The Golden Compass (2007)
Director: Chris Weitz
Screenplay: Chris Weitz
113 minutes
Based on the book Northern Lights, the first in Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy, The Golden Compass misses the boat in so many ways you’d be forgiven for thinking you might be on the set of a Project Greenlight production without the input of professionals. To be fair, the writers, director, actors – everybody in fact – was on a hiding to nothing making this. Having read the trilogy, to say it’s an understatement to say it was an ambitious project would be like saying Ronaldo knows his way around a footie field.
Seemingly abandoned at birth, Lyra (Richards) is a girl who lives with the scholars of Jordan College in Oxford, in a parallel universe to ours. Everybody’s soul, or spirit, is in the animal form of a daemon that is visible to all and sundry and both the human and animal are bonded from birth to death. The Magisterium (read Catholic Church) runs society on a tight leash, however things start going pear-shaped for the God botherers when the mysterious Lord Asriel (Craig) returns from a fact-finding mission to the Arctic. The explorer tries to persuade Jordan College to fund an expedition to find out more about dust – microscopic particles that will unite all the different universes, which in the long run, will make the Magisterium redundant. Of course, like all religions, the Magisterium doesn’t take too kindly to its power being usurped and will do anything to stop Asriel from being successful.
Lyra forms an important part of the story as, unbeknown to her, she is the main subject of of a long-established prophesy that will change the fabric of the many universes. She gets given an alethometer (the golden compass of the title), which gives her the ability to answer any question asked. Cue the introduction of the sinister Mrs Coulter (Kidman), and her spooky monkey daemon, and the pic starts to take on a life of its own as Lyra lurches from one adventure to the next. She runs into talking polar bears, witches, mad scientists, an aeronaut, lobotomised kids…the list goes on. That’s the premise, but what follows is a mish-mash of ideas and you really need to read the books to get a true feel of what Pullman was trying to say. His books sometimes came across as convoluted and this doesn’t help the movies. Weitz did well with About a Boy, and while he can’t take the whole blame for the pic, he can take some for even attempting it.
Maybe the pic’s box office failure was a blessing in disguise – God knows how they were going to make the other two books into intelligent movies – they’d make Matrix Reloaded and Matrix Revolutions look like Paint by Numbers. Sometimes books are best left alone to be, well, just books…
2.5 Stars out of 5
Yawns kill movies.
Sydney Table
Salty Popcorn
Total Randomness
I worship the books and everyone that made this movie should be banished from Hollywood!!
Nice read - thanks!
Even worse was the Eragon film!!!