastically detailed pseudo victorian word with zeppelins, cool architecture, steamships, tricycle automobiles. Also features fantasy stuff like "daemons" who are apparently human souls materialized as animal spirits and talking warrior bears, but hey, it's got airships! Anyone read the books?
 

Yossarian

I read and very much enjoyed the books, and the movie looks like it's going to be quite good as well.

It will be interesting to see how the movie series develops, as the later books have something of an anti-religion message.
 
Grey Wolf

Grey Wolf

I was surprised they didn't stick with "The Northern Lights' as the title for the film, I guess they thought the Golden Compass sounded more adventurous, and it allowed someone to do that trailer where the Ring from LOTR morphs into the alethiometer.

I wasn't too sure about Lyra from the trailers until the last second on the one I saw when her look at the camera gave an expression matching my mental picture of her from reading the books, so she might work out OK after all.

The Panzerbeorn look quite cool too !

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 

Grand_Panjandrum

I hear they are cutting out the less-favourable-to-organized-religion aspect of the books, which kind of cuts out the basis of the series.
 
Electric Monk

Electric Monk

They're actually cutting out the last section of the first book (filmed & looks amazing according to reports, but edited out). They need to open a theoretical second movie with a bang, and the Subtle Knife does not count anything impressive on that end.

(Incidentially, perhaps shifting the ending of the Golden Compass to the Subtle Knife will also make them think about shifting the beginning of Amber Spyglass to the end of Subtle Knife—would make a much better movie IMO than the SUbtle Knife + Golden Compass's ending.)

The anti-religion stuff has been toned down (but is no longer removed, like an old version of the script), but I'm pretty sure Pullman (the author) approved the changes.

Loved the first book hugely from the moment I saw the North American paperback cover in 1996 (bottom: Alethiometer, top Lyra with Iorek Byrnison watching the Northern Lights and the… :) , enjoyed the second and third.

I have high hopes for the movie, though they better put the ending on the DVD if it tanks and we don't get the Subtle Knife.
 

edvader

A Catholic watchdog league claims the film promotes atheism.Just what we need -another bunch of book burners who are going cause people to see the movie rather than let it alone.They seem to forget that the second film in the Narnia series is due to be released soon.
 

Uber_Amoeba

I really like the look of this. Super-Victorian London looks really nice, and the panzerbjorn look suitably badass. It would be too bad if they took out too many of the anti-religious bits of the novels - the last one is basically a big anti-theist polemic. With a multi-dimensional celestial war.
 

Sergio Van Lukenstein

I'm a big fan of all the books. It makes sense to refer to the first film as The Golden Compass because that title fits in with the titles of the other two books (The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass), seeing how they all refer to important objects in the series.

Besides the anti-theistic philosophy, there's also some alternate history in there. I forget what all is different, but I remember that one of the characters comes from an independent Texas. And lots of places have alternate place names based on the names those places used to have in OTL. Yes, a lot of it is ASB, but not completely so.

Oh, and I haven't seen the trailer. Whatever. I just expect movies to pale in comparison to the books on which they're based.
 

Gaius Julius Caesar

I loved the book very much and I hope the film won't be to bad. In my opinion films based on books are almost always very poorly compared to the books(except the LOTR), because you can't put as much information in a movie as in a book. But I'm afraid that if they cut out the atheist stuff it will be just another crappy movie...I mean, that's what the whole story is about! it's just a story!!!
 

alt_historian

edvader said:
A Catholic watchdog league claims the film promotes atheism. Just what we need -another bunch of book burners who are going cause people to see the movie rather than let it alone.They seem to forget that the second film in the Narnia series is due to be released soon.
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Well, surely that's a good thing. AFAIK the Harry Potter films have been hugely successful, in part due to the efforts of Catholic groups saying that the films promote witchcraft, or something like that. This is the same mentality as people who assume that, say, Platoon is a pro-war film, because, you know, it's about the Vietnam war.
I wouldn't say that the His Dark Materials trilogy "promotes" atheism, as such. It just shows Christianity in a negative light.
 

alt_historian

Sergio Van Lukenstein said:
I wouldn't say they promote atheism, either. More like anti-theism. Or deicide. I have issues with the way the universe was created, and I was delighted to see a book like this which reflected my feelings about it.
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Cool. Its not as if the scientific explanation of the creation of the universe is any more coherent that the Christian one. The scientific explanation can be boiled down to "the Universe just sort of popped into existence. We're not really sure what happened." Whereas the Christian explanation is essentially "Um... there was this big guy, and he made the whole thing. Only took six days, too. Pretty cool, huh?"
I don't remember, off-hand, the series dealing with the creation of the universe, only with the Authority. Important not to get confused with the comics of the same name (excellent, BTW).
 
Redem

Redem

alt_historian said:
Well, surely that's a good thing. AFAIK the Harry Potter films have been hugely successful, in part due to the efforts of Catholic groups saying that the films promote witchcraft, or something like that. This is the same mentality as people who assume that, say, .
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Well I think that it was popular then after they went on it saying it was witchcraft which created even more buzz
 
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