The Golden Compass (film)
It stars Dakota Blue Richards as Lyra Belacqua, Nicole Kidman as Marisa Coulter, and Daniel Craig as Lord Asriel, alongside Sam Elliott, Ian McKellen, and Eva Green.In the film, Lyra joins a race of water-workers and seafarers on a trip to the far North in search of children kidnapped by the Gobblers, a group supported by the world's rulers, the Magisterium.Development on the film was first announced in February 2002, but difficulties over the screenplay and the selection of a director (including Weitz departing and returning) caused significant delays.The Golden Compass has grossed $372 million worldwide but was a box office disappointment in North America which directly contributed to New Line Cinema's 2008 restructuring.Kidnappers called "the Gobblers" have been abducting poor and wandering children, including Lyra's best friends, a college kitchen boy, Roger Parslow and Billy Costa, a young Gyptian.Just before she leaves, the Master of the college entrusts Lyra with her uncle's alethiometer — the titular golden compass — an artefact that reveals the truth, warning her to keep it secret.Serafina Pekkala, queen of one of the witch clans, flies to the Gyptian ship and tells Lyra the children are a week’s travel from Trollesund in a Magisterial experimental station at Bolvangar in Lapland.At Trollesund, Lyra befriends Texan aeronaut Lee Scoresby, who suggests she hire him and his friend Iorek Byrnison, an armoured bear that he has come to rescue.She explains to Lyra that the Magisterium believe intercision protects children from Dust's corrupting influence, when their dæmon’s form settles, but it is still experimental.Lyra flees her mother and destroys the intercision machine, then leads the all the children, primed ready by Roger, outside where they are confronted by Tatar mercenary guards and their wolf dæmons.In a big battle, the guards are defeated by Iorek, Scoresby, and the Gyptians, with the witches led by Serafina flying in to turn the tide in their favour.With the freed children safe, Scoresby flies in his hot air balloon Lyra, Roger, Iorek, and Serafina north in search of Asriel.[7] Directors Brett Ratner and Sam Mendes expressed interest in the film,[7] but a year later, Chris Weitz was hired to direct after approaching the studio with an unsolicited 40-page treatment.Tucker felt the film would thematically be about Lyra "looking for a family",[7] and Pullman agreed: "He has plenty of very good ideas, and he isn't daunted by the technical challenges.Since his departure, blueprints, production design and visual effects strategies had been put into position, and while Weitz admitted that his fears did not vanish, the project suddenly seemed feasible for the director."[28] In addition to removing the novel's unsettling ending, the film reverses the order in which Lyra travels to Bolvangar, the Gobbler's outpost, and then Svalbard, the armoured bears' kingdom.Club argued that through the use of a spoken introduction and other exposition-filled dialogue, the film fails by "baldly revealing up front everything that the novel is trying to get you to wonder about and to explore slowly."[29] Youyoung Lee wrote in a December 2007 Entertainment Weekly that the film "leaves out the gore", such as the book's ritualistic heart-eating that concludes the bear fight, "to create family-friendlier fare.[40] The league hoped that "the film [would fail] to meet box-office expectations and that [Pullman's] books attract few buyers",[41] declaring the boycott campaign a success after a North American opening weekend which was lower than anticipated.[42] Albert Mohler, the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, agreed that the broad appeal of the film was a dangerous lure to the novels, which he criticised for carrying a clear agenda to expose what Pullman believes is the "tyranny of the Christian faith" and for providing "a liberating mythology for a new secular age.[59] On 9 June 2020 Weitz revealed on Twitter that it would take $17 million for him to complete VFX for his directors cut making him think there is no financial incentive for them to finish it and release it .The critical consensus reads: "Without the bite or the controversy of the source material, The Golden Compass is reduced to impressive visuals overcompensating for lax storytelling.[68] Manohla Dargis of The New York Times said that the film "crams so many events, characters, ... twists and turns, sumptuously appointed rooms and ethereally strange vistas ... that [it] risks losing you in the whirl" and that while The Golden Compass is "an honorable work," it is "hampered by its fealty to the book and its madly rushed pace."[69] James Berardinelli of ReelReviews gave the film 2.5 stars out of 4, calling it "adequate, but not inspired" and criticising the first hour for its rushed pace and sketchily-developed characters.[70] James Christopher of The Times of London was disappointed, praising the "marvellous" special effects and casting, but saying that the "books weave a magic the film simply cannot match" and citing a "lack of genuine drama.At the time of The Golden Compass's theatrical release, Chris Weitz pledged to "protect [the] integrity" of the prospective sequels by being "much less compromising" in the book-to-film adaptation process."[83] In February 2008, Weitz told The Daily Yomiuri, a Japanese newspaper, that he still hoped for the sequels' production: "at first it looked like we were down for the count because in the U.S. [the film] underperformed, but then internationally it performed [better] than expectations."[88] From 2019, 12 years after the film's disappointment that caused the two sequels to be scrapped, a three-season television series adaptation of all three novels of His Dark Materials was made, culminating in 2022.
Chris WeitzNorthern LightsPhilip PullmanDeborah ForteNicole KidmanSam ElliottEva GreenIan McKellenIan McShaneFreddie HighmoreKathy BatesKristin Scott ThomasDaniel CraigDakota Blue RichardsHenry BrahamAnne V. CoatesPeter HonessKevin TentAlexandre DesplatNew Line CinemaIngenious Film PartnersScholastic ProductionsEntertainment Film DistributorsLondonfantasyadventure filmHis Dark MaterialsLyra BelacquaMarisa CoulterLord AsrielPrincipal photographyShepperton StudiossecularistEntertainment FilmrestructuringBest Visual Effects80th Academy AwardsBest Special Visual Effects61st British Academy Film Awardsretro-futuristicthe Authorityanimal companiondæmonJordan CollegeOxfordPantalaimonRoger ParslowGyptianMasterOblationgolden monkeyTrollesundNorwegian LaplandFarder CoramSerafina PekkalaBolvangarLaplandSvalbardSamoyedRagnar SturlussonaeronautIorek Byrnisonarmoured bearJordan College, OxfordPaul BettanyLee ScoresbyJim CarterGyptiansTom CourtenayClare HigginsCharlie RoweDerek JacobiChristopher LeeSimon McBurneyJack ShepherdMagda SzubanskiHattie MorahanJason WatkinsIce BearNonso AnozieChris HemsworthToby Emmerichhare (jackrabbit)Stelmariasnow leopardTom StoppardBrett RatnerSam MendesBarry LyndonStar WarsThe Lord of the RingsPeter JacksonKing KongAnand TuckerOld Royal Naval CollegeGreenwichChiswick HouseRadcliffe SquareChrist Church, OxfordExeter College, OxfordThe Queen's College, OxfordThe Historic Dockyard ChathamHedsor HouseDennis GassnerRhythm & Hues StudiosFramestore CFCCinesiteNew YorkSan Francisco ChronicleScholastic PublishingComic ConThe A.V. ClubEntertainment Weeklyabuse of powerChurchdogmaticNational Secular SocietyThe AtlanticChristianity TodayMagisteriumheresyByzantineCatholic LeagueWilliam A. DonohueThe Washington PostAlbert Mohler