Design . Build . Learn . Repeat

Philip Pullman’s “The Golden Compass” is one of my favorite books, so my review of the movie is duly biased. However, it was an interesting film that showcased some of the difficulties in adapting this kind of book to the screen.

See it. Go on. This isn’t a “best. movie. evar.” type of recommendation, but you should see this movie, despite the bad stuff I’m going to say about it. Pullman’s novel is very cinematic, so much so that it would be difficult not to produce some pretty good movie moments. There are plenty of the exotic locales and wild battles set to cinematic music that we’ve come to expect from fantasy epics like The Lord of the Rings. Chris Weitz seems fairly competent as director, and the acting stands out as particularly good, with great performances from Dakota Blue Richards as Lyra, Nicole Kidman as Madame Coulter, and Sam Elliot as Lee Scoresby.

Like any film based on a complex novel, “The Golden Compass” has too much ground to cover. The plot holds together reasonably well, or at least it gets to more or less the same places, sometimes by different routes. As a minor example, the screenwriters invent a pretense for Lyra to be in the Retiring Room at the beginning, whereas book Lyra is simply snooping. The changes work in some places, by simplifying the climactic sequence of events, for instance, but they also leave things out, particularly the pivotal ending. I suspect New Line eliminated the cliffhanger because of their uncertainty about sequels. And some of the changes are just silly: the writers replaced all references to “The Church” with “The Magisterium” in order not to offend religious folks, but the religious symbolism still being present, it’s likely just to make the message seem like subliminal secular propaganda rather than a straightforward parable about the dangers of medieval-style organized religion.

But these complaints are secondary. Here’s the main thing: the storytelling is incomplete, and sometimes lazy. (Lazy storytelling, you say? In movies? Never!) The narrative is what creates the world, more than any number of fancy visuals, and the storytelling in this novel has put it on peoples’ ‘best-of’ lists. The screen adaptation rushes through, rolling out threads but weaving them together artlessly or not at all. The connections between characters and events aren’t always clear, characters’ motivations aren’t fully explored, and some of the themes get lost.

Gimmicks don’t help. There’s a fascinating sequence when Lyra first uses the golden compass and begins to intuit meaning from its symbols: the snake represents cunning, she explains, and so forth. The scene works, and it begins to draw us into the symbolism and mystery that are so crucial to the world of “The Golden Compass”. For some reason, however, that’s all we get. Subsequently, whenever Lyra looks into the compass, we dive into a sort of CG fireworks show in which various images float past. Perhaps it’s trying to show us what Lyra is seeing, but it doesn’t work. It’s stupid, it makes it look like magic when it shouldn’t, and it’s lazy use of CG when Richards is quite a good enough actress to tell the crucial story of her growing connection with the golden compass.

It would have been a lot to expect, but here’s what the makers of this film needed to do: cut out some of the wide shots of landscapes and so on, if necessary. We’ve seen it before. And add some length — there’s no reason to cram this film into 1 hour and 53 minutes when the shortest “Lord of the Rings” was 2 hours, 58 minutes. Then use that extra time for storytelling (it’s show and tell, remember, not just show). Explain how Iorek was able to trick Iofur Raknison (sorry — Ragnar) in the fight, even though bears cannot be tricked, because Iorek knew that Ragnar was behaving like a human and that Lyra had been able to trick him. Reveal some of the witches’ motivations, rather than just having Eva Green float down awkwardly now and then.

I know I’m dissatisfied in part because you can’t read these books without creating your own mental movie. No film adaptation could quite match that experience. “The Golden Compass”, however, needed a more artful storyteller behind the wheel. Instead of becoming a great movie in its own right, it’s fun — but sadly forgettable.

“I Am Legend” had the opportunity to be excellent science fiction. That’s the best I can say for it. Will Smith has established himself as a surprisingly good sci-fi actor, and he does a good job as Dr. Robert Neville in this movie, without much dialogue to work with. And the budget and use of real-life locations allow for some stunning visuals. But many of the plot and direction choices were disappointing. For instance, director Francis Lawrence certainly managed to create mood, if not too much else, in “Constantine”, and he pulls off a good number of beautiful and melancholy scenes in “Legend”. So why spoil the sci-fi spookiness by packing the scary scenes with nothing but “fright” moments, where things loudly jump out at the audience? Expecting to be blasted with deafening sound around every corner makes good sci-fi seem like cheap horror.

More than that, the plot represents a significant rewriting of Richard Matheson’s 1954 novel (above left — which I admittedly have not read). The movie retains the scientific rationale for the monsters’ paleness, aggression and aversion to light while tiptoeing around actually labeling them ‘vampires’; they’re ‘Dark Seekers’ instead. The writers seem less interested in linking the scientific and the supernatural, with the result that neither aspect is as compelling. Vampires have human qualities, which is what makes them so terrifying, and in the book, almost sympathetic; these movie monsters are one-dimensional rage machines, much like the MLB. If we’re to buy into the scientific side, the ‘Dark Seekers’ seem stupidly fast and strong, and yet deterred by the smallest amount of UV radiation.

The rewrite of the ending, based on what I have read about the original, tries to make the movie’s outcome more palatable for a mass audience. I suspect this change is what makes the movie feel more like horror and less like science-fiction; Neville is now fighting a virus and virus-controlled creatures, rather than anything with a vestige of humanity. One of science fiction’s virtues is the ability to take the story into very dark places thematically and examine the lessons therein, so the absence of any such themes (apart from, “Beware of miracle cures” and, I suppose, “Perseverance in the face of adversity is a good thing”) is disappointing. The movie, unfortunately, doesn’t live up to its potential.