HIS DARK MATERIALS

not to people like me and spencer!

And HI DERE (who is seeing this in 3 hrs, 25 min)!

Bombing at the box office, apparently:

http://www.slashfilm.com/2007/12/08/box-office-golden-compass-disaster-juno-a-record-breaker/

I never ever wanted to see this until I just read that Dune quote.

But I think its not being 3 fucking hours long is kinda commendable.

I think Scik's review absolutely nailed it. Good. But could have been so much more...

The books are amazing.

I'd almost say the best order would be to see the movie, then read all 3 books, then see the sequels (assuming they get made).

The folks I went with who weren't familiar with the book liked it more than I did. I still liked it, though.

Nicole Kidman was great. omg the scene where she slaps her daemon.

Nice euphemism.

is anyone here as annoyed by the ending as every reviewer seems to be (they cut off the end of the book; apparently filmed it but took it out, i assume it'll be on the dvd or used for the opening of the next movie, or put on itunes as a premovie trailer before subtle knife, or some newfangled trick)

I wish whoever posted that snopes thing would have said that there is a MASSIVE SPOILER in the first sentence. Pity as I had another browser open to order the first two books off amazon.

Oh, man, Nicole Kidman's face, watching her try to arch an eyebrow. Cut back on the botox lady.

Cutting out the end was pretty bad, but I thought they stayed truer to the spirit of the book than most reviews led me to believe. Best parts, like the book, were Lyra's relationships with the Gyptians, Scoresby and Iorek.

Now that I know what these books are about I want to read them. I knew it was "some kind of cult following thing," and that's about all I knew. I will probably skip the movie since I don't care for the look of the animal souls that I've seen in clips from it.

Anti-religious children's books. Yesssssss my precious.

xpost- sorry about the spoiler; I'm sure I posted that link (and I know I only skimmed the snopes article). Be assured, though, there is way WAY more interesting material in the books than that; it's almost anticlimactic. (I *think* I know what spoiler you're referring to; it's in the first paragraph, though, not the first sentence, so not entirely sure...?)

My first chance to see this movie is going to be Dec. 16. I really want to go. The mixed reviews people have been giving it make me want to see it even more.

I really enjoyed the movie. Going to read the books now.

can't believe this thread is missing
http://content.ytmnd.com/content/3/e/6/3e621738b7fe09ccb101532a9336f033.jpg

The movie's ultra-mega-feh.

But imagine the pitch to the studios:

"It's Paradise Lost but with bears?"

"In space?"

"No...just bears."

The books are the greatest books written in the history of book writing. At least that's how I felt reading em.

i didn't like the movie, but want there to be more, because i liked the idea of the movie. overseas b.o. more boffo than domestic could help, but probably not.

the movie really bummed me out.

not because it was horrible, but because i felt like they really were in distance of making something really great, something that lived up to the books...the set designs and visual style was perfect, excactly how i imagined.

the girl cast as lyra was brilliant, didn't seem like one of those creepy child actors at all...kidman, james bond, james bond girl as the witch, john faa, farder coram, all great casting...having mckellen be the voice for iorek was a little distracting, but not as bad as i thought...don't really get why they had christopher lee come onscreen for like 3 minutes, i guess they thought more LORT mojo the better.

buuuuut....of course, it wasn't great, only OK, and it's a shame.

biggest thing for me was the movie could have used AT LEAST another hour. it felt terribly frenetic just speeding between plot points. i really like in the book the part where she becomes a part of the gyptian community and the long journey north...that lasted about 10 minutes. you don't really get a feeling for any of the characters.

also they chickened out on so much stuff, not necessarily the church stuff which i expected, but when they find the boy in the shack why did they change the fact that he was clutching a dead, decomposing fish? That made it so vile to me, really got home how terrible it would be to lose your daemon....so many little things like that.

but yes the religion was played down, but i could live with that. what i can't live with is the ending...for shame. ugh. the big thing for me at the end of that book is you realize that azreal is just as ruthless and bad as everyone else, or apparently so at that moment, that it's not just a simple matter of black and white, good guys vs. bad guys....i just reread the book and it's amazing how unlikeable he is throughout the whole thing...but i think his betrayal of lyra at the end is important for the whole series, and to have them just sail off into the sunset defeats the book.

so yep overall, i don't mean to be a trainspotter, i was more than okay with many of the things that jackson changed/left out in LOTR...because i felt that it was a filmmaker whose motivation was to make the best possible LOTR film he could...this felt like a filmmmaker who had the studio and the marketing dept in his ear saying "oh well you know we can't have it be too long" ...."We can't get into a religious controversy"..."We can't have daniel craig seem like a bad guy"...

shame, too, because weitz really did a number of things well, i'd be curious to read an interview w/him and i wonder how much he clased with the studio...i know that mckellen was forced on him, that was not his choice....

I just saw this and I thought it really sucked. :( A real shame, since I thought the cast were fantastic, and the design and look was pretty much perfect. There just didn't seem to be any real resolution - everything was simply skimmed over way too quickly.

I think this would have worked much better as a mini-series rather than a movie because so many things weren't properly established, like the importance of the daemon and why it was so bad to separate a child from theirs. I saw this with my sister who has never read the books and she was either bored or completely confused by the various characters, many of whom appeared for less than 10 minutes tops. But it did make her want to read the books - only because it was clear this was a good story being told at breakneck speed.

When my wife and daughter came out of the theater and said "...well...it was good..." I was pretty shocked and knew it had to be bad. If it had lived up to any of their expectations, they would have been squeeing like crazy.

Director's cut needed

All you folks who LOVE the books (like me) might want to read the best (adult) sci/fantasy series of all time The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe. Yes, it's better than Tolkien or Pullman or Herbert. Thank me later.

Holy shit... I think I read that...

Wolfe's pretty damn great, no question.

i liked those gene wolfe books a lot. they were pretty weird. i never read past the first 4, i think there were more.

this movie had its heart in the right place but still managed to be almost completely terrible.

SPOILAZ!

milo upthread OTM -- the plottier adventure parts of the story were by far the most intoxicating parts of the trilogy (everything about <i>Golden Compass</i>, when Will and Lyra recover the alethiometer in <i>Subtle Knife</i> -- awesomes!), and while I have to admire the ballsiness of the its anti-church bias, it stacks the deck too neatly against religion -- curious, since the bad guy(s) in the work that inspired HDM is extremely morally equivocal. If I had to identify a shark-jumping point, it was two-thirds of the way through <i>Subtle Knife</i>, when the story just became Will & Lyra walking forever, and Will losing blood.

And OTM x 1000000 about Lyra gradually transforming into a weepy & clutchy broad after <i>TGS</i>, very dispiriting since she started out as such a compelling spitfire in vol. 1. Also very ;_; that from vol. 2 on, she barely got to lie, and when she did, she was immediately punished for it.

Totally didn't realize that the decrepit angel getting eated by ghasts was the Authority until I read this very thread! I ar dum!

I'm on my second read through of these, this time aloud to my son. He's entranced by them; I'd wondered if he was too young (he's 8, but he's kind of a mature 8), but we'd already finished all the Harry Potters and needed to move on to something else. Haven't let him watch the disappointing film yet, maybe I won't.

BBC TV adaptation!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/latestnews/2015/his-dark-materials

Exciting.

nice, I hope there's an opportunity to see these in the US

I re-read these over the summer, they were still great despite bogging down a bit in book 3

Could be good, the beeb have been doing well with literary adaptations of late.

On a similar note, is their version of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell worth a watch?

thank good, the film was a botched opportunity.

Anyone check out The Book Of Dust: La Belle Sauvage yet?

i finished last night and I didn't fall head over heels in love with it like I did Northern Lights, but it was engrossing, especially towards the end. Malcolm was always an interesting character to follow, even if his adventures were a bit repetitive until the flood came. Pullman really knows how to capture the thoughts, languages, and feelings of a kid, even after all these years. The image of creeping religious authoritarianism in schools really resonated with me given current events. It was cool to see younger versions of characters like Asriel and Mrs. Coulter, and seeing how their characterizations conflicted with the characters we saw in HDM. No spoilers, but I think if the old trilogy was about exploring the magic of the North and traveling to other worlds, the new one will focus on the magic that governs Oxford and Britain, along with the continuing fight for intellectual liberty in Lyra's world.

I read a couple weeks ago, was totally absorbed in it though looking back at it the pacing is super weird and Malcolm’s back-and-forth spy adventures are pretty repetitive. Not as great as Northern Lights but he’s still excellent at describing people discovering the world around them. Was caught off-guard by the more mythical elements, fairy food and so forth - they didn’t seem as well integrated as the armored bears and witches in the original trilogy; and there’s something v ugly implied near the end that seems to be weirdly not followed up on. Thought it was funny how much Pullman mentions characters needing to pee, change diapers, etc. But it’s great immersing oneself back into that world, I’ll def read the next one.

Was caught off-guard by the more mythical elements, fairy food and so forth - they didn’t seem as well integrated as the armored bears and witches in the original trilogy

It was a more "realistic" book overall than either of the first three--despite the presence of daemons, it felt more speculative than fantasy for about the first 2/3s of the book. I think part of the reason the tone was strange was just because Malcolm was the single most unflappable 11-year-old anyone has ever met. He took every single mythical interaction in stride and somehow always knew exactly what to do. That was true of Lyra in the original books, but it was always implied that she was a girl of extraordinary talents, while Malcolm seemed to be clever, but more ordinary.

Still, looking forward to the next book

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yuIE1OYnVI

Yes!

... unless they mess up the anti-religion stuff. Then I meant No!

Has anyone read The Secret Commonwealth yet? I have one chapter to go and I think it's Pullman's best yet. I really enjoyed La Belle Sauvage, but this is next level. I've found some of it very emotionally difficult to deal with.

I didn't even realize it was out until I went and explicitly looked it up. Just got it yesterday, looking forward to it.

Just read it. Really liked most of the travel narrative and think he's overall done a very good job of writing Lyra as a 20-year-old with a lot of traumatic experiences in her past. I didn't buy the business about the book, though - we're told that it's affected her thinking and personality but I don't see any actual evidence of it.

I thought of the book(s) as - not quite maguffins, but almost the opposite of maguffins? Like Lyra had changed for a multitude of reasons - not least separation from Pan and the trauma thereof - plus just general ageing and social changes, and the book(s) were almost scapegoats, things that Pan had picked up on and fixated about as being the causes, whereas reading them and identifying with them was more of a symptom of the general direction she was heading in. Like they described her condition rather than causing it.

I think the book Pan hates is akin to Jordan Peterson’s type of reductive, sneering faux-intellectualist blather. Lyra’s acceptance of it is especially galling to her daemon because she, uniquely, has proof of the depth of the Secret Commonwealth due to her childhood experience. Also, I’m a little squicked by Malcolm’s infatuation with her.

Whoa, I had no idea that Pullman extended the HDM stories! Do I need to read the other ones before I get started on the new trilogy?

Probably yes.

I’d read in chronological order? Belle Sauvage, OT, Secret Commonwealth, next one?

I think I’d choose publication order. A lot is revealed about how lyra’s world works in the original trilogy that isn’t explained in La Belle Sauvage.