Review of The Golden Compass (2007) by Araminta G — 20 Aug 2018

New Line cinema publicized The Golden Compass as the new epic journey following the famous and very successful Lord of the Rings trilogy. That, added in with the unsatisfying ending, however, contributed to a mediocre film in comparison.

The beginning of The Golden Compass is quite promising: the visuals are very atmospheric and aesthetic. It is reminiscent of Lord of the Rings, especially with shots recalling in quite a bit of detail The Fellowship of the Ring sceneries and landscapes. The exposition is well handled through narration and diegetic character dialogue. The first half of the movie follows the book almost scene by scene. The actors and performances are well done, even though they then suffer from the story in the end - more about that later.

The CGI in my opinion is surprisingly well done for a 2007 children's-to-young-adult film. The contrast between the daemons and the actors is smaller than in some films you would see today. The actual images work with the CGI through the use of saturated colours which also helps with atmosphere and this child-like world. One aspect which might be considered as uncertain CGI and use thereof are the witches, flying around. It still passes though, especially as the film is, after all, intended for a younger audience.

The moment things start to tip over to the other side is towards the middle of the film, where the writers chose to change up the lineup of the novel's events and their appearance or not in the movie. Understandably, the unsure climax of the book is problematic for a film that needs structure to hit the points of any mainstream cinema movie.

However, it is unsure for those that have read the book if all these changes were a good idea, although it makes the story easier to show and creates a better linearity of events. Perhaps the most notable change from the novel and probably the most prominent flaw of the film is the extremely weak ending.

There is a huge climactic fight and the movie ends shortly thereafter, with Lyra and her friends in the hot air balloon.

The ending scenes of the novel are completely cut out and there is no resolution in the movie. It keeps suspense for a potential sequel, no doubt, but disappoints deeply those that have read the book, awaiting the final dramatic scenes of the novel that are almost perfect for a movie ending and also opens to a very well done cliffhanger for a sequel, at least a better cliffhanger than what the film had. In addition, it is difficult to imagine the last pages of Northern Lights as the beginning of another film, so it makes even less sense for it to have been cut. The ending is probably going to cost one star.