Of the many strengths of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy, the most important is arguably the easiest to overlook. Pullman’s thematic ambition, grasp of pacing, and deftness with character are all clear from the outset, but while these elements are crucial to the books’ success, the one that makes the first, and most important, impact is his talent for building a world without ever letting the audience see the strings. The Golden Compass introduces readers to a place where every person has a talking animal companion (a dæmon); where the Church is a dominating political force; and where studies into a mysterious substance known as “Dust” threaten to upend the entire social order. And yet it all more or less makes sense, the world feeling lived-in and real without ever needing to stop too long to explain things. The result is something magical—an immediately gripping tale whose ability to surprise and enchant never really flags.
His Dark Materials, the new television adaptation of the trilogy, is not quite so adept. Instead of trusting the audience to pick things up as they go, the first episode begins with a text crawl explaining the basics, going so far as to tell viewers that dæmons are our equivalent of souls and suggesting that there’s going to be a “child of prophecy” in play. Still, as far as opening exposition goes, it could’ve been worse, and for the most part, the series does an admirable job of presenting its story without getting tangled up in lore. Characters and organizations are introduced with enough sense of presence and scale for you to understand the basic idea of them even before the details become clear, creating the suggestion of larger forces at play without ever getting entirely bogged down by them.
It’s an admirable achievement, but not an entirely successful one. In adapting the books to television, writer Jack Thorne attempts to start laying the groundwork for later entries in the series early on in the story of the first one, paralleling Lyra Belacqua’s (Dafne Keen) adventures in discovering her place in the world with the actions of others that will presumably become relevant later. The decision makes some sense, as it reshapes Compass’ structure (starting small and then expanding as Lyra discovers more and more about her world) into a more conventional television drama’s, but it also robs reveals of a lot of their power. It’s evident even from that introductory text; in the novels, the relationships between the humans and their dæmons was something that was uncovered over time, and it was a while before anything about “prophecy” came up. One of the pleasures of Pullman’s work was that starting small meant every development and expansion in scope felt exponentially important. Here, it’s all simply pieces presented with equal weight to be integrated eventually along with other pieces, losing that feeling of dangerous, unexpected discovery almost entirely.
Spelling it out from the start makes it easier to grasp what you’re getting into, but it’s unclear if that clarity is a worthwhile goal. Compass worked in part by marrying its more outlandish ideas to a familiar “young girl goes on an adventure to save a friend” fantasy plot, allowing readers to ease their way in while still offering more conventional thrills. His Dark Materials leaves most of Lyra’s story intact, at least in the first four episodes, but it adds in side scenes and subplots with other major characters. Some of those scenes, like the one that introduces a traveling Egyptian community’s ritual for welcoming young men and women into adulthood, add a welcome texture and vitality to the series. Others, like a running background plot about a man investigating things, are less successful, largely existing to introduce intrigue for intrigue’s sake. By treating the narrative as information to be delivered to the viewer, rather than as a story that benefits from specific, deliberate choices of perspective and focus, the show feels consistent but rarely surprising; accurate but lacking in a sense of wonder.
Several curious casting choices also serve to undercut the story’s impact. Dafne Keen is an excellent Lyra, bringing all the murderous energy she showed in Logan to someone who actually talks (and shows considerably more emotional depth). But while both James McAvoy and Ruth Wilson do solid work as Asriel and Mrs. Coulter, respectively, neither of them is quite suited to characters who were designed on the page to be larger than life. They bring a down-to-earth intimacy to figures whose ambition and passion should necessarily border on mythic. Clarke Peters seems lost as the Master of Oxford, and Lin-Manuel Miranda’s turn as the roguish Lee Scoresby is, well, Lin-Manuel Miranda: charming as ever but not particularly convincing as a battle-scarred adventurer.
It’s possible these actors will grow into their roles as the series goes on, and considering the potential scope of the material, it makes a certain sense to downplay events at the start. At the very least, it allows room to build up to the point where things get truly crazy. As adaptations go, His Dark Materials is a credibly faithful one, and the show is never clumsy or outright bad; anyone familiar with the Golden Compass film can take comfort in knowing this version is considerably more thoughtful and comprehensive. The effects work, particularly the expression of multiple talking animals, is largely convincing and impressively unobtrusive, and while the direction could use a little more panache, it’s never difficult to follow what’s going on. By the end of the four episodes shown for critics, His Dark Materials has started to build up what could be called a head of steam, and even if future episodes never manage to rise above the bar the show sets for itself here, the original novels are strong enough that a faithful retelling of them by competent artists will have its pleasures. It’s a good story, told with restraint and respect. Pity about the magic, though.
Experts reviews (for those who have read the books) by Myles McNutt will run weekly beginning November 4.
Newbies reviews (for those coming into the series fresh) by Lisa Weidenfeld will run weekly beginning November 4.
120 Comments
Like the one that introduces a traveling Egyptian community’s ritual for welcoming young men and women into adulthood, Ummm… Egyptian?!
lol i thought the same thing. that’s a typo…. right??
“The Church is a dominating political force”? I know it’s a fantasy story, but that’s too hard to believe.
I’m not sure if you’re joking or just unfamiliar with the source material but there’s a pretty strong atheistic and anti-theistic theme in the books.
-Spoiler Alert-
the trilogy ends with the discovery that god is a crippled old man in a wheelchair who has been fully usurped by his right hand angel who was calling all the real shots. he is then unceremoniously shoved down a well to his death. i think anti-theistic is underselling it
the trilogy ends with the discovery that god is a crippled old man in a wheelchair who has been fully usurped by his right hand angel who was calling all the real shots. he is then unceremoniously shoved down a well to his deathWha? The protagonists have no idea what he is, but since he seems so terrified and in pain, they try to free him from his crystal prison, only to discover that it was the only thing keeping him alive, and he fades away, but seems pretty content to do so. Also, not really God, just the oldest angel who once upon a time convinced the rest of his kind that he created them all.
I’m still so very very glad that when I saw Philip Pullman on tour for the launch of The Amber Spyglass, the reading was in a church.The irony was delicious.
That’s not how it goes down.SPOILERSSPOILERSGod is an old angel locked in a glass coffin, because he can’t handle contact with the outside world anymore. Will and Lyra think he’s a prisoner, and set him free…which causes him to evaporate into the Dust from which he came.Metatron’s death at the well, meanwhile, is anything but “unceremonious.”
They really should have tried to keep Sam Elliott. No other human should be playing Scoresby.
I’m definitely having trouble picturing Lin-Manuel Miranda in this part. But, then I’m also having trouble picturing James McAvoy as being as impressive a presence as Daniel Craig. For all the movie’s faults, they did get the casting right on many of the characters.
Nicole Kidman was the perfect choice.
Agreed and Russell Crowe for Asriel
I believe after seeing Nicole Kidman in the movie, the author edited subsequent editions of the book to make her character blonde.
As much as Nicole Kidman was perfect, I can see Ruth Wilson being perfect for that role, too—albeit more in terms of Ms. Coulter’s personality than her physical description.McAvoy as opposed to Daniel Craig I have a much harder time seeing.
Eva Greene as the queen of the witches was an inspired choice. i want her back for this.
Agreed on all of this, and I am not someone who dislikes Lin-Manuel at all. It’s just Sam Elliott was so damn good.(but I am intrigued at the casting of Ruth Wilson as Mrs. Coulter)
For the stage adaptation, they got Timothy Dalton as Lord Asriel, which has always struck me as ideal casting for that part.
I thought Oscar Isaac or Pedro Pascal would have been great choices.
I don’t care if he’s 76 years old and dead*, Elliott is the only option here. *not really
When reading the book, I envisioned Kevin Bacon.
Yeah, much as I like Lin-Manuel, I thought Sam Elliott was one of the few things the movie got right, especially (trying to escape a spoiler here) given Scoresby’s apparent age against another character with a shared history.
Like J.K. Simmons as JJJ, casting that good just has to be maintained.
The movie’s adult casting was aces. The adapation of the those characters to film was absolute crap though. Kidman was a fantastic Mrs. Coulter, Elliot was a fantastic Scoresby. Even Craig was a pretty good Asriel who suffered from shitty writing. No matter who gets to voice Iorek, it’s going to suffer by comparison.
Unpopular opinion: McKellen is too cuddly as Iorek in the movie, his voice has the wrong (read: any) warmth. I liked McShane’s performance a lot better, that’s the way to go with one of the great badasses in books.
Like J.K. Simmons as JJJ, casting that good just has to be maintained.
Casting Miranda, who is very good at playing high strung type-A New Yorkers, as a relaxed and centered Texan always seemed strange to me. He’s a great actor but it’s just not the right role for him.
Age is my main objection here.
Weirdly, when I was reading the book as a kid I envisioned Scoresby as being completely different, so this change didn’t bother me so much (although even then, LMM seems a weird choice, but hey.)The one that bothered me more was James McAvoy. A great actor, to be sure, but Lord Asriel is basically meant to be a quintessential Byronic hero, physically imposing as well as intellectually/emotionally intimidating. Daniel Craig was a good choice, but I think Dominic West could have been equally good, and maybe Michael Fassbender too.
Honestly…my fantasy Asriel from this generation of actors would have to be Idris Elba.
Oh yeah! He’d be a great choice too
Pullman wanted Sam Jackson. Which would have been awesome. Snakes on an airship
Hmm, well say what you want about the movie (i really liked it), but it did nail the casting. Nicole Kidman as Coulter, Sam Elliot as Scoresby, Ian McKellen was a fantastic Iorek. Christopher Lee, Daniel Craig … why was this thing a flop again? Was it really just Catholics freaking out?
I sort of remember the way it was promoted made it seem to me (who knew nothing about the books) like a ripoff of the lion the witch and the wardrobe movie which had come out not that long before. Maybe that played a part?
Catholics freaking out would only drive up awareness (which it did as the film was in the news far more that it would have been).I think part of the flop was the fact that it just seemed like another fantasy at the time, and they messed up the ending so badly (since they were afraid to leave off on a tragic cliffhanger) that word of mouth did it no favors. It IS too bad because the casting was exquisite.
The movie omitted everything that would freak out the Catholics. That was my problem with it, anyway.
That’s a good way of putting it. It was a very shallow adaption.
I read a few retrospectives recently that seemed to follow that line. In attempting to damp down the religious heat, they excised or neutered a lot of the material that the story really needs (which isn’t really nearly as heretical as all that), while not really doing much to tighten it up elsewhere in replace. I don’t know if they felt that the “controversy” really affected its success at all, but they ended up also letting down the core fans who could have driven it somewhere. Trying to serve two masters, became half of a one thing.
New Line sold off the international profit rights to finance the movie, essentially betting everything on the US market where the books weren’t super well known, religious backlash was most intense, and movies with young female leads (pre-Hunger Games) rarely enjoyed much success. It… wasn’t a great plan.
The Catholics freaking out resulted in Hollywood butchering half the story, so basically yeah
Yes, the original was the most perfect casting.
As someone who hadn’t read the books, the movie (which I saw in it’s theater release) felt really forced. Lots of purposeful looking into middle distance and reciting names with significance. Despite a cast of favorite actors I didn’t get invested in any of the characters. It ends with an ensemble gathered for confusing purposes headed to a narrated cliffhanger as if surely we can’t wait for what comes next.
It was from a period of studios trying to replicate Lord Of The Rings success by going down a checklist (book trilogy to movie trilogy, CGI battles, Iain McKellen) without understanding why Fellowship worked.
I had similar feelings about the Lion, Witch, and the Wardrobe that came out in the similar era. Trying to feel LOTR-ish. Didn’t have McKellan, but Neeson as Aslan seemed entirely too on-the-nose. I think it did a very good job nonetheless, though, and maintained a lot of the specific Narnian qualities. The giant CGI battle at the end was odd given that Lewis vs Tolkien… Tolkien spends ninety-seven pages on one stage of the battle. Lewis spends about two.On the entire thing. So in fairness, there’s lots happening that Lewis wasn’t interested in writing about (nor did it necessarily fit with what Narnia was, more of a children’s fairie-storie; it’s far more similar to the Hobbit after all). That said the children were well-cast, especially Lucy and Edmund. Tilda Swinton was a dream. But the seams showed much more in Prince Caspian with the added scenes and attempting to create more of a tight “trilogy.” While LWW/Caspian/Dawntreader are linked, they’re not really the same kind of “single story.” And LWW stands on its own as a standalone story or film; many more people have read Lion than have read any other Narnia stories. I’m essentially monloguing so I’ll stop. tl;dr: i agree with your point.
I keep butting in on this everytime the topic is mentioned, so here it goes again:1) It suffered from living up to LOTR in terms of “starting a franchise”. People had fantasy fatigue (between LOTR and HP), and it didn’t help that the movie straight up cribbed “people walking in epic vistas with swooping cameras”, to what sounded like a royalty free score named something like “Duke of the Jewlery”, to the actors themselves.2) The whole debacle around snowflake Christians threatening a boycott undercut the atheist themes, even to the point of cutting the ending (to be included at the start of the next movie)3) The plot is truly not suited to a movie, there’s too many locations and too much moving around a textured and perhaps unfamiliar world (LOTR and HP had much more cultural cache to build their worlds upon). A series is the perfect medium for it.But I’ll bat for the movie any day. The casting was spot on, the production design gorgeous, and save for the arctic bits the cgi was flawless and ahead of its time.
Fun fact about 2), they filmed the ending and cut it quite late. So late that it remained as the ending cut scene of the video game.
A bit of it can also be seen in the trailer IIRC.
I remember Catholics freaking out and protesting it and after having seen it, the movie mostly left out everything that would’ve made the Vatican angry.It was kind of this middle ground movie that wasn’t sinister enough to piss off organized religion but too afraid to commit to what book readers would’ve loved.
Did they keep the part of the books where the first one is amazing worldbuilding and the second two are just the author spinning his wheels?
THIS ^^^^^^. LOVED the first book. The following ones then seem to slide into the author moving on to lecture on his views at the expense of the characters.
there’s that bit near the end of the third one, where what’s her face goes on the story about losing her faith… I had heard so much about how subversive it was, and then thought: that’s it? wow, he really crucified christianity there (terrible pun intended). (noting, if I have to, that i’m agnostic these days)
Were you born with opinions that poor, or have you practiced at them? 😉
Really? . As those are pretty much the correct opinions?
I mean…The Subtle Knife is clearly the best of the three books.But yeah, The Amber Spyglass is has some great scenes, but is overlong and clearly a result of Pullman buying into his own hype.
I’m with you. The first book was terrific. The second book got wonky real quick. Then the third… I just lost interest and never finished it. It’s the first book I gave myself permission to put down and I’ve never returned to it.
Question: I’m currently reading The Golden Compass with my 12 year old (almost done!). a) Is this series appropriate for her?b) Based on the review, it sounds like they introduce elements from the later books early in the series. If she’s read the first book, will watching the series spoil the second two books? How about the two released books in the Book of Dust series? I’d hate for her to lose out on the incredible twists and turns ahead for her in the books.
1. The book is appropriate for young readers. They likely won’t grasp the larger themes woven into the story, but the story also stands on its own without that anyway.2. Not sure.
(a) More mature themes, and more graphic violence, arise in “The Subtle Knife.’ Should be fine for age 12 though.
In regards to 1, my response to them not grasping the larger themes is: “idiots.”
a) I don’t know her.b) I haven’t seen the series yet.
def appropriate.
Agree she should be able to handle the books, but as someone who read these at a similar age, I missed a lot of the themes and adult context at the time.On the new series Book of Dust, I would wait until finishing with His Dark Materials trilogy. There are a lot of references that only make sense once you have read all three HDM books. The first book is set before HDM. The second book is set after.
THANKS for all the replies. Let me clarify. Is the HBO TV SERIES appropriate for her? I’ve read the books myself and know they’re fine (and love them). I was just wondering if the TV series would try and make this more adult. I realize of course that the average site user won’t have seen the show yet since it debuts Nov 4 but was hoping the reviewer would chime in with his take.
It’s not an HBO series; it’s a BBC series that HBO purchased the North American rights to and slapped their logo on. My guess is it will approximate a PG-13 rating.
The Books of Dust are prequels, not sequels, and I doubt they add anything in from the later books because that involves a lot of big reveals and things literally none of the characters know are possible yet.
1) There’s nothing particularly startling in the show that isn’t from the books, to this point. Should be fine.2) I’m torn on this. Zack’s right that it pulls from future books, but through four episodes it’s still pretty vague, and it’s still unclear how MUCH they intend to pull from Subtle Knife. However, as long as you finish Golden Compass before Monday night (or Sunday if you’re in the U.K.), it’s part of the end of the first book that the show is outright “spoiling” in order to adjust the story structure.
If you find Harry Potter appropriate then this is as well – the larger religious themes are missed on younger kids, and it has the same level of danger to kids as HP. I always think that’s probably what’s scariest for most kids when they watch/read something (seeing themselves) … so if she can deal in the scarier HP moments, it totally is good for her too.
I just want to comment—for all of the people saying kids will miss the larger religious themes, I was at least one thoughtful middle schooler who did not, and I credit His Dark Materials (in combination with reading Anne Rice’s vampire books later on in high school—no difference in quality there) with inspiring me to seriously question my parents’ fairly conventional evangelical mega-church brand of Christianity. I have no regrets, since I eventually settled into my own brand of idiosyncratic agnosticism/humanism, and Pullman’s celebration of self-discovery and exploration as well as science and other types of academic research is something that deeply resonates with me to this day. But it was somewhat unsettling to begin on that journey, and I understand why parents who don’t want their children to question their family faith traditions are leery of the book.To be fair (and as others have pointed out), it isn’t until the sequels that these themes really start to emerge, and I imagine most adolescents who are savvy enough to pick up on the religious themes are also intelligent enough to be aware of the variety in different people’s personal beliefs and decide for themselves. But I do think it’s inevitable that people who enjoy The Golden Compass will want to read the sequels (since it ends on such a cliffhanger, and a fairly dark note for children’s literature), and parents who see a real danger in letting their children make their own religious decisions because they believe an immortal soul is at stake should probably stay away.
Hi. I’ve seen the first two episodes, and the second one in particular spoils some major plot elements from the second book! Based on that, I’d encourage your kid to read the whole trilogy before starting the series. 🙂
(I’d say it is overall appropriate for 12-year-olds, though some of it will likely go over her head.)
Ruth Wilson as Mrs Coulter seems like pretty good casting to me. I do love her being creepily menacing yet seductive though
This review is an excellent breakdown of how Pullman’s structure and parsing out of information is so important to the books’ power (especially the first one), but it does not answer the biggest question for this series: How are the ARMORED FUCKING POLAR BEARS?And I liked Keen in Logan a lot but she looks serious as hell in the images I’ve seen here — Lyra is wild and mischievous, she has fun! Keen almost looks like she’s playing Will.
“four episodes watched for review”
I’m curious to see how they handle the reading of the alethiometer, as they botched it so poorly in the movie. Also, they better not have screwed with the ending.
The alethiometer is another place where Pullman is very smart about what he reveals, it lets the reader form a picture using his words (or lack thereof) and that’s good for a weird, intuitive process. But that’s something that works in a non-visual medium, so I can sort of understand how easily it can be botched in a movie. I assume the ending will be intact (heh, so to speak) if only because that was the biggest and dumbest fuckup of the movie, there’s no way people with relative independence make that mistake again.
Thankfully, I suppose, I read all the books and then saw the movie, and I can’t remember anything about the movie’s ending.
It was infuriating how they filmed the ending of the movie and then showed us That Scene in the trailers, as if to torment us with what could have been.
I agree – Pullman uses restraint and mystery all over the place to construct a world that feels like it always has fathoms to reveal. Another example is the way the bears’ society is teased in mentions in the first third of the book.
It’s disappointing to hear that it sounds like the show makers have missed how necessary this restraint is to making world and story work.Obviously book and TV are very different mediums, but I adore an adaption that understands how and why the source material does a thing and finds a way to do that in a different medium. For example, in Atonement I thought the film managed to take a very literary novel and find filmic ways to create equivalent effect.In the book Pullman has the luxury of only mentioning, for example, daemons, when it suits him. On screen they must be there at all times, making downplaying them hard. The theatre adaptations did a great job, so I’m convinced it’s doable on screen too.
i’ll take respectful. the books are excellent.
Same here – I liked the books well enough that I don’t need revelatory. I’d like an actual reflection of the books … if it’s closer than the movie I’ll be pleased.
I am excited about this but the casting perplexes me and gives me pause. The Ruth Wilson casting in particular drives me bonkers. I am okay with LMM if he essentially plays a completely different version of Scoresby.
Any adaptation of a book that begins with a text crawl is lazy as fuck.
I guess it beats the movie, which opens with a spoken narration. Wonder if the UK version also has a crawl, or if it’s an addition for us Yanks.
The UK version has one too, but instead of a “text crawl” they call it a “scrolly-geeze”
Just watched it on BBC – it’s a text scrawl.
“a traveling Egyptian community” – you mean “Gyptian.”
Must have been autocorrect, or else a copy-editing error; that’s not a mistake anyone who’s read the books would make.
E-Gyptian, the electronic Gyptian
You were honestly hoping this would be revelatory? The books really aren’t that good, in fact the second and third are pretty lousy. Then again I really don’t think Pullman thought through what he really wanted to do with the books other than shit on C.S. Lewis and he doesn’t even do a very good job at that.
The second one is quite fun. The third one gets a bit weird when the wheeled mule things show up.
“NARNIA IS GARBAGE FANTASY, I’M GOING TO WRITE REAL MATURE SOPHISTICATED FANTASY WITH DEEP CHARACTERS, BLACKJACK, AND HOOKERS”*basically writes the atheistic/agnostic version of Narnia and populates the world with almost entirely one-dimensional stock characters and CHURCH=BAD in flaming letters while author pushes his reductionist and one-dimensional readings of Lewis on interviewers for decades, also, tolkien sucks too, my books are literature, wait, i’ve gone cross-eyed*
“FORGET THE FANTASY, JUST THE BLACKJACK HOOKERS”
The truth about these books lies, in fact, somewhere between it being as great as its fans says it is and these two mega-overcorrections in the other direction.
I’m sure if I had discovered it when I was 15, the way I did Anne McCaffrey and Pern, I would adore it. That’s not a criticism. Time and place is a valuable part of why we love things and why things resonate with us. I love the connections many people have with dark materials; am saddened I can’t truly engage with it; hope to enjoy the BBC series. I think, when you talk about exactly where it lies, it will forever bother me that one of his motives in writing was to “stick it” to Tolkien/Lewis. I don’t think I can ever fully get past that. It’s a nasty little tic.(I feel much the same way about Atwood – she is brilliant yet has gotten so far up her own ass to deride sf as something she’s “above” it colors my potential enjoyment of much of her work.)(Also, Oryx and crake is trash.)
Ugh yes, Oryx and Crake is so hacky! SF by and for people who haven’t read SF in decades.And I agree in a lot of ways about your Pullman thoughts. The Subtle Knife and especially the Amber Spyglass leave me a little cold these days.Obviously time of reading has a big part to play in one’s estimation of a book, especially when it’s a book that first introduced us too big life-changing ideas as many people say of HDM.But it’s far from everything and I’d balk at the comparison to Anne McCaffrey. Pullman’s writing is in another league from McCaffrey’s, or Rowling’s, or any of the other writers for adolescents that get too much praise from nostalgic adults. The Atwood comparison seems more apt to me. He’s a genuinely great writer on a good day, but has a few fatal flaws of a similar bent which occasionally let down some of his books.Pullman’s is far more than the chippy, silly comments above yours depict, though it is of course fine not to like him or rate him. But I’d agree that his own chippiness starts to let down the series as it goes on.
Good thoughts. I hadn’t actually compared Pullman and McCaffrey as writers; more that I was noting that had I stumbled upon Compass the way I did dragonsdawn and Damia, at that age, it would have no doubt nested inside me and have been re-read a half dozen times before I was twenty. :)My all caps bit is facetious and cheeky. I do have genuine arguments to make, but, it is silly. And Pullman pulls himself into that silliness with his public statements. It’s difficult not to roll my eyes at him. I like the atwood comparison. I can recognize her talent as an author while still generally not enjoying her work or feeling that some of her ideas about what she is writing —- the self-importance —- are distssteful. I can do the same as Pullman. (Which, y’know, handmaid’s tale is prescient as hell)I am interested in reading more casual discourse of pullmans’s writing from you. Rowling is interesting. Read the first four to my oldest this past year. She does whimsy so well. I struggled with the amount of “reveal exposition” she crams in. It never bothered me when reading in my head but out loud, especially the lonnnnnnng explanation in azkaban, was torturous. I was dreading goblet of fire but I enjoyed reading it aloud; long, sure, but seemed to strain less with more space and time to work. I certainly won’t jump on the “Rowling is an awful writer, actually” bandwagon (not saying you’re on it). They are lovely books that create and immerse very well. I am leaving it to oldest to read order of the Phoenix when she’s ready. She’s only eight; it gets much darker. And I can’t stand Umbridge OR Harry in it. Of all the seven, it’s the one I feel is most in need of an editor but was the first published when all involved were going “sure Jo, do whatever you want, we’ll just spellcheck it” whilst counting piles of money. You can take 200 pages out of it and lose nothing of value. I promise.
I read Order when I was 9 (in 2003), and didn’t find it much darker than Goblet. I was upset by Sirius, but Cedric’s death was much more traumatizing.
(Of course…that’s likely down to having read Goblet when I was 6 or 7)
That’s true. I think my oldest will take Sirius’ death much harder. And Umbridge is nasty to a point of “I don’t want to read about her anymore, even as a villain.” God, though, that entire graveyard sequence in Goblet is pretty twisted.
Oh, Sirius is my favorite character in the series. I was far more attached to him than Cedric…but Cedric was way more traumatizing, because I was 6 or 7, while I spent the intervening years reading stuff like The Hobbit and the Chronicles of Narnia by the time Sirius’s death came around.
Sorry I think I wrote my comment when tired, I hope my tone wasn’t off! I don’t think I even registered you had written the previous comment and must therefore be being facetious or ironic in it.Rowling is… she’s actually a damn good storyteller on the whole, though I have to say that through gritted teeth. I haaate Harry Potter but I must admit that were it not a cultural phenomenon but just a kids series that had come and gone like any other, I think I would… not. Her prose isn’t anything great but actually I’ve been reading a lot of middle grade fiction recently and realising that my standards may be a wee bit skewed; Rowling certainly falls of the ‘good’ sides of the average!
See, I think you may just have different taste in books than some other readers. Oryx and Crake is one of my all time favorites.I hate to break it to you, but there’s not like a universal consensus on what makes a book good or bad.
I was having a conversation with a bookstore owner I’m on good terms with and was talking about how I couldn’t stand (or finish) Kerouac’s ‘On The Road’, and I suggested maybe I’d just been too old when I picked it up. It’s one of his favourite books, but he was willing to admit that might have something to do with him first reading it when he was twenty and perfectly primed for a novel about aimless youth and the desire to find something real in a large confusing world. (Which the book certainly tackles, just not, in my opinion, very well.) So to summarise, yes, time and place make a huge difference.
If you haven’t seen this, you will appreciate it.
I have indeed seen and enjoyed that clip. It joins ‘Blackadder Goes Forth’s famous “It was too much effort not to have a war” explanation of WWI as one of my favourite cutting-through-the-bollocks moments of television. ‘On The Road’ is a classic example of a book everyone’s told they should read that I genuinely think most people shouldn’t read, and this scene captures not only why, but the pissy responses of people who’ll loudly proclaim it as a work of genius.
Another reason I finally need to get around to watching Blackadder.As a social studies and English teacher, the clip inspires me so much to not be that pissy and insufferable. =D
This is what happened to me with Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. I was much too old for it when I read it the first time and simply couldn’t enjoy it with the kind of adoration the fanboys/girls/people heap on it.I may have been already too far down the “I’m not Catholic anymore, mom” rabbit hole when I came to HDM. Lewis hit just right, just before I gave up on the church, so Narnia is hallowed (except the Last Battle; that book can also be dropped down a well ceremoniously or otherwise).
the “daemons are souls” thing is outright stated in all three of the books, i think. It’s said through metaphor a lot in the first, but the second has Will who gets the outright explanation.
as for the “child of prophecy” thing, maybe they just lifted a few things out of the Book of Dust?
Hmm. I felt considerably more awe and wonder than you did, apparently, but that’s subjective.I would argue that Wilson is perfect as Coulter, because Coulter shouldn’t seem like a villain to Lyra at the start. Nicole Kidman was icy and villain-ish from the beginning. Here you could believe Ms. Coulter is genuinely concerned for Lyra, unless you’ve read the books — then you can shudder at each carefully calculated smile and touch. She gives Lyra the mother figure Lyra desperately needs, and that’s why Lyra follows her.
Has anyone read La Belle Sauvage or The Secret Commonwealth yet? I want to talk about those. For books thatw ere so feverishly antpicipated by the original books’ fans, their releases have seemed very low-key.I think they’re both very good, for what it’s worth. The cliffhanger that TSC ends on is one of the most maddening/compelling I’ve read in a long time.
I’ve just started the first one on my Kindle. Give me a week or so.
I’m in the middle of the first book and the writing and build-up are wonderful.
The Secret Commonwealth is OUT? WHY DIDN’T I KNOW ABOUT THIS? That really was low-key.
Anyway, La Belle Sauvage is fantastic. Loved it. Was a bit surprised by how weird things got during the flood section, at first, especially in comparison to the previous, more grounded sections of the novel, but after a while that aspect of things became equally fascinating.
I just want to repeat this post word for word. Especially including that The Secret Commonwealth is out!
I really liked La Belle Sauvage, haven’t had time to make it to The Secret Commonwealth yet because my job’s a nightmare this time of year. Is it good?
Basically bought it a couple of hours after reading this post and
devoured it over the weekend. It’s really, really good. Some screed-y
parts (which I still enjoyed) and there are might be a bit of
controversy over certain aspects of it but I thought it was incredible. And I agree on the cliffhanger.
I’m very interested in the series because I’m very interested in the story, characters, and world of the Golden Compass…… but I can’t stand Philip Pullman. It’s funny, I read a wonderful, lengthy interview with him a few months ago (there are new books out?). Half of it was lovely, the other half insufferable.
I didn’t discover the Golden Compass when it was new; when I’d first heard about it I was still fairly evangelical so I heard about it under that “spectre.” Having moved on from that life ages ago, and hearing so much good, I was finally able to read the stories with an open mind. And the problem became, right or wrong, that I found the writing insufferably labored, overwrought, and pompous despite the rich, terrific material. Maybe it is. Maybe it is, but less than I thought. My theory is that, over years of focusing on Pullman himself —- from his interviews, quotes, perspectives, etc —-I can’t separate the arrogant twat from his work. I’m not interested in debating people. I genuinely want to enjoy this work, and I look forward to the series as another avenue into the world. That’s one of the beauties of adaptation. There are simply too many pretentious, condescending, blindingly self-delusional things Pullman himself has said (and continues saying!) over the years to ever be able to fully separate the art from the artist. (if that’s really a thing we actually should do… which I don’t necessarily agree with).
“Pullman’s thematic ambition, grasp of pacing, and deftness with character are all baffling abandoned by the time The Amber Spyglass rolls around, turning one of the most important series of its age into a rambling, digressive, boring, didactically exhausting, lurching mess really if you love The Golden Compass stop there.
Subtle Knife is incredible enough that I’d read all three, even if it means suffering through the extra hundred pages of didactic chaff in The Amber Spyglass, in between the great scenes.
Dear christ, are we complaining about *clarity* in a prestige genre property??? Of all the problems to have, a wealth of CLARITY seems extremely minor. It seems, to me, like a breath of fucking fresh air. As compared to its fellows at HBO like Westgoddamworld or, much as I loved it, The Leftovers…
A really insightful and thoughtful review I’m going to read again once I’ve seen the first episode tonight.You hit first upon a real source of consternation for me, a litmus test of whether adaptors know what they’re doing with this material, because it (secretly) forms the centre of the book – the way daemons are handled.In the book, as you say, Pullman’s masterstroke, is to be so tight-lipped about them. We are introduced to their presence with just enough information to visualise them, and as the story goes on he occasionally drops in another line of exposition about how they work, a scene that demonstrates some principle of their existence in a moment of drama (like another daemon attacking Pan and Lyra feeling the pain etc).Pullman doesn’t leave off mentioning that ‘a daemon is like a soul’ until a good third into the book because he didn’t think of it till then and was too lazy to go back and drop in the thought earlier. He puts it there because he knows that it’s the right time to add in this philosophical idea (it’s also a character that says it, not an omniscient expositor/narrator – it’s an idea, a possibility to play with, not as adaptations will insist on making these things a certain fact to be dully front-loaded).This kind of storytelling – writing with space, hints, mystery, respect for the reader’s ability to make their own leaps – is not simply a more elegant mode of world/idea-building, it’s part of the build. Pullman’s restraint in looking too directly at daemons allow them to both seem truly natural in the setting and for our imaginations and emotions to work unfettered on the fascinating basic idea. It’s also, without wanting to give away plot details, a brilliant bit of mystery writing because we don’t see coming the big emotional blows later on that hinge on the ideas and feeling we have not noticed Pullman subtly constructing in our imaginations.This idea that such narrative sleight of hand and gradual uncovering of detail are inconveniences that ought to be tidied away, the unquestioned assumption that immediate understanding and relatability are automatically desirable… it’s a common issue in adaptation. It’s part of a wider trend towards being rather literalist about media.I’m beginning to hate faithful adaptations because they seem to pander to (or come from) a dull, almost anti-intellectual attitude I see in fandom of all political bents, a desire for the media that matters to us to be completely quantifiable, a democratisation of engagement with stories where every fan considers their opinion expert but who don’t really have any expertise in storytelling so really just crow loudly for things to be somehow more like the version they like (‘it should be more faithful to the book’ or ‘it should make me feel like the Star Wars films I watched as a kid did’ etc).So we’re getting adaptations like Good Omens which faithfully transposes the book almost scene-by-scene to the screen but which utterly fails to grasp even the more obvious framework (relationship arc etc) that went into crafting and selecting those scenes in the novel- despite being helmed by one of the original writers.
I’m going to skip past the deeply subjective opinions about which of the books are good and say that, less than halfway through the first episode, I profoundly disagree that there is anything wrong whatsoever with James McAvoy’s performance.Also, “Gyptians” aren’t Egyptian, they’re Lyraworld’s equivalent of gypsies/Romani (note that “gypsy” is not a slur in the UK). Gypsies are called gypsies because people thought they were from Egypt, but they aren’t, and as far as I’m aware aren’t in HDM either
With the books you are more free to slowly build characters, tension and worlds. TV doesnt provide that so much. People are much more likely to turn off TV if they dont understand than put down a book after 100 pages
The pacing of this episode was frustrating as it left me feeling like they wanted to parse out a lot of information, but not actually let any of it settle. It felt like they wanted to hurry up and establish it as a family friendly Game of Thrones, rather than tell a story. My main desire after watching the episode was to seek out the books as the story does interest me. But the way in which they tell it left me thinking the books would feel less exhausting.
Thanks for the heads up on the completely superfluous opening crawl. That is definitely some studio head addition, as the world building in the show (don’t tell) clearly stands on its own.