Golden Compass

[liralen]

John and I went to see the Golden Compass yesterday afternoon as our last kid-free afternoon for the next two weeks. 

It didn't suck.  But I have to say that the real highlight for the whole experience was getting to see the preview for the Speed Racer movie that's coming out in May.  *laughter*

The Golden Compass was very pretty.  The scenes and the people and the voice actors for the daemons were all pretty much spot on to what I thought the characters should be.  I really enjoyed the daemons.    The simplifications of the whole plot were absolutely astonishing, too.  It took away a lot of the richness and complexity and depth of the story, but I think they had to for the format. Still... I think that's what made it less memorable and more like a shorthand, prettied up version of the books.

Which, I'll also have to say, the Lord of the Rings and the Harry Potter movies also made me feel like, in some sense.  Beautiful visual representations of what had been going on in my head, and somehow it all always fell short of the depth and complexity of character I expected from the characters themselves.  The gorgeous scenery and props and action representation and all that were cool, but with the character-driven plots cut so to simplicity the characters, by necessity, become simplified as well. 

Ah well.  It may just be a weakness of the medium.  But... there are movies where character is represented so thoroughly and so well, that I don't think that that is just the culprit, but it may be in the comparison of text to movies. 

Comments

[aquamarcia.livejournal.com]

Films which seem to have greater depth of character representation tend not to have books with which to compare them, or if there are books the books are tie-ins that do little to add to the characters. I think there's a lot to be said for material written for a medium versus material ported from one medium to another.

[liralen.livejournal.com]

Very true.

[kirbyk.livejournal.com]

I tend to agree, both with the specific on TGC and the general.

Really, the best way to do it is to read the book first, then see the movie while importing all the extra data. I didn't notice some of the characterization skimping quite as much as a fresh viewer, because the characters were acting correctly. Lyra probably comes across fine (really, spot on job!), but it's the Lee Scorsby types, or the Gyptians, that get shortchanged. But as a visual feast, as long as it reads like an abridged form, I'm cool with it.

(And not, say, The Seeker. I suppose it's a bit unfair, as I haven't seen it, but it's exactly the kind of adaptation I don't want.)

It's very hard to think of adaptations that aren't like this. Some of it is length - A 300 page book is hard to get into two hours, and when you get into monstrosities like the Harry Potter tomes, things start getting cut. Another is that it's easier to show character in a book in an interesting manner. (Harder to do action, though.) It would be a mistake not to spend less time on character and more on the visual scenes - it wouldn't make a compelling movie.

I think that's partly why Peter Jackson's Rings trilogy was so well liked, because he wasn't shy about dropping the things that work well in text, like all the poetry and songs, and expanding things that work well on the screen, like battles. Which worked, but wasn't satisfying in the same way that the books are.

As companion pieces, though, like The Atlas of Pern or something, a well done movie is a nice addition! And I certainly enjoyed TGC as such, although I wonder how the specific things they cut are going to make it possible to do book 3 properly. (I hope they get to make it, too. It did great internationally but not so much in America.)

I spend more time watching movies than reading these days, but that's probably a tactical error on my part! :-)

[ross-teneyck.livejournal.com]

And yet, as far as the Harry Potter movies go... the first two books were short enough that they actually could put pretty much the entire book into the movies, and they did. The third one was where they had to start cutting stuff, and to my mind the third movie was much stronger than the first two.

I don't know if that was due to the fact that they actually had to think about "What story are we telling in this movie, and what's necessary to tell it?" but it felt that way to me.

[liralen.livejournal.com]

I definitely agree that the latter movies were stronger movies, and, even occasionally stronger story/plot lines because of what was cut. But there was still that lack of character complexity for me, at least.

It's interesting...

[liralen.livejournal.com]

*laughter*

Just a preference, perhaps? *grin*

[crimini.livejournal.com]

I don't think it's the weakness of the medium, I just think film storytelling is vastly different than book storytelling.

For me, one is very active while the other is less so. Words can only describe so much--our imagination fills in the rest. A film has to show everything visually (and through the soundtrack, but that's almost an added layer). It can not describe to the audience how something smells or feels, it can only show you how the actors react to it, or how it might look.

For me, all the book adaptations are just separate from the books. The book is usually written by one person and the reading experience usually happens with one person. It's rather intimate. The film is created by loads of people all with their own interpretations of the source material. And then the original script could be mucked around with. And then there are the actors' views of their characters and the casting director who chose those actors to represent said characters and so forth. It's very collaborative and as you know with collaborations, they are usually wild, broad things that bring about something that doesn't usually reflect the original intent exactly. Still a wonderful piece, but not the same if only one person did it all.

I've just stopped expecting the movies to be exactly like the books. :)

[liralen.livejournal.com]

Hmm... I'm not sure I'm expecting them to be exactly alike... just that one is, sometimes, missing something that the other had which I *liked* best about that story.

And I'll admit that I can't separate them.

I liked the Bourne movies much better than the Bourne books, but they're still related even without the plot differences. I liked the both Stardust the movie and the book, even though their plot lines were immensely different and even some of the major characters had essential characteristics changed.

It's just for both LotR and the Golden Compass, things that were important for me in the books were left out and there wasn't something that made up for it in as big a way.

[jilara.livejournal.com]

The visual medium, coupled with the need for brevity, can do a lot of pull the chracterization into a two-dimensional plane. I was actually pleasantly surprised at Mrs. Porter, but yes, the supporting case turned into visual snapshots. And just try to depict the relationship of human and daemon in a visual medium. Can't be done, really.

I understand they actually filmed to the end of the first book, but it was a downer for the test audiences, so they sculpted it back to a more positive point in the story (and didn't leave them with a cliff-hanger). Again, foci of movies are different from those of books.

[liralen.livejournal.com]

Yup, the ending really made sense for what they were trying to sell the movie for. :-)

[foomf.livejournal.com]

It's a compression/decompression artifact.
Certain directors are lossier than others.

[liralen.livejournal.com]

*laughter* I *like* that explanation, very much.