Comparing a movie to the book it's based on is never fair. It's a different medium, with different demands and possibilities. However, I think it's interesting to look at what some stories - for instance, Pullman's book - do right, and others - for instance, this movie - fail to do.
The strength of any fantasy story, from the old fairytales to the newest SF space operas, depends on exactly that which the completely pointless voice-over at the start of
The Golden Compass mentions but fails to do: the ability of the story to build an entire different world, yet one that we can relate to. When we watch
Star Wars, we're on Tattooine; when we read
Lord of the Rings, we're in Middle Earth; when we watch
Buffy, we're in Sunnydale; when we read
The Golden Compass, we're in... whatever we're supposed to call Lyra's world. Why is this important? Because if we don't know and accept the logic of that world (that people can use the Force, there are elves and dwarves and vampires, and people's souls walk around on their own) then the story is only so much smeerps and special effects. The trick isn't to make it seem extraordinary, but to make it seem natural; take us into that world, make us part of it, get to know who's who, THEN let the story unfold. That's where Philip Pullman succeeds - the opening of the book is rather excellent at that - and where the movie fails. Right from the opening monologue, it focuses on the weird elements (look! A world that's not ours! Look! Daemons! Look! Talking bears! Look! Airships!) as if the point were how
different this world is rather than how much it's a slightly distorted version of our own. "Don't worry, it's just a fairytale."
That's one of the problems. Related to that is that they're so hellbent on squeezing in absolutely every detail (well, at least every detail that can be done with CGI rather than a good script) that the bigger picture gets lost in a rushed jumble of details, where we only know which ones are important because we are explicitly told they are. We're rushed from exposition to action to exposition to action without ever really getting to settle in and
believe. Sure there are some good bits - the scenes between Scoresby and Iorek, for instance, which really are good - but for the most part, it feels like watching a bunch of actors and CGI experts. The story doesn't get told as much as summarized.
Pullman in his first book wrote about, he wrote about, he wrote about, Pullman in his first book wrote about the - ooops, out of time.
Then, you have the way the stakes are lower. Pullman didn't shy away from horror, the feeling that Very Bad Things could happen to good people; the movie does. The bearfight is impressive, but where's the blood, where's the risk? We never once get the feeling that Iorek could actually lose, since the newly christened Ragnar is obviously a pompous and fat fool who poses no true danger. Poor Billy Costa is cold and alone, but surely he's OK after he's been reunited with his loving mother? That's the most horriffic scene of the book , but here it's castrated and wasted. And of course, the ending. Or rather, the lack thereof, which really only works if the audience is at the edge of their seats screaming "NOW what is going to happen? SEQUEL! NOW!" Which I for one am not; especially since the movie even goes to some length to have Lyra explain that everything's going to work out - it's as if they didn't know whether to give it a heartwarming reunion ending or a huge cliffhanger, and so did... neither. Why should we care what happens next? What's at stake here? Why? Where? To whom? The book ends on a huge shock that makes the reader re-evaluate pretty much the entire story. The movie doesn't end, it just stops.
Yes, it looks really good. The proper actors are excellent whenever they're given 10 seconds to actually do some work, the animals are astonishing, and the story isn't
quite as dumbed down as I'd been lead to believe - there's still at least some of Pullman's philosophising in there, even if it's rushed past and made more of a plot point than the point of the entire story. But in the end, it's about as rewarding as watching a demo for a computer game; lots of flashy graphics, but since it doesn't have anything to do with me, I see no point in demanding to know what happens next.
