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#1 | |
Ghost Prince of Cardolan
Join Date: Mar 2007
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COMPASS & LOTR comparison
Film Journal has a good essay giving their review of THE GOLDEN COMPASS.
http://www.filmjournal.com/filmjourn..._id=1003682398 One of the more interesting things to Tolkien fans is the following key paragraph Quote:
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#2 | |
Late Istar
Join Date: Mar 2001
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#3 |
Illustrious Ulair
Join Date: Aug 2002
Location: In the home of lost causes, and forsaken beliefs, and unpopular names,and impossible loyalties
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Should a director attempt to stamp his own vision on an adaptation, or submit to the author's?
Difficult. the main problem with Jackson as far as LotR goes was that he lost it too many times & just went too far. The Aragorn/Eowyn/Gimli episode in TT springs to mind - a perfect scene - till Gimli falls off the horse: one step too far. Same with the flaming Denethor 3 mile run. The main problem was that no-one seemed to be present to tell Jackson when enough was enough. As to the Golden Compass - I haven't seen it yet, so I don't know how bad/good or average it is. It doesn't seem to be doing too well - though that could simply be down to the attempted boycott by various religious groups. I know Jackson has earned a lot of praise for LotR, but looking at his other movies I suspect that's down to the material rather than his skill. His King Kong was as mind numbing as it was bum numbing.... |
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#4 |
Wisest of the Noldor
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Davem, while I agree that Jackson's version tends to lack subtlety, I don't think you're being fair to him– he brought off some incredibly difficult things in the Lord of the Rings movies. I don't see a lack of skill there. You're talking about a lack of taste. (Well, I mean, he made a film called "Bad Taste"– what did you expect?)
I think this may be the reason some Tolkien fans can't reconcile themselves to the films, rather than because said films fail to adhere blindly to the text. Myself, I just think it's a regrettable failing in an otherwise good movie trilogy. |
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#5 | |||
Ghost Prince of Cardolan
Join Date: Mar 2007
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from davem
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The Denethor "3 mile run" lasted exactly ten seconds from start to finish. Time it. I have. The worlds fastest runner could do three miles in 12 minutes plus. I hardly think anyone was sitting there plugging all the distance together and coming up with three miles. ANd if they were Jackson had lost them a long way before that. How many times have audience members sees a flaming person in a previous movie and that lasted a similar time? Numerous I would think. So much so that some stuntmen now consider it a normal part of the job and there are industry standards for such a thing. I hardly think that particular scene tipped the balance. There may have been people there to say when enough was enough. One of whom was Jackson himself. When he saw the early footage of Arwen at Helms Deep, he canned it saying it just did not work. It could be that even Jackson felt he had gone too far and could recognize it. Quote:
Its interesting that anyone can claim the material was what made the films great when many of those same voices continuilly bemoan the near destruction of that same material. I have read where some purist critics claim its not JRR TOlkiens LOTR that is one the screen due to all the additions, subtractions and changes. They can hardly recognize the material. But now that same material came through enough to make the films successful and good? Its hard to have it both ways. And the excellence of the source material (and I agree that it was excellent) did nothing to help poor Ralph Bakshi in his earlier effort at the first half of the book, nor the Rankin & Bass studio in filming the last part. Neither of those. based on the same excellent material, were hits with the audience or with critics. If LOTR is an excellent steak that anyone can cook, it ended up as a bad meal two out of three times when tackled by different chefs. Last edited by Sauron the White; 12-13-2007 at 10:06 PM. Reason: typo |
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#6 |
Ghost Prince of Cardolan
Join Date: Nov 2007
Location: Facing the world's troubles with Christ's hope!
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Lord of the Rings is based on a christian perspective were good truimphs over evil.
The Golden Compass was written by an atheist, and, in the books, evil truimphs over good. The two trilogies are completely opposite of each other!
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#7 |
Spectre of Capitalism
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A Value-able comparison
Opening Weekends (USA):
Fellowship of the Ring: $47 million Two Towers: $62 million Return of the King: $72 million Narnia: $65 million Golden Compass: $26 million I couldn't be happier...well, I might have been happier had GC's numbers been lower... All figures taken from www.boxofficemojo.com
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#8 | ||
A Mere Boggart
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![]() I haven't seen the Golden Compass yet (and nor am likely to until it's out on DVD, sadly) but I have seen the first five minutes and as many snips as I can online and I was impressed by the look of the piece. However I have also heard that the narrative has been mucked about with a little too much. How the film can be offensive to anyone I can't grasp as the Magisterium can at worst only be an allegory of organised religion in general (and isn't even based on Catholicism but on Calvinism) and I understand even this has been downplayed. And organised religions can indeed be bad news just as politics can be bad news - Pullman's allowed to say that if he likes. There's a very interesting interview on BBC Radio Oxford* with the guy doing the whole protest thing and he failed to answer the thorny question of why if TGC is 'offensive' to Christians because it's somehow underhandedly tempting them towards Atheism and therefore should be banned, is a film of Narnia OK? Wonder what sort of a froth they're in on Lewis forums? Meh. ![]() Quote:
*http://www.bbc.co.uk/oxford/content/..._compass.shtml On one of these links you'll also find a quite disrespectful anecdote about when Pullman had dinner with Tolkien. I found it funny anyway, you can't be preciousss all the time. ![]()
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#9 | |
Spectre of Capitalism
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The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane. ~~ Marcus Aurelius |
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#10 | |
A Mere Boggart
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Plus there's the Shrek-like Enchanted out this week so 'the kids' might much prefer that. From what I've heard GC fails to get the story across properly, and Northern Lights is the 'easiest' of the trilogy (such as any of them can be said to be 'easy') to understand so I dread to think how they'd even begin to film the second and third books - especially as one of them is missing a major protagonist for about a third of the story! And after the brou-ha-ha over The Two Towers I think too much 'meddling' can ruin a narrative...
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#11 | |
Spectre of Capitalism
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My wife and I are, shall we say, unsophisticated in our moviegoing tastes -- at least, that's what our kids say. They'd rather see Beowulf and The Invisible. We would rather see Ratatouille or Transformers. I took my wife to see Enchanted, and it was wonderful! I often lament the dearth of movies like The Music Man, Mary Poppins, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, movies with real music (not pop-chart soundtracks) and elaborate dance numbers (not beat-boxing breaks). Enchanted is not quite like those movies, but there was enough of what I miss in the good movies-of-old to recommend it highly. That is, if you've not been ruined by movies like Dewey Cox, Talladega Nights, and Superbad... And the fantasy movie genre has not yet begun to complete its course. Prince Caspian will be out in May, and the buzz on that one is quite good.
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The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane. ~~ Marcus Aurelius |
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#12 |
A Mere Boggart
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I want to see Enchanted too, but like all other films I won't be seeing it for many months...I may have to make friends with someone who knows someone who knows a man in the pub who can get naughty copies of new films or something at this rate
![]() I'm a bit worried that they have spent so long making the next Narnia film that all the hype will have died away for it. The biggest fans of films like that are young and fickle, it's more the grown-up nerds who can and will wait for a sequel for a couple of years, so I'm afraid Prince Caspian won't be so much of a hit either. They ought to have kept up with the punishing yearly schedule the Potter films are keeping to...I hope it does come out though because I much preferred the film of Narnia...oooh, controversial... ![]()
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#13 | |
Spectre of Capitalism
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![]() <whispers "You're not alone," and disappears like an ephemeral smoke...>
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#14 |
Wight
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: England, UK
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I found the Narnia film to be boring and empty in comparison to LOTR. The CGI was good but there was no real emotion or reason to care about anything that was actually happening. Due to a lack of any real development of Narnia and its land I didn't really care about what Narnia's fate was - we see a load of wonderful but empty scenery and then a big battle. Watch the sequence in ROTK where Theoden leads the Rohirrim charging across the field with Howard Shore's Rohan theme thundering along and the golden sun in the background, and then the bit in Narnia where Aslan appears with 'reinforcements'. One was epic and glorious and the other was flat.
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#15 |
A Mere Boggart
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"In comparison" maybe, but had I seen it without ever seeing the film of LotR I'd probably have thought it awesome - as it was, I found it a fab film, very enjoyable (apart from the WWII inaccuracies...).
There's the thing though, just about anything, whether book or film, in the fantasy genre will always be compared to Lord of the Rings and just about anything will be found lacking "in comparison".....which is exactly why people like Philip Pullman feel they need to be especially vocal in disassociating from Tolkien.
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#16 | |
Wight
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'Dangerous!' cried Gandalf. 'And so am I, very dangerous: more dangerous than anything you will ever meet, unless you are brought alive before the seat of the Dark Lord.' |
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#17 |
Wisest of the Noldor
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That, and the White Witch had one of the worst make-up jobs I've ever seen.
I mean, I enjoyed the film... but honestly, half of it looked like left-over footage from The Lord of the Rings. |
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#18 | |
Cryptic Aura
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#19 |
Ghost Prince of Cardolan
Join Date: Mar 2007
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Films such as LOTR, NARNIA or COMPASS usually open very wide - a couple of thousand theaters. Art films have much higher per screen revenues when you consider that a film like the latest biopic on Bob Dylan might open in a 3 million person metropolis in one theater. In the end, per screen figures matter little compared to gross revenues.
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#20 | |
Illustrious Ulair
Join Date: Aug 2002
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Found this interview with Pullman interesting : http://video.yahoo.com/video/play?vid=1439673.
Certainly calls into question Pullman's 'militant athiesm' - he states he's perfectly happy for the interviewer to see 'Dust' in the novel as the divine - but more interesting is where talks about 'mutual interdependence' of humans & Dust, - its a mysterious force encompassing human thought, imagination, kindness, love, intellectual curiosity, & that our duty is to introduce more Dust into the world - that without Dust we will dwindle away, & without us Dust will dwindle away. The reason I found it interesting is that it is almost exactly what Tolkien says about Faery in the Smith Essay: Quote:
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#21 |
A Mere Boggart
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Pullman isn't a 'militant atheist' - it's a ridiculous thing to attach to the man, nor is he at the helm of some sinister recruitment campaign to secularism. His books simply (complexly?) put an alternative view that the path to wonder and joy can also be found outside of religion. And it can. Don't we all get exactly that from reading Tolkien, having a walk in the woods or watching kids smile?
![]() One of the 'points' to Lyra is that she is an ''Eve" figure, one of the symbols of the Bible which Pullman finds most interesting as it is Eve who discovers Learning and Knowledge and yet she is thrown out of Paradise for having a mind. Lyra defies Authority in seeking to find out what this Dust business is all about and she too acts like Eve - but in Pullman's case, he has written about what would happen if this 'Eve' did not get punished. And what happens? Some quite beautiful things, actually ![]() In HDM what happens to people who have had their daemons forcibly severed? They become hollow, and in the case of children, they even die - they clearly need the daemon, it being representative of something within us, either soul or imagination, whichever you like. This is done in an attempt to stop Dust settling on them as they begin to become young adults. The Dust is seen as 'bad', as 'sin', but it turns out not to be like that at all - we don't get told what it is exactly, but we have a good idea that it's something essential to human life, something which separates conscious (self-conscious?) beings from animals. It's also fading from the Universe/s. Lyra, in defying Authority, and in being brave and learning things, discovers all of this and learns how Story is one of the few things we have - that when we die what is left but our Story. All of this is incredibly similar to Tolkien's way of thinking, that to attempt to trap and control the imagination and to suppress it is a terrible thing. Lyra discovers the limitless possibilities of other worlds, learns not to tell lies and be true to her own Story and most of all to see Learning as important. This is also what Tolkien tells us, that liars and cheats do not win out, that we must learn for ourselves what is right and wrong (who's there out in the wilds telling Frodo and Sam what to do? Nobody, they must decide for themselves), and to be brave. I think it's a sad thing if people refuse to read this wonderful book by Pullman purely because a man tells them not to. Terribly sad... I suppose one of the problems is one it shares with Lord of the Rings - it's hard to tell "what it's about" and people feel they must fix a 'meaning' on it all. After all, in this cost conscious modern society every large effort made must have some kind of 'pay-off', mustn't it? And that's probably why lengthy shaggy dog stories like Tristram Shandy aren't popular these days - all our reading must have some kind of 'purpose' - pur-lease.... Well, meanings are there to be found if you so wish, but it is just a good story, just like the equally daunting Lord of the Rings.
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#22 | |
Cryptic Aura
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This is going to stray a wee bit off toipc, but that quotation from Tolkien's Smith essay is too fascinating to let my thoughts stray off--won't be so vein as to say I want to catch the Dust before it scatters. ![]() The idea that Fairie is Love and that the elves are part of that love is intriguing, but does this attribute really adequately explain or suit the elves as we know them in The Silm? I hardly think it does, with their stiff necked arrogance and honour and oath-dependency. What I think the Smith essay shows most clearly though is how Tolkien's ideas underwent change, development. I would use the word progress but I know how much the man himself distrusted that word. ![]() Really, I think it's kind of sad to wish ill of Pullman and Compass on some preconceived notion of hierarchy that one has to be better than the other, that Tolkien alone got things right where others fail, that somehow Tolkien's star will shine the brighter if the Pullman movies fail to be as successful as the LotR movies.
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#23 | |||
Illustrious Ulair
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In the Essay Tolkien also states:
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Another difference is that Pullman refers to Dust as a metaphor or visual image, whereas for Tolkien Faery is a place, in which living creatures live, move & have their being. Yet it seems that the concern of both writers is communicating the idea of some kind of immanent 'reality' which exists alongside/within the material universe, that the two are mutually dependent & cannot exist one without the other - & what's really interesting is that both use terms like love & imagination to describe this other 'reality'. |
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#24 | |||
A Mere Boggart
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Tell you what tickles me with all this faith-driven comparison of Tolkien and Pullman and the business of whether it's anyone else's business to tell us what's good for us...that Lord of the Rings is religion-free and yet His Dark Materials takes religion on board as a theme! And even compare what you can find of earthly religion in Tolkien's work (which it takes a serious fan to do) to what's in Pullman's work; Eru is really quite an unpleasant and negative character - nowhere even close to my idea of God, whereas the 'God' in Pullman's work is a sad figure, beaten by what people have done to him, and he is treated kindly in the end.
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There's a very close link between Gollum, wandering the wild in search of his Precious and the frightened boy huddled in the shed without his Daemon. Quote:
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#25 | |
Illustrious Ulair
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I find it difficult to comment in any real depth about Pullman's 'vision' - its years since I read HDM. 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. I also wonder how geniune he is being in his comments - Tolkien was not averse to taking up 'meanings' into his work suggested by readers which had clearly not occured to him before. One can't help thinking that LotR became a whole lot more 'Christian' in his mind after it was written than it was during the process... I don't know how much of what Pullman is claiming to be in the book was put in there deliberately.
In many ways I find Tolkien's creation more interesting than Pullmans because I dislike Eru (what there is of him in the story). One pities the inhabitants of M-e more than those of Pullman's multiverse because Eru is not removable: one is stuck with him & has to make the best of it - of his cruelty, his petulance, his stand-offish smugness & his obsession with his composition & his callous disregard of those who have to live in the world his foot-stamping response to Melkor's variations on his themes brings into being. Of course, one can start waffling on about 'inscrutability' & divine mystery & the like, but in reality the inhabitants of M-e have a generally poor time of it & Eru does very little, if anything, to alleviate their suffering. Yet as I say, this makes for a greater tragedy in its way - Eru can't be overthrown & Men, Elves & Hobbits have to find a way to live with him. Pullman's 'God' is a fake & can be overthrown & one can be liberated to find one's own way & meaning - even if one chooses the loopy option of trying to build a castle in the air (or 'building the 'Republic of Heaven' as Pullman has it, & which comes to the same thing, meaning precisely nothing). The weakness of HDM for me is that he makes the 'Magisterium' so OTT in its totalitarian hatred & desire for dominance that we end up in Python territory Quote:
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#26 | |
Late Istar
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Lalwende wrote:
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Insofar as the charge is 'cold and disinterested' (which is altogether a different thing from petty and bad-tempered), I will agree with you. But this is 'problem of evil' territory. Anyone who posits an omnipotent God is going to have to make him or her either petty and malicious or cold and distant, as it is certainly a fact that bad things happen to good people. If you are going to take Pullman's Dust as his true, loving and merciful, God (which I think is inevitable) then doesn't the charge of 'cold and distant' apply to it as well? Though I suppose the Dust is different, as it is explicitly (and emphatically) not omnipotent. Last edited by Aiwendil; 03-03-2009 at 01:07 PM. |
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#27 | ||
A Mere Boggart
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It's Eru's very omnipotence which causes the issue. He creates everything, including Melkor, free will and the whole caboodle - therefore Eru must logically also create the potential for evil if nothing can exist without his having created it. Even laying this aside he also has the power not to call the world into being after Melkor has interjected his themes. But he still does it. He also destroys Numenor as has been discussed many a time. He leaves dealing with Melkor to his servants, does nothing himself. He creates two races which simply cannot live alongside each other without coming into conflict because their very natures are incompatible. And I actually don't think Tolkien had any problem with this Omnipotent thing himself - it would certainly make sense coming from the mind of a man who had to reconcile devout belief in the Catholic God with being in the very heart of the unimaginable (because it is unimaginable to any of us) slaughter of the trenches. This may or may not have been his particular view of his own God that he painted in Eru - but we don't know that for sure, we can only guess. Whatever, I've never much liked Eru. He's a very negative figure and doesn't inspire me...but then did Tolkien intend him to do that? I think not - we have ordinary people like Frodo and Sam for that purpose. Quote:
![]() Pullman himself has no issue with belief where it does not hurt people, and that's fair enough, surely that's what anyone should believe? His beef is with abusive and restrictive religions - he shows what they have done to God in his books. Interestingly, revealingly, the Archbishop of Canterbury thinks every school child should read His Dark Materials. And remember, Pullman did not write a tragic story in the way Tolkien did. In Tolkien's world, there is only the Long Defeat and one day, maybe, an end to the world. In Pullman's Universe/s, Lyra comes to save the day/s!
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#28 | ||
Late Istar
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Lalwende wrote:
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And yet, as you pointed out earlier, Pullman does not, in the end, come across as anti-religion in HDM. Anti-Islamo-Judeo-Christianity, even anti-organized religion, yes, but anti-religion no. And I suspect that for many Christians of the less extreme sort, the Dust comes closer to their conception of God than does the Authority. Whether this is a virtue or a flaw in HDM is another matter, of course. |
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#29 |
Illustrious Ulair
Join Date: Aug 2002
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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? |
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#30 | |
Ghost Prince of Cardolan
Join Date: Mar 2007
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This from Deadline Hollywood site on COMPASS revenue.
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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. |
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#31 | |||
Spectre of Capitalism
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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: Quote:
![]() 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: Quote:
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#32 | |||
A Mere Boggart
Join Date: Mar 2004
Location: under the bed
Posts: 4,737
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The only way anyone can honestly form a criticism of these books is to go out and read them - and read them a couple of times as they are incredibly complex and ambitious and draw on so much more than mere criticisms of religions (they draw on philosophy, poetry, psychology, science, myth, art and literature amongst other things). Quote:
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#33 | |
Illustrious Ulair
Join Date: Aug 2002
Location: In the home of lost causes, and forsaken beliefs, and unpopular names,and impossible loyalties
Posts: 4,240
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But is Dust an actual physical thing (a form of matter) or is it a metaphor for imagination/love? Can't really be both - unless Pullman is actually writing a parable & not a story at all. Pullman seems to be doing a Humpty Dumpty, & having Dust mean whatever he wants it to mean at any particular point in the story. Is this 'Divine' Dust a physical thing - in which case it can't be something as abstract & metaphysical as love or imagination, or is it simply a floating metaphor for 'nice' things - in which case how can its presence be registered on machines, or anything be done with it at all? |
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#34 | ||
A Mere Boggart
Join Date: Mar 2004
Location: under the bed
Posts: 4,737
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Dust can be a metaphor for things in our world because unless Pullman is cleverer than all the clever people in the world put together then I doubt Dust is the answer to our own existence and is just a 'thing in a book'. So of course it can be a metaphor. ![]()
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#35 |
Spectre of Capitalism
Join Date: May 2001
Location: Battling evil bureaucrats at Zeta Aquilae
Posts: 987
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Darn it, now I'm going to have to actually read HDM so I can see what you guys are talking about and write a thorough refutation.
![]() -- Thenamir The Gadfly |
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#36 | |||
A Mere Boggart
Join Date: Mar 2004
Location: under the bed
Posts: 4,737
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![]() And some more on Dust...It falls, in Lyra's world, on those who have got a fixed Daemon, as opposed to children who have shifting Daemons - so it must be linked to what the Daemon 'is'. Which cannot be firmly defined, but we can guess that the Daemon is part of the human which feels, which thinks, which learns, judging by what has happened to the nurses at Bolvangar who have undergone intercission as adults: Quote:
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#37 |
Spectre of Capitalism
Join Date: May 2001
Location: Battling evil bureaucrats at Zeta Aquilae
Posts: 987
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As I noted to someone in PM, my delay in approaching HDM is not from protest of any sort (I have read and thoroughly enjoyed most of the Harry Potter books), but rather of time and the fact that I'd never heard of it until a couple of years ago. I have to admit it's not high on my to-read list even now, but if this row keeps up for much longer, I'll have to up the priority on it.
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The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane. ~~ Marcus Aurelius |
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#38 |
Illustrious Ulair
Join Date: Aug 2002
Location: In the home of lost causes, and forsaken beliefs, and unpopular names,and impossible loyalties
Posts: 4,240
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Pullman annoys Pope...
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#39 |
A Mere Boggart
Join Date: Mar 2004
Location: under the bed
Posts: 4,737
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There's some irony for you
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#40 |
Shade of Carn Dűm
Join Date: Sep 2003
Location: Halls of Mandos
Posts: 332
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Wish I had seen the film or read the books so I could contribute to this thread. For what it's worth, I will say, as a Christian whom most would describe as a "right-wing fundamentalist", that I have zero problem with these films being made. Doesn't affect me one iota. I'm not gonna take my kids to them (assuming I have kids, which I don't, yet), but censorship is idiotic and immoral.
I don't see my God (the God of the New Testament and Old alike) as petty, vengeful, spiteful, or distant. Tolkien didn't either, and I doubt he would appreciate his Eru being characterized as such. But that goes way beyond this thread's topic.
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"If you're referring to the incident with the dragon, I was barely involved. All I did was give your uncle a little nudge out of the door." THE HOBBIT - IT'S COMING |
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