COMPASS & LOTR comparison

[davem]

Yes, but its sad. And it puts a question mark over the future of fantasy films. Yes, the LotR series will continue, & so will the Narnia movies, but fantasy movies generally?

Of course, the problem was that NL bottled out ('got scared'). They may have set out wanting to avoid offending Christians, but they ended up going too far & trying to avoid bothering anyone - & they succeeded: in the end no-one was bothered by the movie. Trouble was not enough people were bothered about the movie.

Anyway, I don't see a sequel to TGC being made. What I do see is a slew of sub LotR movies which just repeat the standard formula of 'band of unlikely heroes must unite to defeat the DARK LORD? blah blah blah'.

What I'm most interested in seeing is the response to Pullman's sequel to HDM, 'The Book of Dust' which is supposed to be out in a couple of years. I've already heard of HDM being removed from some school libraries - can we expect a boycott of the next book?


EDIT

Actually, it brings up a bigger question - should the ideas & concepts that fantasy explores, whether in book or movie form, be restricted? Isn't fantasy, at heart, about asking the question 'What if?' If a fantasy novel or movie can't present a secondary world in which 'God' is not only evil, but actually a fake, then what can it do - what limits do we set on fantasy worlds - because whatever limits we set on fantasy worlds we are actually setting on the human imagination - we're saying 'You are not allowed to imagine 'X'.' - effectively Pullman's point.

It could be argued that those who object to Pullman's work on 'moral' grounds (not pointing at anyone in particular) are actually objecting to fantasy in general, & to the human imagination in particular. After all, in what way is imagining a secondary world in which 'God' is a fake from whom humanity must liberate itself & find its own way forward different from imagining a world in which the sun is green, or in which animals can speak with humans?

(For the record, I still found HDM (the book - haven't seen the movie yet) increasingly dull as it went on (nearly said 'progressed'!!) & found PP's repetitive haranguing just annoying by the end, so I'm not putting this argument forward as praise of PP.

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by davem

I've already heard of HDM being removed from some school libraries - can we expect a boycott of the next book?
.

Not in the UK. In fact the head of the church recommends that all schoolchildren read it!

Which brings me back to my point about it not being simple black/white fare. Pullman worked with some very ambiguous material from Blake and Milton, and raised some difficult questions, plus he threw a lot of theoretical physics into the mix. This is not standard blockbuster fantasy fare. It wears intellectual challenge on its sleeve, which is possibly why the Archbishop of Canterbury recommends it so highly - in contrast to the often dreary dull "Christian storybooks" (I read more than my share in childhood) His Dark Materials raises deep and important questions. It's more likely to have someone running to read their bible again than just about any other fantasy you can think of - including Lewis, who I didn't even twig onto as having any 'message' until I was told (that's what Neil Gaiman thought, too).

Incidentally, yes, I do think film audiences the world over are incapable of complex messages in films. Otherwise it would be Ingmar Bergman and Lars Von Trier films which topped the charts. And I'm broadly the same as anyone in that respect.

[Lalaith]

Golden Compass was a very unintellectual film adaptation of a very intellectual book. There was very little in the way of extended dialogue, for example, just look at rushed exposition compared to the leisurely and quite challenging intro to FotR. If anyone got any Blake, Milton or biblical stuff out of the Golden Compass I´d be very surprised...and I agree, btw that it did send me rushing back to all three to remind myself of references when I first read the trilogy.
I also agree, I think the film-makers bottled out. Not just about the religion business but about all the intellectual concepts....the nature of a daemon, the bear culture, all that stuff.
I felt Jackson bottled out too, to a certain extent (mostly in the Two Towers) but he did show understanding of the nature of heroic epic, for which I am sure Tolkien would have been grateful.

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by Lal1 --Lalwende

Quote:
Originally Posted by davem
I've already heard of HDM being removed from some school libraries - can we expect a boycott of the next book?
.

Not in the UK. In fact the head of the church recommends that all schoolchildren read it!

I assume you are referring to the head of the Anglican Communion. It is the official state church/religion, but I do believe you have a few other sects over there which he cannot in all fairness speak for.

Sadly, Pullman has just recently been pulled from high school libraries in one local catholic school board here--despite the recommendation from the library committee that it not be banned!

Originally Posted by Lal2--Lalaith

There was very little in the way of extended dialogue, for example, just look at rushed exposition compared to the leisurely and quite challenging intro to FotR.

You know, I was wondering about the balance of Pullman's three books and how there's so much explanation of the entire concept in the first book and whether that could profitably be extended to the latter two movies.

Perhaps, just perhaps, this is a case where it would have been preferrable for the film makers not to observe the independence of the three books, but to be more leisurely at explaining it all and integrate the three. After all, PJ moved Boromir's death and that hasn't drawn nearly the outcries that some of his other 'creative rewritings' have. The GC writers could have introduced Will and his universe a bit, even Mary and hers in explication of dust and alternate universes, spent some time depicting just what this heresy of Asrael's was all about--make us feel just how revolutionary and upsetting this idea would be for Lyra's world. And why the native northern cultures were so dead set against these intruders but accepted the Intercessionists. Does it need some other narrator's eyes than Lyra's?

I did like the way dust was represented both when a character was killed and when Lyra used the Compass. Of course, visually the movie is finely done, very finely done. To one who has seen Oxford even briefly, the alternate version of its towers and buildings was most intriguing.

I wished there was more to Lyra's childhood with the Gyptians as there is quite enough proof there about the existence of 'Others' even within Lyra's world, although I suppose that single early scene with the children battling establishes her character. And I so much enjoyed the book's descriptions of the Gyptian ship as she sailed down the Thames and hid out. There's a love of a grand river there that was completely eclipsed by the movie. And Mrs. Coulter's party is such a grand way to express the nasty business of this world and that was missed too.

Of course, right now I have no idea just where the first movie should have ended, if all this was to be incorporated. Still, it is possible that the complexity of the ideas could have been given more justice if they had been spread out more between three movies and not crammed into one. However, I must add that those here who've seen the movie but not read the book thoroughly enjoyed the movie and its pacing.

But it doesn't begin with a sweet and beguiling Shire so there isn't that to draw the audience in.

[Thenamir]

Originally Posted by Sauron The White

Rule of thumb says a film needs to take in at least twice what its budget was to break even because of what the theaters take as their cut of the action.

Actually. I learned something a few years ago that somewhat surprised me. Theatres, at least here in the USA, do not get to keep any of the ticket sales price -- the total box office goes to the makers of the film, which explains why the box office numbers are so important. The theatre makes its money almost entirely on concessions sales -- which explains why a bucket of popcorn and a soda (which costs the theatre about 25 cents) is sold to the moviegoer for $10.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

However, the over and above the production budget, you also have the marketing and distribution budget- which can, sometimes, be as great or greater, especially if they run TV spots in heavy rotation.

[Mister Underhill]

Originally Posted by Thenamir

Actually. I learned something a few years ago that somewhat surprised me. Theatres, at least here in the USA, do not get to keep any of the ticket sales price -- the total box office goes to the makers of the film, which explains why the box office numbers are so important.

Sorry, Thena, but this isn't exactly accurate. Most releases have a distributor/exhibitor split that shifts over the life of the release. The studios take the lion's share of the profits for the first few weeks, then their percentage steadily drops off over the next several weeks until theaters are actually making more. So it's only the films that run successfully for many weeks where theaters see big money, but I think you'd be hard pressed to find a film where the theater is getting 0% even for the first week, let alone the life of the release.

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by Bethberry

I assume you are referring to the head of the Anglican Communion. It is the official state church/religion, but I do believe you have a few other sects over there which he cannot in all fairness speak for.

Sadly, Pullman has just recently been pulled from high school libraries in one local catholic school board here--despite the recommendation from the library committee that it not be banned!

All schools which receive public funding over here, including 'religious' schools (we have quite a lot of Anglican, Catholic plus one or two Muslim and Jewish schools) would not be permitted to 'ban' books. Things like that are controlled by the DCSF. School Governors could object in theory but in practice, the Department would kick them into touch pronto.

I wish I could add more to your comments on the how the book was translated to film, but I still haven't been able to snatch the time to see it, so it will have to wait I'm quite desperate to see how Oxford comes across after actually being there to see it filmed - it was intriguing seeing all the lights and cameras up on the college rooftops - though I know what Jordan College gardens will look like as they left the door to a private Fellows' garden open at Exeter and I took my chance to sneak in

The most important bit to get right for me was Lyra as she's such a wonderful character (her and Hermione Granger are two of the best female characters created lately). I saw the first five minutes of the film in a sneaky internet 'leak' and I was very impressed just with that bit...