COMPASS & LOTR comparison

[davem]

Well, it looks like TGC has fallen to number 3 in the US charts & will struggle to make back its production budget, so there probably won't be any sequels. I wonder why? I haven't been able to see it, so I don't know if its a bad movie or if its because people don't like the message - or even if they've gone along with the boycott.

Whatever, it seems like the LotR movies have won this one. I wonder if this is because if the 'message' is removed (& it has been apparently) the story itself simply isn't enough to sustain interest - remove the whole 'wicked Church'/death of God stuff & you have animal 'spirits' & armoured polar bears knocking seven bells out of each other & that doesn't seem all that attractive to movie goers. Yet LotR, for all the claims of religious symbolism running through it, is basically an entertaining story.

So what I'm asking is, is HDM really a good, entertaining story (as Pullman likes to claim) or is it actually an average/poor story which relies on a controversial message to attract readers?

[Sauron the White]

This from Deadline Hollywood site on COMPASS revenue.

And in only its second weekend in release, the bottom fell out of costly domestic flop The Golden Compass from New Line, which forked over $200+ million to make it. I know, I know, the pic is doing OK overseas after earning $50.9 mil from 27 territories December 7th-9th. But the fantasy epic is so lost domestically it earned only an anemic $2.6 million Friday and $3.7 million Saturday from 3,528 nearly empty runs for 3rd place and a new cume of just $40.5 mil. I hear studio topper Bob Shaye once again is blaming everyone but himself -- including the movie's director Chris Weitz, and also New Line's own prez of production Toby Emmerich.

That type of dropoff is extremely severe. Remember what happened with the RINGS movies? They managed to be the top film for several weeks running and the films stayed in the theaters for over two months. COMPASS is officially dead after only ten days in the theaters.

I have not seen it and probably will not until its on cable down the road. For what its worth, I have a six year old grandson who is just head over heels in love with the LOTR movies. Go figure. Earlier I had shown him trailers for COMPASS and the only thing he was even mildly interested in was the bears. When the film came out i offered to take him but he would much rather sit here and watch the LOTR films. If that is any indication, they simply are not reaching an audience.

I wonder how long the act of Bob Shaye can keep going like this? He bombed with his own film earlier this year and now the big series they had bet the farm on is not going anywhere - anywhere good that is. If this does not put pressure on New Line to come to a quick agreement with Jackson on the HOBBIT I really do not know what will.

[Thenamir]

Originally Posted by davem

Well, it looks like TGC has fallen to number 3 in the US charts & will struggle to make back its production budget, so there probably won't be any sequels. I wonder why?

<cackles with glee>

I am not a movie producer, director, or even a hack grip, and I don't play any of them on television. However, it seems to me that perhaps Pullman isn't quite as "loved" or "revered" an author as JRRT or C. S. Lewis, and probably for the reasons given earlier:

Originally Posted by davem

I enjoyed the first volume & liked the next two less & less & by the end I just didn't care because I just felt Pullman had stopped telling me a story & was just ranting at me.

Now Tolkien paints his stories in painstaking detail, Lewis in broader strokes and more primary colors (colours for you non-USian folks ) but neither forgets that the tale is the real focus. Don't know if Lewis meant his stories to be overtly and primarily a tool for proselytization, but from all my sources (I have not yet read HDM, so all my info is second-hand) it appears that davem is hardly alone in his assessments -- Pullman's focus seems to be less on the tale, and more on his not-so-subtly-hidden ideas and ideals.

My main point, at which I am only now arriving via a circuitous path, is that Pullman's readers just don't care as much about HDM as do the readers of LOTR or Narnia. In fact, the fans of Tolkien and Lewis are so keen to see the movies based on their favorite works that they are willing to put up with what the more pedantic ones would view as grievous errors in the print-to-screen translation. Pullman might have been read by many, but it didn't affect them as deeply or as strongly, and not in such a way that they seem to care much about seeing it onscreen.

Either that, or the movie was so badly made that it deserves its fate. I will defer that judgment to those who care to plunk down the cash to see it. As I said earlier, having seen neither book nor flick, I am certainly open to correction.

EDIT:

Originally Posted by Sauron The White

If this does not put pressure on New Line to come to a quick agreement with Jackson on the HOBBIT I really do not know what will.

If that is indeed the case, then The Golden Compass might actually have a redeeming quality!