An excellent movie

An excellent movie-book duo is very rare, for I only know a few that meet my standards. The Golden Compass, by Philip Pullman, was one of the best books I’ve ever read: sue me if you find one half as interesting. The world of Lyra has so many unforgettable elements, like Dust, an elementary particle that somehow makes our consciousness. Dust also has a mysterious connection to humans’ daemons. A Daemon is a living corporeal thing that is part of your soul. They take the form of animals, and can morph into any animal shape until puberty, when they settle into one shape forever. It is these weird inventions that are amazing. They hold a deeper truth and make you wonder what it means to be human.

The Golden Compass’s movie could have been great too, for it already had the masterpiece book as infrastructure. If only a few details were changed, it could have been memorable too.

Introductions are everything to a movie. The Golden Compass movie was introduced by a narrator, and that set distance between the viewers and our heroine, Lyra. The book had introduced us to our new best friend, our comrade in arms. The movie introduced us to a narrator narrating the story of a random girl frolicking about and being stupid. We didn’t feel as close to Lyra as we did in the book, and that cut half the thrill of anything Lyra did.

In terms of visual presentation, however, I would say The Golden Compass did a superb job; it exceeded all my expectations for a 2007-low-level-CGI animation + real-life movie. My imagination of Bolvangar was almost identical to the movie’s adaptation-- cold, mysterious, and unforgiving. Everything from the bears’ fur to the daemons were seamlessly blended into the setting in a way that did not stray too far from the original book.

My last critique is one many will nod their heads at-- abbreviation. The movie abbreviated so much that it took away from the plot. The intricate and complicated stories developed in the book are reduced to a few jumbled uninteresting mysteries, and once those were solved, the overall plot seemed to end abruptly. The book had us witness Lyra grow up, and makes us think about what it means to grow up. On the other hand, the end of the movie left us with a random girl with none of Lyra’s intelligence and spirit.

Perhaps the Golden Compass movie was judged unfairly. The book was so legendary, no movie could ever trump it.