Quote:
Originally Posted by Essex
anyway back to the Thread.
The Golden Compass has not translated as well across to the screen as Lord of the Rings because the source material is an inferior piece of writing and plot compared with Lord of the Rings
It's still a good tale, but is no where near as good as LOTR (to me anyway) and yes I have read Pullman's trilogy
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Interesting idea,
Essex, that the difficulties of the movie derive from faults in the original material. It sort of puts screen writers and directors in an inferior position, but I'm sure there are script writers (or hopeful script writers) here who would take issue with that idea.
However, it is your claim of Pullman's inferiority that I want to think about. Of course all of us here on a Tolkien board would naturally favour Tolkien, but I wouldn't want it said that such preference would blind us or make us incapable of reaching an informed, perceptive and intelligent response to any other author, especially one who appears so clearly to be in a rival camp.
Pullman's
His Dark Materials is not pure fantasy/fairie as is Tolkien's work. While Pullman clearly points to Blake and Milton as his inspiration, there is another English writer whose work clearly is a forerunner in the mode of fantasy. That is Jonathan Swift. His
Gulliver's Travels is equally difficult to place within a genre. It isn't pure allegory. It isn't pure fantasy. It isn't pure philosophical fable. It isn't pure travel story. (Travel stories were of some interest back when Swift wrote.) It's an amalgm of all of those.
The readerly history of GT shows this--often expurgated to omit the Yahoos for children and to focus on the Lilliputians and secondly the Brobdingnagians. The third book is often regarded as the least appealing. Interestingly, it is the third book which is the most overtly philosophical. (I do get a kick out of the idea of philosopher's thought balloons though.) Movies of GT follow this line, often limiting themselves to the first one or two books only.
There is something to be said for literary works which don't adhere to pure aesthetic demands for uniformity, consistency, overarching coherence. I think Pullman's triloogy follows Swift in this regard. Thus, quite possibly it isn't as you say inferior writing which mars Pullman's work and makes it fail to translate to the screen, but that it is a different kind of work. And to force it into the fantasy/adventure/blockbuster movie genre is to demonstrate misunderstanding of its original nature.
Of course, the same can be said of PJ's work on LotR, that he forced Tolkien into the movie blockbuster mode and in doing so damaged the original work.
Cheers!