MandyThe Trouble With Lyra: Redux
June 2nd 2008 07:13
It was the day after Christmas, and I was bound for the cinema.
The film I was waiting to see had been anticipated more than any Christmas present, including my brand-new iPod and season two of Laguna Beach. Earlier that month I had been to see Enchanted (as a devoted cinephile, I try to absorb a wide cross-section of popular culture), and squirmed with delight as the preview for The Golden Compass unfolded. I may have even shed tears of excitement. So they had changed the name from Northern Lights to The Golden Compass—disappointing, but I could deal. I had the wonderfully promising trailer to buck me up. There was Lyra! There were solemn and possibly evil statements of intent! There was the doomsday choir! It appeared to be everything I adored in fantasy films. In my glee, I failed to notice something odd- the preview was being coupled with a Disney film. An admittedly great, G-rated, children’s film.
The premiere of The Golden Compass grew closer, and I grew exponentially more impatient. Christmas was coming—who cared! I cursed Christmas for coming between me and the movie adaptation of one of my favourite books. Philip Pullman’s trilogy, comprised of Northern Lights, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass, had been a birthday gift earlier in the year, and I hurried to re-read them so the details of the story would be fresh in my mind when I sat down in that cinema on Boxing Day. However this was no chore—the books were just as good the second time around.
I could hardly sleep on Christmas night. Over the preceding months I had lathered myself into a frenzy of anticipation and expectation. When a film is this important, especially a fantasy film, I don’t just watch it. I experience it. It becomes an Experience. This is a concept my mother cannot comprehend. When the time came to go to the cinema I was positively light-headed. I fidgeted in the ticket line, scorned offers of over-priced snacks (the Experience never involves distractions of food) and raced into the darkened cinema to analyse the optimum viewing position. I sat alone (another requirement of the Experience) and writhed with excitement. A woman two rows down told me to “shut up and stop squeaking.”
The previews, always a favourite part of the Experience, sailed by unnoticed. I was quivering with excitement and my breath came short and quick. As the lights went down I wondered if it was possible to pass out from pure joy. This was it- the culmination of what seemed an eternity of waiting. The New Line Cinema logo twirled its way onto the screen (as a cinephile, one has an intimate knowledge of these things) and I settled down the task of Experiencing. After all, the film was in the hands of New Line, the studio behind The Lord of the Rings. What could possibly go wrong?
*sounds of film projector chewing tape*
Six months after the Experience, I am fully recovered. The deep hurt of betrayal has gone, the scars from the knife-twisting have faded, and I would be willing to give The Golden Compass a second chance, minus the frenzied emotional involvement. After all, the celebrated film critic Roger Ebert gave it four stars and called it “a wonderfully good-looking movie, with exciting passages and a captivating heroine in Lyra” (we cinephiles always look to Ebert for guidance and affirmation). So now, with the healing influence of time and distance, I would like to rephrase my innocent question. What possibly went wrong? And the all-important addendum: Why?
In the months leading up to its release, The Golden Compass was predictably attracting attention for all the wrong reasons. I won’t bother denying the anti-religious slant of the books; Pullman himself has said “My books are about killing God.” Yet the fundamentalists always missed the point with their criticism. Pullman may argue against Christianity and the corruption of the Church, but the themes of the story echo Christ’s original message of love and friendship. “We need joy, we need a sense of meaning and purpose in our lives, we need a connection with the universe, we need all the things the Kingdom of Heaven used to promise us but failed to deliver,” he said in a speech in 2000. His books are about the necessity of faith, rather than that of religion. And there is a difference.
But it seems New Line chose not to acknowledge the more subtle themes in The Golden Compass. After the phenomenal success of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, culminating with the Oscar-laden The Return of the King in 2003, New Line commissioned the first script of The Golden Compass. Over the next five years—spanning two writers, two directors, and several scripts—the studio spent enormous energy sorting out exactly how to characterize the villains in the movie.
Director and screenwriter Chris Weitz swore the film would not, heaven forbid, offer any critique of religion. “The movie’s first job is to beguile the audience for a couple of hours,” he said, and it makes a credible attempt at doing so. The religious undertones of the story were tweaked and twisted and shadowed so they became essentially indecipherable. The Church is never mentioned in the film, the studio instead opting to make the bad guys part of a “vaguely…fascistic, totalitarian dictatorship.” Even the word “sin” was cut from the script in order to destroy any hints of religious dogma. In the words of one reviewer, “the studio opted to kidnap the book’s body and leave behind its soul.”
The controversial aspects of the story- Lyra’s fight against the Church and its priest-sanctioned murder of children- were of course watered down to make the film more palatable to a wider audience, and the dollars they bring. Weitz spoke about this and the difficulties in translating the themes of the book to the big screen. “New Line is a company that makes films for economic returns,” he said. “You would hardly expect them to be anything else. They have expressed worry about the possibility of [The Golden Compass’s] perceived anti-religiosity making it an unviable project financially.”
Despite believing they had catered to the demands of Christian fundamentalists, the studio copped a lot of heat in the form of boycotts and Pullman-damning pamphlets. The Catholic League, a group which monitors the portrayal of the Catholic Church in the media, damned the film as “sugar-coated atheism” and warned parents against exposing their children to its anti-religious themes. “We're saying don't go to it, and certainly don't buy the books as Christmas gifts for your children," said Kiera McCaffrey, director of communications for the Catholic League.
This approach seemed to have succeeded, especially in America where The Golden Compass had a lackluster opening weekend with a box office total of $27 million. The cinephile’s own God, Roger Ebert, noted that “any bad buzz on a family film can be mortal, and that seems to have been the case this time.” The film cost New Line Cinema $180 million to make, and the production of the second and third books in the trilogy depended on the success of the first. However the film has done well internationally, quadrupling the US box office returns and keeping the hope of sequels alive.
In trying to please everyone, New Line succeeding in pleasing very few people. Weitz attempted to appease fans of the books, saying that religion would instead appear in euphemistic terms, yet the decision was criticised by fans and anti-censorship groups, saying “they are taking the heart out of it, losing the point of it, castrating it...” and “this is part of a long-term problem over freedom of speech.” In addition to poor box office returns, The Golden Compass suffered from mixed, unenthusiastic reviews from critics and unhappy, despairing reviews from fans. Its special effects were lauded as “marvelous” and “sumptuous” but many critics commented on the shaky, convoluted plot Weitz and New Line had put together from the ravaged bones of Pullman’s books. As one critic said, “By ripping out the very things that made the novel so spell-binding and original, we're left with an ultimately quite hollow, shallow and self-conscious movie, which is more interested in showing off it's (admittedly breathtaking special effects) than telling an interesting story.”
Another mistake by New Line had the film’s running time reduced to 114 minutes, nearly half the length of each of The Lord of the Rings installments. While Pullman’s books aren’t as mammoth as JRR Tolkien’s trilogy, the world he created is just as detailed and original, and many fans felt deserved an equal treatment. “Granted, such a complex story was always going to be difficult to adapt, but surely restricting it to such a short-time span to tell the story just increases that difficulty,” says a fan on the Internet Movie Database. The New York Magazine concluded that the studio had opted for a “failed” length of under two hours in order to maximize revenue.
In doing this, New Line sacrificed one of the most important occurrences in the book which gave them the added bonus of providing their audience with an happy ending. Weitz revealed he cut the final three chapters of the book in order to provide “the most promising conclusion to the first film and the best possible beginning to the second,” though he later admitted there had been “tremendous marketing pressure” to create “an upbeat ending.” In the book, Lyra watches her father murder a young child in order to facilitate his experiment, however along with the religious elements of the story this was excised from the film.
With all the evidence laid out in front of me, I have figured out why New Line and Chris Weitz found it necessary to fiddle with the successful plot of The Golden Compass. The smoothing over of religious antagonism, the shorter running time, and the clumsy happy ending all point to an inevitable conclusion—New Line believed they were making a children’s film.
This all started with a hobbit. A monstrous surge of fantasy films swamped cinemas since The Return of the King sailed off into the sunset, each trying to fill the gaping void. There have been five Harry Potter films so far, and while they have been a commercial success, critics and fans alike left with divided opinions. 2005’s The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was well-received enough to generate a sequel (Prince Caspian is released on June 5) but failed to make a huge splash. Eragon, the big screen adaption of Christopher Paolini’s New York Times bestseller, was roundly dismissed for being thin on plot and big on The Lord of the Rings homage, and not knowing whether it was for children or adults.
This is the dilemma that plagues studios such as New Line today. While Pullman’s books are rife with difficult moral quandaries, murderous characters, and culminate in all-out war, The Golden Compass was marketed as a children’s blockbuster. The film was marketed to the hilt, its late December release helpfully coinciding with the Christmas crowds who would buy sticker books, poster books, behind-the-scenes books, notebooks, new editions of the trilogy, and then take their family to McDonalds where they could get a piece of plastic junk licensed under The Golden Compass brand. No wonder filmmakers are so confused, and fans so despairing. The poor film is trying to grow up, but its parents are forcing it to wear baby booties and stuffing it into a pram. Just let it go, man!
But there is hope for cinephiles everywhere; it seems Hollywood is beginning to wise up. Despite The Golden Compass’s poor reception in the United States, producer Deborah Forte wants to see the trilogy through. If sequels are produced, and if he is still on board, Weitz has said that he intends to "protect [their] integrity" by being "much less compromising" in the book-to-film adaptation process.
I certainly hope so. After all, The Lord of the Rings has died and been reincarnated in DVD form, there are only two Harry Potter films left, and there’s no way I’m shelling out good money to see the sequel to Eragon on the big screen. What other movie am I going to Experience? Get Smart? No thanks. The latest Chronicles of Narnia, though…
Yes, I think I’ll go and Experience Prince Caspian.
The film I was waiting to see had been anticipated more than any Christmas present, including my brand-new iPod and season two of Laguna Beach. Earlier that month I had been to see Enchanted (as a devoted cinephile, I try to absorb a wide cross-section of popular culture), and squirmed with delight as the preview for The Golden Compass unfolded. I may have even shed tears of excitement. So they had changed the name from Northern Lights to The Golden Compass—disappointing, but I could deal. I had the wonderfully promising trailer to buck me up. There was Lyra! There were solemn and possibly evil statements of intent! There was the doomsday choir! It appeared to be everything I adored in fantasy films. In my glee, I failed to notice something odd- the preview was being coupled with a Disney film. An admittedly great, G-rated, children’s film.
How does she know that you love her??
The premiere of The Golden Compass grew closer, and I grew exponentially more impatient. Christmas was coming—who cared! I cursed Christmas for coming between me and the movie adaptation of one of my favourite books. Philip Pullman’s trilogy, comprised of Northern Lights, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass, had been a birthday gift earlier in the year, and I hurried to re-read them so the details of the story would be fresh in my mind when I sat down in that cinema on Boxing Day. However this was no chore—the books were just as good the second time around.
I could hardly sleep on Christmas night. Over the preceding months I had lathered myself into a frenzy of anticipation and expectation. When a film is this important, especially a fantasy film, I don’t just watch it. I experience it. It becomes an Experience. This is a concept my mother cannot comprehend. When the time came to go to the cinema I was positively light-headed. I fidgeted in the ticket line, scorned offers of over-priced snacks (the Experience never involves distractions of food) and raced into the darkened cinema to analyse the optimum viewing position. I sat alone (another requirement of the Experience) and writhed with excitement. A woman two rows down told me to “shut up and stop squeaking.”
The previews, always a favourite part of the Experience, sailed by unnoticed. I was quivering with excitement and my breath came short and quick. As the lights went down I wondered if it was possible to pass out from pure joy. This was it- the culmination of what seemed an eternity of waiting. The New Line Cinema logo twirled its way onto the screen (as a cinephile, one has an intimate knowledge of these things) and I settled down the task of Experiencing. After all, the film was in the hands of New Line, the studio behind The Lord of the Rings. What could possibly go wrong?
*sounds of film projector chewing tape*
Six months after the Experience, I am fully recovered. The deep hurt of betrayal has gone, the scars from the knife-twisting have faded, and I would be willing to give The Golden Compass a second chance, minus the frenzied emotional involvement. After all, the celebrated film critic Roger Ebert gave it four stars and called it “a wonderfully good-looking movie, with exciting passages and a captivating heroine in Lyra” (we cinephiles always look to Ebert for guidance and affirmation). So now, with the healing influence of time and distance, I would like to rephrase my innocent question. What possibly went wrong? And the all-important addendum: Why?
In the months leading up to its release, The Golden Compass was predictably attracting attention for all the wrong reasons. I won’t bother denying the anti-religious slant of the books; Pullman himself has said “My books are about killing God.” Yet the fundamentalists always missed the point with their criticism. Pullman may argue against Christianity and the corruption of the Church, but the themes of the story echo Christ’s original message of love and friendship. “We need joy, we need a sense of meaning and purpose in our lives, we need a connection with the universe, we need all the things the Kingdom of Heaven used to promise us but failed to deliver,” he said in a speech in 2000. His books are about the necessity of faith, rather than that of religion. And there is a difference.
Friendship-- Anti-Christian?
But it seems New Line chose not to acknowledge the more subtle themes in The Golden Compass. After the phenomenal success of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, culminating with the Oscar-laden The Return of the King in 2003, New Line commissioned the first script of The Golden Compass. Over the next five years—spanning two writers, two directors, and several scripts—the studio spent enormous energy sorting out exactly how to characterize the villains in the movie.
Director and screenwriter Chris Weitz swore the film would not, heaven forbid, offer any critique of religion. “The movie’s first job is to beguile the audience for a couple of hours,” he said, and it makes a credible attempt at doing so. The religious undertones of the story were tweaked and twisted and shadowed so they became essentially indecipherable. The Church is never mentioned in the film, the studio instead opting to make the bad guys part of a “vaguely…fascistic, totalitarian dictatorship.” Even the word “sin” was cut from the script in order to destroy any hints of religious dogma. In the words of one reviewer, “the studio opted to kidnap the book’s body and leave behind its soul.”
The controversial aspects of the story- Lyra’s fight against the Church and its priest-sanctioned murder of children- were of course watered down to make the film more palatable to a wider audience, and the dollars they bring. Weitz spoke about this and the difficulties in translating the themes of the book to the big screen. “New Line is a company that makes films for economic returns,” he said. “You would hardly expect them to be anything else. They have expressed worry about the possibility of [The Golden Compass’s] perceived anti-religiosity making it an unviable project financially.”
Despite believing they had catered to the demands of Christian fundamentalists, the studio copped a lot of heat in the form of boycotts and Pullman-damning pamphlets. The Catholic League, a group which monitors the portrayal of the Catholic Church in the media, damned the film as “sugar-coated atheism” and warned parents against exposing their children to its anti-religious themes. “We're saying don't go to it, and certainly don't buy the books as Christmas gifts for your children," said Kiera McCaffrey, director of communications for the Catholic League.
Bad!
This approach seemed to have succeeded, especially in America where The Golden Compass had a lackluster opening weekend with a box office total of $27 million. The cinephile’s own God, Roger Ebert, noted that “any bad buzz on a family film can be mortal, and that seems to have been the case this time.” The film cost New Line Cinema $180 million to make, and the production of the second and third books in the trilogy depended on the success of the first. However the film has done well internationally, quadrupling the US box office returns and keeping the hope of sequels alive.
In trying to please everyone, New Line succeeding in pleasing very few people. Weitz attempted to appease fans of the books, saying that religion would instead appear in euphemistic terms, yet the decision was criticised by fans and anti-censorship groups, saying “they are taking the heart out of it, losing the point of it, castrating it...” and “this is part of a long-term problem over freedom of speech.” In addition to poor box office returns, The Golden Compass suffered from mixed, unenthusiastic reviews from critics and unhappy, despairing reviews from fans. Its special effects were lauded as “marvelous” and “sumptuous” but many critics commented on the shaky, convoluted plot Weitz and New Line had put together from the ravaged bones of Pullman’s books. As one critic said, “By ripping out the very things that made the novel so spell-binding and original, we're left with an ultimately quite hollow, shallow and self-conscious movie, which is more interested in showing off it's (admittedly breathtaking special effects) than telling an interesting story.”
Another mistake by New Line had the film’s running time reduced to 114 minutes, nearly half the length of each of The Lord of the Rings installments. While Pullman’s books aren’t as mammoth as JRR Tolkien’s trilogy, the world he created is just as detailed and original, and many fans felt deserved an equal treatment. “Granted, such a complex story was always going to be difficult to adapt, but surely restricting it to such a short-time span to tell the story just increases that difficulty,” says a fan on the Internet Movie Database. The New York Magazine concluded that the studio had opted for a “failed” length of under two hours in order to maximize revenue.
In doing this, New Line sacrificed one of the most important occurrences in the book which gave them the added bonus of providing their audience with an happy ending. Weitz revealed he cut the final three chapters of the book in order to provide “the most promising conclusion to the first film and the best possible beginning to the second,” though he later admitted there had been “tremendous marketing pressure” to create “an upbeat ending.” In the book, Lyra watches her father murder a young child in order to facilitate his experiment, however along with the religious elements of the story this was excised from the film.
With all the evidence laid out in front of me, I have figured out why New Line and Chris Weitz found it necessary to fiddle with the successful plot of The Golden Compass. The smoothing over of religious antagonism, the shorter running time, and the clumsy happy ending all point to an inevitable conclusion—New Line believed they were making a children’s film.
This all started with a hobbit. A monstrous surge of fantasy films swamped cinemas since The Return of the King sailed off into the sunset, each trying to fill the gaping void. There have been five Harry Potter films so far, and while they have been a commercial success, critics and fans alike left with divided opinions. 2005’s The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was well-received enough to generate a sequel (Prince Caspian is released on June 5) but failed to make a huge splash. Eragon, the big screen adaption of Christopher Paolini’s New York Times bestseller, was roundly dismissed for being thin on plot and big on The Lord of the Rings homage, and not knowing whether it was for children or adults.
pwned!!1!
This is the dilemma that plagues studios such as New Line today. While Pullman’s books are rife with difficult moral quandaries, murderous characters, and culminate in all-out war, The Golden Compass was marketed as a children’s blockbuster. The film was marketed to the hilt, its late December release helpfully coinciding with the Christmas crowds who would buy sticker books, poster books, behind-the-scenes books, notebooks, new editions of the trilogy, and then take their family to McDonalds where they could get a piece of plastic junk licensed under The Golden Compass brand. No wonder filmmakers are so confused, and fans so despairing. The poor film is trying to grow up, but its parents are forcing it to wear baby booties and stuffing it into a pram. Just let it go, man!
But there is hope for cinephiles everywhere; it seems Hollywood is beginning to wise up. Despite The Golden Compass’s poor reception in the United States, producer Deborah Forte wants to see the trilogy through. If sequels are produced, and if he is still on board, Weitz has said that he intends to "protect [their] integrity" by being "much less compromising" in the book-to-film adaptation process.
I certainly hope so. After all, The Lord of the Rings has died and been reincarnated in DVD form, there are only two Harry Potter films left, and there’s no way I’m shelling out good money to see the sequel to Eragon on the big screen. What other movie am I going to Experience? Get Smart? No thanks. The latest Chronicles of Narnia, though…
Yes, I think I’ll go and Experience Prince Caspian.
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