The Golden Compass

[nancylebov]

I highly recommend it. Even though the anti-religious material has been removed, there's plenty of anti-authoritarianism, which I think is more important. It's a lot harder to pull people into bad religion if they're innoculated with anti-authoritarianism, and the movie has a pleasing "don't trust government or dubious people who say they're helping you avoid painful things like thinking" aspect.

It's gorgeous. I would say it has a dreamlike beauty, except that my dreams don't look that good.

And it may be the fastest movie I've ever seen. It runs 113 minutes. Usually during movies, even movies I like, there are times when I space out or wonder how much longer it's going to be. In this case, they were setting up the sequel and I was expecting more adventures and then the movie ended.

Nitpicks and spoilery stuff will appear as my first comment because lj-cuts don't appear in previews, so I don't entirely like doing cuts for things I want to conceal.

Trailers: I want to see The Spiderwick Chronicles, The Great Debaters (about a top notch black debate team during the civil rights era), Inkheart, and possibly Horton Hears a Who. The proportion of promising trailers was unusually high, and most of them seemed to be from New Line Studios.

Comments

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

The daemons were a little inconsistent. In general, a person and their daemon feel what each other's sensations, but Coulter's golden monkey surreptitiously attacked other daemons a couple of times near the beginning of the movie.

How come some daemons could talk to their people (was it entirely the good characters?), but others couldn't?

Maybe I missed a plot point, but why didn't the polar bear have his army with him during the big fight after he'd become king?

When the polar bear became king, there was some rather solemn applause in the theater. I don't think I've heard anything like it before.

[bradhicks.livejournal.com]

Notice what the doctors at the research center said about Mrs. Coulter's daemon creeping them out, at least in part because it's mute. She probably should have felt it when she slapped it, too, but who's sure that she would have shown it? That's one seriously abused (self-abused, if you will) daemon, and she's a very twisted individual.

I don't remember whether the ice bears fought against the Magisterium in the first book or not. I liked the books, but they made so little impression on me that I'm fuzzy on details. My take on it from the movie was that the old king had committed the ice bears to fighting for the Magisterium, since we were told early on that the facility was protected by both the Magyars and the ice bears. So it was pushing the limits of their honor as far as the new king could do to get them to stay home while he honored his contract to the girl.

[madfilkentist]

I'm planning to see it this afternoon. After going through the book a third time, I think I generally understand the plot. It's a lot of stuff to fit into a two-hour movie!

Some critics have been complaining that it isn't another Harry Potter. It isn't. It's a much more complex and subtle story.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

It's got more philosophy and underlying structure to the magic, but it's also more of a wish-fulfillment story. Lyra gathers supporters, but doesn't have to deal with internal politics or a complex society.