His Dark Materials' suspect storytelling choices continue to muddle its compelling narrative (experts)
TV Reviews His Dark Materials
Welcome to The A.V. Club’s “Experts” reviews of HBO’s His Dark Materials.
It is written from the perspective of someone who has read all three
books in Philip Pullman’s trilogy, and intended for an audience of
viewers who have also read these books. While the main review will not
actively spoil details from future books, there will be a
spoiler-specific section at the end of the review, and the conversation
in the comments will feature spoilers from all books in the series. For
those who wish to avoid these spoilers, please visit our “Newbies” reviews.
When Jack Thorne made the decision to reveal the existence of “our” world early in the first season of His Dark Materials, it fundamentally changed the way this story would be told. What was once a straightforward adventure narrative used as an introduction to a far more complex tale would now be a cross-cutting parallel narrative, creating a relative surplus of “story” compared to the book. By revealing Will’s existence and playing out the backstory introduced through exposition in the opening pages of The Subtle Knife, it guaranteed that these final episodes would be fuller, in terms of the pieces in play.
However, what struck me the most watching “The Fight To The Death” was how empty it felt, in terms of real honest-to-goodness storytelling. There’s certainly a lot happening in the episode, but that’s really all I would say about it. It is an episode where things happen, but things happening doesn’t constitute storytelling. Take, for example, the scene where Lee Scoresby expresses his trepidation about continuing on this journey and Serafina Pekkala just says all-knowing things about how important it is that they help Lyra. It’s a thing that happens in this episode, but it’s functionally identical to the scene in the previous episode where the same thing happened, and in both cases I don’t feel like it’s connected to anything we know about those characters. Serafina is a source of exposition without ties to her history or her agency, while Lee’s dilemma is still inert when it’s expressed entirely through these one-sided conversations with a witch who does nothing but spout facts. It’s a script-level problem where the design of the scene is doing nothing to help us invest in the story: it’s telling us what’s important instead of showing us how these characters understand the situation at hand. Why not show us Hester and Lee working through their feelings about the situation? Why not introduce Serafina’s clan of witches so that we understand her in some additional context? It’s a scene that continues the story without doing anything to actually advance it.
It’s not the only example from the episode. The entire Will storyline sees the show running in place right up until it starts the sprint at episode’s end. As the show kept cutting back to Boreal’s return to Will’s world, and another confrontation with Will’s mother, and another case of Will’s mother showing up at school, I kept wondering why the show was going through these motions. They had already established that the letters were important, yet there’s a Lord Boreal scene where he just watches the same video we already saw Will watching previously, like a built-in recap. Every time the episode cuts to Will’s story, sometimes for bizarre 15-second scenes, I kept wondering why any of them exist when they could have easily just jumped straight to the scene where Will and his mother return home to find the house trashed and the story would have made just as much sense. The cross-cuts with Lyra’s story are never particularly thematic or purposeful: it was just more story for the sake of story, adding nothing to our understanding of Will’s situation and in many ways testing patience by falling into repetition and making the actual climax of his situation feel almost perfunctory (although, whether the same is true when viewers don’t know what’s coming is something I can’t say).
In other words, we’re making a distinction between story and storytelling, and it’s the latter where it feels like His Dark Materials has fallen into bad patterns. I continue to believe that this story is powerful enough to overcome some clunky dramaturgy, even if they end up failing to connect the dots on the religious dimensions of this story, but I’m consistently shocked at just how ill-conceived some of the smaller choices have been. Take, for example, the scene where Lyra and Roger reunite after her time with the armored bears. As Roger emerges from the cave, he doesn’t rush to embrace Lyra: instead, he spouts a bunch of exposition from a distance, before then sharing a moment with Lyra. It’s a bizarre staging of a scene that, if you invert those two events, becomes so much more logical: during their embrace, Roger excitedly tells her of the adventure he had in her absence, while she only cares that he’s okay. The show is filled with scenes like this where you feel like even a cursory set of notes could have dramatically improved the storytelling function of the scenes, as opposed to the scene’s cursory role in the story. This scene technically fulfills that role: we need to learn what happened to Roger and Iorek, and we need to reinforce Lyra and Roger’s bond before they begin their journey to Asriel’s labratory. But it’s like there was never a process during the writing stage where anyone stopped to think about the best way to achieve these story goals, or the most exciting way to make certain scenes or sequences resonate with the audience.
And thus we come to the eponymous fight to the death. As we’ve discussed in the comments in past episodes, “The Fight To The Death” solidifies one macro piece of storytelling from the show that was actually pretty thoughtful, even if it caused much consternation early on. Effectively, Jack Thorne is treating this first season as the origin story of Lyra Silvertongue, a journey of self-discovery in which she learned who she was, negotiated her relationship to her parents, and then found her place in this world. Her conversation with the imprisoned scholar offers a useful contrast to her father: while both believed they could trick the bears, Lyra’s goal was not self-interest but the safety of her friend. She has her mother’s passion and her father’s cunning, but all of it channeled toward a sense of good and love for the people she cares about. Her ability to convince Iofur that she is a daemon, and that she could be his if he tried hard enough, is presented as the first time she’s ever told a lie this big, and the source of the name that will carry with her as she continues her journey. I still believe the show’s depiction of Lyra as incurious in the early episodes was a tactical error, but I will say that being able to depict this moment as a significant revelation for Lyra’s sense of herself made a meaningful impression.
It’s just a pity that the same can’t be said for Iofur and Iorek’s fight. I don’t know who decided that the version of this fight depicted in the books was ineffective, but I just don’t get the choice to strip this fight of any and all storytelling. Why, for example, were these famously armored bears fighting without their armor? It not only made it more difficult to tell the two bears apart, but it also just plain doesn’t make sense, and strips away all of the turning points in the fight (the loss of armor pieces, the strategy, etc.). The movie didn’t adapt every bit of the cat-and-mouse game that’d depicted in the books, but it at least felt like the battle was telling an actual story, instead of just showing off some (very good) CGI. The production design on the castle was great, but there was no effort to articulate the backstory of the society’s shift under Iofur’s reign, or do anything much as it relates to the impact of Iorek’s return. Two bears fight to the death, but that fight ends up being about very little, and contains no internal storytelling to make it suspenseful or dynamic beyond basic spectacle.
And the truth of the matter is that one of the elements of Pullman’s books that I find so compelling is that none of it ever just feels like spectacle. Even the first book, which doesn’t reflect the true complexity of the tale, always feels very lived-in, as though Lyra is entering entirely new worlds that contain their own stories. And while one would presume that extending this story across eight episodes instead of a single film would have dramatically expanded their ability to explore those worlds, choices have often left His Dark Materials feeling rather thin in terms of its world-building, as beautiful production design houses stories that lack impact based on both micro- and macro-level story missteps.
Stray observations
- “We cut away your daemon, not your brain”—this scene was a weird coda to the Bolvangar situation. It really seemed like Coulter was leaving the facility, but she comes back to scream some more, and then instead of clarifying the human/daemon relationship I thought this whole interaction just confused things even more. I continue to find Ruth Wilson’s performance of Coulter’s animalistic quality a compelling dramatic choice, but there’s not a whole lot of story value to it.
- The psychology of the bear fight is the biggest loss compared to the book, but I’ll admit that the choice not to include Iorek just straight up swatting Iofur’s jaw off his face is more inexplicable to me. Did they run out of time or money? Why else leave out something so viscerally satisfying?
- But seriously, what is up with the 15-second scenes? I don’t know why they’re editing the show like it’s a daytime soap opera, where they’re juggling five different scenes and need to keep establishing they exist so that you don’t get lose after commercial breaks, but this is a public/premium program where this should not be a concern. It’s just not an effective way to tell a story.
- I love how Asriel’s butler is only mildly surprised that Lyra shows up in the middle of the north, as though it’s just someone stopping by unexpectedly instead of a child randomly showing up at a remote arctic research facility.
- We still didn’t get the shot of Lyra, mouse Pan and Iorek that I demanded previously, but we did get more gorgeous running montages, and this really is a beautiful show that I’m finding visually impressive even with screener copies on a laptop screen.
- I was a little disappointed that Will ended up accidentally killing the more interesting of Boreal’s henchmen, and also found it weird that he didn’t even seem that freaked out by the dead body. Not even a scene where he starts freaking out and hyperventilating? He just calmly runs off and then lurks outside of his teacher’s house? Again, the emotional followthrough on these plot points to turn from them story into actual storytelling just isn’t present where it needs to be.
Through The Amber Spyglass (Warning: Explicit book spoilers)
Obviously, this episode pivots on its final scene, which I’d argue isn’t at all subtle about Lord Asriel’s plans for Roger. The way it’s shot and particularly the way it’s scored just reads as too doom-like, as we’re pulled away from Lyra’s perspective from the books into a more knowing viewer perspective where the show is connecting the dots between Asriel’s terror at Lyra’s arrival, and his relief when his daemon spots Roger. There’s just no other way to read the scene other than “Lord Asriel is going to do terrible things to that child,” which feels like it would limit the shock of what comes next. Perhaps there will be some storytelling that will keep the actual ending a surprise, but the threads seem a bit too easy to pull together the way it’s been presented.
On a more positive note, I will say that every bit of chaotic energy coming from both Ruth Wilson and James McAvoy is making me very excited for what’s going to happen when they finally come face-to-face as part of the climax next week.
102 Comments
Thank you! I wanted jaws lobbed off! Me wonders if it was a combo of censorship, CGI money AND avoiding copying the movie fight. For shame BBC…
So I skipped the fight scene for nothing!
Based on all of the neck snapping fight scenes up to this point, I’m going with straight up censorship.
I haven’t read the books and so haven’t read this article, but man do I agree with the title.
Storyline is going strong with the whole bear coup, and yet repeatedly slowed down with the whole Magisterium guy harassing the school boy’s mum story.
Add to that the fall Lyra took from Scoresby’s balloon being ignored like Jodie Whittaker’s cliffhanger fall in Doctor Who, Mrs Coulter turning around in a hanger to see a shadowy figure (if that’s what that was), and Scoresby chatting with a witch like Gandalf and Galadriel on the sidelines of The Hobbit, and I’m starting to wonder if reading the books is required to help you care.
Honestly, as long as you avoid the last section, you’re pretty much safe to read the article.
yes it is sadly. I love the books and am sad I had hopes
As I said elsewhere, when I watched the first four episodes in one hit the show was great. So perhaps this adaptation is better binged instead of weekly installments. I certainly wouldn’t call it a bad show.
Jodie would have used her still-active regeneration energy to heal any injuries, same as David Tennant did to regrow his hand.
Show don’t tell.And they didn’t even bother to tell.
I haven’t read the books (and this comment thread is reminding me why – I’m not religious, but I get enough Dawkinsian petty-mindedness without going looking for it in my fiction), but this review exactly describes my thoughts. Except to add that, as someone who hasn’t read the books, the series feels like it was written by someone who has, and who hasn’t considered that I might not have – it feels like everything’s meant to be important, but we’re never shown why, as though the writer is just taking it for granted. I’m not even all that clear on why Lyra is the heroine here, except by a process of elimination – she seems pretty obnoxious, and she doesn’t have a lot of agency either (it doesn’t help that Keen’s acting is surprisingly bad compared to her performance in Logan – is it that she’s just being given terrible direction, or was that film a one-off for her?). Everybody else seems to exist purely to help or hinder Lyra, yet Lyra herself has little sense of purpose. It feels like we’re just going down a checklist of things that have to happen because they happen in the book, with no interest in making them feel meaningful.
Some of the acting’s quite good, and the show as a whole looks and sounds fantastic (just consider the bears compared to the way GOT had to withhold its barely-convincing direwolves). But…
as someone who hasn’t read the books, the series feels like it was
written by someone who has, and who hasn’t considered that I might not
have
This is how I feel about the Harry Potter movies.
You super called it, but fuck, man, the way this episode was put together was so shitty and clunky. We literally cut away from Lyra’s story to watch Boreal come through the portal again, and that’s it. It was so ridiculously stupid and unnecessary. Good things in this episode were basically that I really liked James McAvoy’s delivery of “I didn’t send for YOU.”, etc. You don’t read it like that in the book and I liked that emphasis. I also love the way they continue to emphasize Ms. Coulter’s ape-like qualities. And though the pacing is weird and dumb and feels like filler, I think the actor they cast as Will is nailing it, pitch perfect.
We literally cut away from Lyra’s story to watch Boreal come through the portal againWhen they cut to that, I was like, “Oh no! What’s happened to Lord Boreal’s car now?”
I thought the same thing. I envisioned vandalism. Little disappointed we didn’t get to see it.
Ioruk is about to strike the final blow on Iofur!CUT TOLord Boreal sighing while he looks at “WASH ME” written in the dirt on his car’s window.
I kind of just want him to come out of the window and see that his car’s just up on some blocks like he parked the car in Baltimore or something
They actually did that in a previous episode, no?
As a non-book reader, and honestly pretty passive show watcher, that scene was really confusing for me. He yells at his daughter that he doesn’t want her there then immediately gets all gushy over some kid he doesn’t know.
Not gushy, relieved. You’ll see.
I’ve only watched the movie (which doesn’t even get this far), but that scene was clearly reading as “Yes! A kid! A fresh kid I’m not related to! Tell me, Roger, would you like to help science?”
Just wait…
It makes sense that he would emphasise it like that. We know he was horrified by Lyra’s appearance, and it makes sense that in that moment he would half-reveal his own plan, given that what he’s so upset about is that it’s specifically her who’s arrived. Telegraphing his disturbing intentions is not necessarily a poor choice. In the books, Roger picks up on it, telling Lyra later that night that Asriel was looking at him like a wolf in that moment.
If the tv series is any indication, I have no idea why the books are so highly regarded.
All I’m seeing is yet another ‘chosen one’ tale – one with overtly religious significance (the importance of retaining your soul as personified by daemons).
It just feels like a children’s story that occasionally gestures towards ‘mature’ themes.
I can obviously see the anti-clerical stance – it couldn’t be more obvious. Less apparent, though, is why the books and/or tv show make the ‘church’ so transparently evil (I mean, snakes et al? And the less said about the casting the better: everyone just looks so eevill).Surely it would have been more interesting if the ‘church’ was depicted in a more sympathetic or ambiguous light?Anyone care to enlighten non-book readers?
Because the entire series is written as a scathing indictment of organized religion.
Well, it’s a little fruitless to judge a series you haven’t read by viewing part of an adaptation. Where this story goes is so unexpected and wild that summarizing it would not do it justice. The first book just dips its toe into the larger story. It blows open and expands to many other realms and locations. Yes, the members of the Magisterium that we see are unpleasant but they are the men and women tasked with doing unpleasant things and enforcing orthodoxy. There are perfectly nice priests and nuns who are not part of the Magisterium but they don’t factor into the story. The Magisterium is only one part of the Church. It is the enforcement arm. The Church is not just a critique of organized religion but it is literally the Catholic church of Lyra’s world complete with mentions of Jesus and Christian lore. The average parish priest would function the same way as those in real life. They would also probably be less likely to have snake or insect daemons.
The books are pretty exciting and well paced from a storytelling stand point, but it’s really the themes and world building that make the series magical. Granted, I was a kid during my first read, but there are parts of HDM that still sum up the nature of existence perfectly in my eyes. That one scene in The Amber Spyglass…The books aren’t necessarily the most nuanced take on religion but they take on death and the afterlife (and religion) in a way I haven’t seen in a lot of Western media, especially for younger people.
“Anyone care to enlighten non-book readers?” Sure: read the book.
“Surely it would have been more interesting if the ‘church’ was depicted in a more sympathetic or ambiguous light?” No, that would be idiotic. The whole thematic point of this first book is that the Church’s fascistic, wicked reign over Lyra’s world pushes an otherwise brilliant person to go on a wild and crazy Ahab-like quest, horrific consequences along the way be damned. Take away the sinister nature of the Church, and that choice makes no sense. Again: read the book!
You sound like a zealot from the Magisterium.The problem of evil is not that people do bad things or that bad things happen to awful people – its that is is usually done by people who think they’re doing the right thing or can morally justify their actions (to themselves and others).The problem of evil turns on moral thinking – as the etymology of the swastika (and its continued prevalence in Eastern thinking) readily indicates.
So watching His Dark Materials announce and declare the Magisterium’s eevill at every turn invariably re-turns it into a children’s story.
“re-turns it into a children’s story” – it is a children’s story. An excellent one, to be sure, but a children’s story nonetheless. And epic, fable/myth-like stories generally require outsize, sinister antagonists. If you can’t agree to that, fine; write a better book, if you think you can.
Grow up.
It’s not a children’s story so much as it’s a story about growing up. Literally. About how experience and wisdom are natural and to be sought, protected and cherished. The villainy of the Magisterium is more nuanced than it may seem, because fundamentalists do this kind of thing in the name of religion – genital mutilation, castration, brainwashing, repression, murder, the list goes on. To water down their evil would be to deny their reality. The whole reason they’re able to plunge themselves to such depths in the first place is that they tell themselves it’s for a good cause.
The books are written as an atheist/agnostic rebuttal to the Narnia series, so Pullman is deliberately being as didactic as CS Lewis (and ends up being moreso in The Amber Spyglass). They’re a lot more enjoyable than the TV show.
That right there is the greatest failure of this adaptation. The books are highly regarded for good reason, and this show…well, it happened, certainly. And as they reportedly filmed both season one and two at the same time it looks like it will continue happening.Honestly? Hit the library or your Kindle Unlimited or Audible or however you do and just give Northern Lights/The Golden Compass a try. Then try and watch the series again without feeling a sick fascination at what they’ve done to such an outstanding story.
The first book is the most straight forward and simple adventure tale. The others go into different worlds, genetics, afterlifes etc
The books are good and this adaption is not good enough, I had hopes. The lack of Daemons makes a big difference.
On the blatantly evil Church… You need to realize that the author, Philip Pullman, is an outspoken agnostic atheist or more accurately an anti-theist. While not as well known as the likes of Christopher Hitchens or Richard Dawkins he is in their company.“if there is a God, and he is as the Christians describe him, then he deserves to be put down and rebelled against.” – Philip PullmanPullman has criticized C. S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia which is a Christian allegory on multiple occasions as propaganda and some think His Dark Materials is a form of rebuttal to it. Ie, a piece aimed at young and impressionable readers that shows the evils and hypocrisies of organized religion. It’s in your face about it because that was the point. His Dark Materials intentionally uses Catholic terminology and Judaeo-Christian theological concepts for its bad guys.
Pullman wrote another book called The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ which is a scathing review of religion.All of that said… I love His Dark Materials but that’s the context for why the big bad church is about as subtle as a hand grenade in a china shop.
I’ve only read the first book so far and was pretty unimpressed. I think my expectations were way too high. The motivations of Lee Scoresby and Serafina Pekkala are frustratingly vague and also seem to mostly exist to move the plot and give exposition. I can’t speak for how the series progresses but I didn’t care enough after the first to keep going.
FWIW, I’m a theist and loved the books. Re: being a children’s series, they are categorized as young adult but I read in my 20s and find htem magical. Maybe something to do with Jews and questinoing but I find them magical. It gets more sophisticated as the series progresses.
Meh. They’re alright. There was no attempt at subtlety when it came to how much Pullman hates the church. I devoured book 1, struggled to get into book 2, put down book 3 not too far in and never picked it back up. He’s not being didactic about C.S. Lewis, who was actually pretty decent at subtlety until The Last Battle (which is another book I’ll never read again). So yeah mention it as an answer to Narnia, but don’t compate it, because Narnia is mostly better at what they’re both attempting from opposite angles.
[Serafina, standing dramatically facing the mountains]
(droning mysteriously in an ethereal English accent) “The battles are just beginning. A great war is coming -”LMM, interrupting with a twang:
“No, no more fancy talk!”It really seemed like they were parodying their own show with this scene. I mean honestly. What she was saying had no meaning to the audience or even importance to Lee – he just interrupted and waved it away. It seemed like it was two characters from two different types of shows interacting with each other.On the subject of the incredibly boring storyline in our world – I really hate how they’re trying to milk every little possible instance out of bad men harassing his mother. I don’t like how they spent time making up that Boreal was the one harrassing her and giving airtime to his spy associate. Why? So we care when he dies? Except we don’t, and like the review says Will doesn’t seem to react very seriously either. One thing I don’t mind is moving Will’s introduction up but it just really seems they are attempting to milk every prolonged second out of it to take up screen time. And I still wish they hadn’t revealed the knife windows until later. It really does ruin the magic of Asriel creating the bridge between worlds, and then later, the magic of Will discovering his window.Lyra is basically using the alethiometer like a smartphone. Pan even tells her “check the alethiometer!” and she basically gets the answer so quickly and without showing us anything it’s like she opened Google Maps on AlethiOS to see where Iorek is.
LMM = JarJar Scroresby
LMM’s line delivery in that part reminded me of “Speak English, Doc; we ain’t scientists!” from Walk Hard.
Agreed on most of your points. I was nervous about Iorek’s fight since he’s my fav character, and after seeing what they did I still think the movie did it better. They don’t even show Iorek’s victory really? Where’s the epic rawness of battle? The armor? They’re Panserbjorn, ffs.Anyway, there was a lot to love in the episode, but yeah, each one seems to serve up an unfortunate portion of regret. I wish they would just sloooooow down.
I think they avoided showing the victory so Lyra would temporarily think Iorek was dead, which was just pointless. Stripping the bears of their armour just made it look like a Transformers fight, where you couldn’t tell which of two similarly coloured blurry objects was winning and which was losing. Shame, because it was otherwise some of the most believable CGI of the series, so they had a decent crew working on the scene.
Agreed. Top notch CGI but the focus was on Lyra when it should’ve been on Iorek’s victory. Totally robbed him of the most important moment of his arc.
As a viewer, not book reader, I am left saying “uh…he had an arc?” Sad how that played out. I can imagine in my head how it could be a great arc of redemption, but the show didn’t build it at all.
i think they didn’t show the full battle in order to keep the TV-14 rating. it’s supposed to be a family show.
That feels like one of the only things they got right with the bears, Iorek’s armor. Iofur’s armor in comparison…where was the story’s commentary on that? It again makes me wonder if the people making this show just have no idea of what parts of the story it is important to tell, and what parts are okay to leave out. Nothing points to why Iofur is unsuitable as king, or why it was so easy for Mrs.Coulter to manipulate him for so long and how that harmed the bears. It was, as the review says, just a bunch of things happening. And I’m continually disappointed in the scenes with the alethiometer. Keene is good at stillness, and her direction seems to be to play the character like she’s constantly in shock, would it be too damned hard to show her using the alethiometer in the meditative state that we know from the books it requires?
Yes, they keep leaving out small but REALLY important stuff that just makes me scratch my head. How hard would it have been to include Iofur’s doll-daemon? It would’ve explained so much about him and his motivations.
The omission of important details is just mind boggling. Wasn’t it stressed that the armor is like a daemon or soul for a bear? Why would they fight without it? Also where is the emotional connection between Iorek and Lyra? She seems so standoffish. Iorek is treated basically as an Uber.
Yes! There was this weird scene after Iorek won the fight and he speechifies to the other bears that they don’t have to wear armour anymore. I was like, whot? It’s like no one involved with the show actually read the books. What then was the whole point of Lyra helping Iorek regain his armour? The armour is supposed to be fucking essential, but apparently Jack Thorne didn’t get that memo.
Random Writer: Shouldn’t we put the armor on the armored bears? It looks kind of wrong.Jack Thorne: The armor is uncomfortable for the bears.Random Writer: The… CGI bears?Jack Thorne: It doesn’t work in a visual medium. It’s never used in the filmed adaptations of His Dark Materials.Random Writer: The film did it.Jack Thorne: Yes, the film, but none of the other filmed adaptations.Random Writer: There isn’t any other filmed adap…Jack Thorne: Can we drop this? We have more important things to discuss. The scene where Lord Boreal visits Starbucks, yes or no? I vote yes.
Perhaps 10 episodes would have been a better call? And the budget could have been stretched to cover both an armoured battle and the human-style extravagance of Iofur’s regime.
Yeah, I think 10 would allow for some of those seemingly small but pivotal details to be worked in.
Well they’re at least consistent that armor is to bears as daemons are to humans…..
Meaning that to the filmmakers they’re not an integral part of the story that it is absolutely necessary to film for the stated story to be at all cohesive with the visual story?
Well, I guess if anybody will ever doubt that a fight to the death between two gigantic (allegedly) armored polar bears could be rendered dull, now we can point them out to His Dark Materials. It was if everyone involved in its creation got bored by the concept. And the entire bear society boiled down to just two bears.Iofur: I’ll fight usurped king Iorek to the death now!Bears: …Iorek: I won! I’m your king now!Bears: …Iorek: I’m going to accompany this human child in her travels now, acting as her domesticated steed.Bears: …
This made me LOL. God damn it, give this show to some competent people, please, BBC.
Also great:Iorek: I’m gonna go tell Asriel’s guards (who’ll instictively know I’m the king now, as opposed to an exiled enemy of the throne) to stand down now. You won’t ever see them. It’ll be like they never existed.
Lyra: What guards?Iorek: They’re totally around, just behind that rock, hiding from the VFX budget
The fact that they shot seasons one and two back to back has already depressed me that they’re going to make the subtle knife (my favorite of the three) boring and incoherent. They can’t pull together the most linear of the three books, there’s no chance amber spyglass will make sense at all.
the show is a narrative mess, and I agree WHY WHY WHY remove the bears armor?? For *** sake it is their SOUL. It is their daemon. The show did not even bother to illustarte the difference in Iorek and Iofur
But, hey, the painted WAR PAINT on Iofur’s face!!! That really set the two apart. I had to explain to my girlfriend the background with Iofur and Iorek since the show couldn’t be arsed to lay the stakes and story on the table to make it the righteous fight it was. I also had to explain what it was that Iofur had done to fundamentally change bear society for the worst. I get they only had x amount of time to get shit out there, but a lot of the stuff they skipped is pretty important.
I think you nailed the thing I just couldn’t put my finger on. The episode was fine, but it seemed clunky and I didn’t dislike it, but didn’t love it either. Ah well, I’m just going to hope Jack Thorne will let Ruth Wilson do her thing and make Marisa’s reunion with Asriel really interesting and impactful. That’s all I can hope for with the last episode. I’m pretty sure they will fumble everything else in some small way that is really going to bother me.
Also, I
hate that they insist on keeping McPhail around. Why do they do this? From what
I can gather, it only makes it confusing for people who didn’t read the books,
because why would Marisa stay involved when the Church thinks she done-effed up
and the CCD is there to take over? I would much prefer if they had made it
clear that Marisa is powerful all on her own, that she still has witches and
zombis and all sort of resources, and that the big guns are not at all that fast
or that involved in any of this. Is not like we’ll get confused about why they
don’t get along in TAS.
Well, I still cannot fathom why they didn’t show the jaw-ripping scene except for a misallocation of budget. What a complete disappointment. I really appreciate your reviews and the thoughtfulness of which you approach the material.I cannot help but remember all the criticisms of the movie: the lack of anti-religion theme, lack of character development, and the happy ending that obscured the punch-to-the-gut ending of the first book. I would argue the TV series has failed on the first two accounts. And is mounting a failure on the third (but will clearly deliver the sacrifice) because of how obvious it is that Lord Asriel has bad intentions for Roger. Talk about leading a pig to slaughter with all the over the top hugging. A clear hug-of-death, if you will.I missed McKellan’s “come my little daemon” (or similar, if the wording is off) before the bear fight in the movie. Lyra doesn’t even tell Iorek the *main* part of her lie. Smh. She makes the strange commentary about Iofur not being a real king or whatever. How would she know what a “real” armored bear king and kingdom should look like? From a writer’s pov, I guess this is to help fill in some blanks about what has happened to the bears, but, logically, it makes no sense. It was so jarring for me that it prompted me to yell at my TV “You didn’t even tell him about the daemon bit!”I guess it’s clear that I am a fan of the movie version (which, granted, has its flaws). But the whole idea of the show was to expand and delve deep into this material. I have yet to be impressed and I’m often left dissatisfied on the richness, tonality, and emotional aspects of the story. The title of Lyra Silvertongue felt like a participation trophy instead of a gold medal of respect. I am still holding my breath for next week as we’ve never seen this part adapted for the screen before. Maybe it will be amazing and you can finally give it an “A”. But something tells me that I’m going to wish that we followed up with the movie instead.
“He’s desperate to be like a person and have a daemon, just desperate. So I tricked him into thinking that I was your daemon, and I was going to desert you and be his instead, but he had to fight you to make it happen. Because otherwise, Iorek, dear, they’d never let you fight, they were going to just burn you up before you got close -”“You tricked Iofur Raknison?”“Yes. I made him agree that he’d fight you instead of just killing you straight off like an outcast, and the winner would be king of the bears. I had to do that, because -”“Belacqua? No. You are Lyra Silvertongue,” he said. “To fight him is all I want. Come, little daemon.”She looked at Iorek Byrnison in his battered armour, lean and ferocious, and felt as if her heart would burst with pride. ————-This exchange encompasses so much. Iorek’s underdog status and desire to make up for his past, Lyra’s delight in receiving rare praise for her skill and her judicious use of it, her achievement of agency and power in having been able to make the bear-king do something so pivotal, Iofur’s self-denying obsession with humanity, the profound importance of daemons in both society and character, the emphasis that the true bear equivalent of daemons is their armour, and the sense that Iorek is so impressed with Lyra’s skill and decency that he refers to her as though she were indeed part of his soul, showing how much he has emotionally connected to her and acknowledging that the extent of it is reciprocated. All in a few words set up by prior context. Another mistake the series has made was to excise the scene where Iorek not only explains to Lyra that you can’t trick a bear, but shows her by inviting her to strike him and constantly anticipating where she’s going to strike next. In the books this pays off hugely when it ties into Iofur being trickable because he’s in denial about reality, the way this makes him a perfect Magisterium patsy because of their yen for denying pleasure, nature and fulfilment, the way Lyra is able to defeat him using her empathy and sense of right and wrong as well as her skill in lying. In this adaptation the whole subplot has been reduced to events, as if Thorne does think of Iorek as an Uber and not as a redemptive, contemplative character in his own right who is a corroborating example of the idea that it is sweet and fitting to be yourself, and who helps Lyra realise that about herself, to the point that from this moment forward she introduces and thinks of herself only as Silvertongue and never again Belacqua.
Honestly BBC, if this what it was going to turn out to be you needn’t have bothered.
I had the thought that Will looks some years older than Lyra, and that’s not good, given what happens in the books. Not helped by her best friend being shorter than her and having a baby face.The conversation between Will’s mum and Boreal seemed to go on forever.Yeah, I had the exact same thought with Lee and Serafina talking: you guys said this already!Even though it’s explained, I’m still annoyed at how nice Will’s house is given his mother is out of work. Couldn’t they have picked a more realistic looking place?Anyone else creeped out by the Lyra-Iofur scene? Maybe that was the intent if she was pitching herself as his daemon.I’ve liked Coulter’s characterization up to now, but I did feel they went a tad high pitched with her going homicidally mad at the worker because of her own guilt at what she’s doing.The show better explain its title before the season’s over for the newbies.
Although Lyra’s actress looks a little younger than her age there’s only a year difference between her and Will’s actor.
Will’s actor is obviously just tall for his age imo.
Honestly, given Will’s life and responsibilities, it wouldn’t be a surprise if he did look somewhat older. Lyra’s life had been of ease until the adventures in the story began, Will’s hadn’t.
Re. the inaccurately overly nice house: let’s just imagine that they own it outright, so there is no mortgage. But the house being new instead of neglected and falling apart is a little off-putting. Maybe they wanted to underscore that this is our modern world and not Lyra’s world? And how come her room at Jordan College was so crummy, anyway?
You can’t explain the title easily without quoting Paradise Lost. I was hoping and half-expecting that the quote that opens the book would be the first shot of the show. ‘Into this wild abyssThe womb of nature and perhaps her grave Of neither sea, nor shore, nor air, nor fire, But all these in their pregnant causes mix’dConfusedly, and which thus must ever fight Unless the almighty maker them ordain His dark materials to create more worlds. Into the wild abyss the wary fiend Stood on the brink of Hell and looked awhile, Pondering his voyage…’Basically what it means is that the characters are going to use heavenly materials for human purposes to save the world, thus taking back power and agency from celestial overlords.
We’re not at the stage yet, in show or book, where the true nature of Dust has been explained or how it powers the alethiometer, so explicit references to celestial beings might spoil the surprise.
Also I want to mention that I tried Slate’s His Dark Materials podcast, finally. I like both Laura Miller and Dan Kois but hadn’t listened because each podcast was long, like 50 minutes each long. But started the one for the last episode and then bailed when their “daemons” started talking. Sorry, guys, but you didn’t need to pad it out this way. I miss the clean and very informative 26 minutes of June Thomas’ The Americans podcast. (I learned about Watchmen’s podcast some episodes into the series, and will check out, hoping Mazin and Lindelof don’t do character shtick.)
I had a similar reaction. I made it through a whole episode but don’t think I’ll listen to any more. I just have a bad reaction to that kind of cutesy-poo thing in much the same way I want to punch people who tell me what their Hogwarts house is.
As hacked up, rushed, and overly polished-looking as the movie was, I at least always felt that adapter/director Chris Weitz fundamentally understood the soul of the book, and was doing his best to present it faithfully. As I recall, the movie has lots of little moments that are spot-on, albeit maddeningly brief. And, of course, it’s amply documented that the movie’s biggest deviations from the book – swapping the Bolvangar/Svalbard sequence order, leaving out the ending, obfuscating the anti-religious themes – were forced upon Weitz by cowardly New Line suits. Weitz literally went straight from The Golden Compass to the second Twilight movie, and said it was a relief to be allowed to follow the source material that time. From Pullman to Twilight, a “relief!” FFS!From watching the first episode and reading these reviews, however, it really sounds as though the writers/directors have little to no clue what they’re doing. It’s downright bizarre. No armor for the bear fight?! Cutting from Lyra’s northern adventure to ordinary old Blighty, let alone doing so repeatedly? The hell is wrong with them?!
went straight from The Golden Compass to the second Twilight movie, and said it was a relief to be allowed to follow the source material that time.This says more about Twilight than about anybody involved.
Yeah the cut from Iorek’s.arrival to the two armoured bears without there armour was jarring. Feels like there’s been some explanation that’s been cut here
Last night’s episode was the point where I just sighed and started counting down the days to Avenue 5, because this show is not doing it for me.
I can’t quite believe I’m using my first ever comment to moan, but isn’t that just what the internet is for? Sidenote- Hello everyone!I couldn’t agree more with Miles about how disappointing this episode was. For those of us watching in the UK (where this series has had relatively little traction, for many obvious reasons beyond the fact it’s just not very good), this was on an hour later than last week’s (actually more as Sports Personality of the Year overran as ever), which got me quite excited! Suggestion of (spoilers) child murder! Anti-religious themes! Epic bloody bear fight! Considering all the CG effort put into the bears themselves I couldn’t believe how tame it was, and there’s no excuse for the lack of armour, especially as Iorek literally in wearing his! The book really plays Iorek as the underdog (his armour is battered and clearly inferior to Iofur’s, he’s tired, and physically smaller) and it’s supposed to be outside with everyone braying for his defeat.Honestly, every week I’m comparing this to the film, which I remember being horribly disappointed in at the time, and they nailed the bear fight! ‘His Dark Materials’ are my everything books and I’m re-reading them at the moment (I’m actually already onto ‘The Amber Spyglass’ because once you start you can’t stop), and every week I’m looking on them and even the film more fondly. I’m obviously going to watch next week’s episode regardless, and at least come the second series they will be able to run at ‘The Subtle Knife’ without a comparison, but I’m honestly pretty concerned that they’re already pushing elements from that book into this series not entirely successfully (although I think the young man playing Will is doing a strong job and Nina Sosanya is always good in what is a slightly thankless role). The film really fucked up the ending though so they can’t do worse than that, right?
The film didn’t even have the ending. I guess they were too scared of people’s reaction to how devastating it is. Honestly though I think this adaptation has been mostly awesome. The bear fight (and lack of regime context) was a huge letdown, as was the removal of the dried fish scene, but they’re both symptomatic of the same flaw: a focus on events rather than the character traits that set those events into motion (Iofur’s self-denying daemon obsession and murderous usurpation, Iorek’s years of drunken shame and guilt being alleviated first by Lyra’s learned faith in his integrity, then by his cunning victory, then by his discovery that Iofur got the bear Iorek killed – in a fight – drunk so he wouldn’t surrender so Iorek would kill him and be exiled; Lyra’s objections to the fish removal being because the dead kid was using it as a replacement daemon, such being the depths of his severed loneliness, and that bringing out her book-established character trait of ‘furious kindness’, to quote one Twitter user from 2 weeks ago). The rest of the show – Lyra’s characterisation as a stubborn, confident adventurer, Mrs Coulter’s dichotomy of maternal love and religious hatred, Asriel’s standoffish adventurism, Will’s devoted concern, Boreal’s sliminess, the Magisterium’s self-righteous atrocities, Roger’s earnestness, Ma Costa’s protectiveness and learned rough exterior – all of this has been nailed perfectly. Someone just needs to explain to Jack Thorne that character drives plot in this series, not vice-versa. The next most obvious plot point at which there is the opportunity to show this is Lyra’s choice to follow her father (physically) beyond the North in order to foil his quest, because with all the shit her parents and their organisations have put her through, they must be the bad guys. Then there’s Lee choosing to seek Will’s dad because he’s rumoured to know where a protective object is (the subtle knife), then getting Will’s dad to promise it’ll be used to help Lyra. Character drives plot in almost every instance in the books, including the witches’ outrage at Bolvangar-style Church practices and the angels’ desire to provide freedom to fully enjoy life and love for the characters lucky enough to have flesh. That’s what makes it epic, not the witches, angels, dimension-jumping, polar bears and hot air balloons. They’re just interesting features: a natural consequence of ‘shew you all alive the world, where every particle of dust breathes forth its joy’.
Why is the armor gone in the bear fight? I do not remember the armor gone in the books anyone remember?
The armor was not gone in the books, and the differences in their armor was key to the outcome of the fight, IIRC.
sadly another WTF moment for this series. I was hoping that having a flop of a movie in recent memory would make sure this production did a better job.
I’m calling it now, Will and Lyra will meet in Cittàgazze in the last moments of the final episode before it cuts to black.
I totally agree with your points on
storytelling and how it’s kind of not here. I’ve been thinking very similar
things. This series has kind of taken the book and not seemed to understand
that it’s not the surface that makes it worth paying attention to. The series
is kind of… just a bunch of stuff that happens.It’s funny how easy it is to unsettle a
great pace into something that doesn’t really work. Because while I’ve been
very vocal bout my criticisms of the storytelling going along, I think it all
pretty much holds together in a satisfying season. It’s very close to the
structure of the book, not just order, but even the way it breaks up into eight
episodes with kind of their own internal little arcs and focuses and locations.But this is the first time I’ve felt
like that’s let them down and I’m not even sure why. Like in theory the
excursion enact regime change in a sovereign foreign power is kind of a dogleg in climactic events. Lyra’s dual aims from the
beginning have been a. save Roger, b. save/help AsrieBut in the novel the excursion feels
like a perfect and necessary part of the plot and story.I think it has something to do with the
weight of Lyra’s situation and the
battle. The series generally has a flatter feel to the drama and emotion
whereas the novel by this point has worked up to a certain pitch where emotions
are big enough to carry us through this. There’s even a trick in it. The
chapter has all the feel of the dramatic and emotional climax of the novel,
leaving us all the more unprepared of the final chapters to be anything other
than a comparatively peaceful epilogue.I think this part of the story springs off the
Bolvangar climax and themes much more than it at first appears to. Lyra is
still dancing on the knife-edge in her lying and manipulation as she was with
Mrs. Coulter. She escaped her, and now she has to take it a step further and
actually steal a whole kingdom from an even more formidable opponent – one who
is theoretically untrickable opponent who will kill her in a second if she puts
a foot wrong. And it’s a climax for Lyra’s lying, or rather for her
relationship with the truth, because she is lying from a place of wisdom and
maturity of emotion she wouldn’t have been capable of before. I think she gets
away with her manipulation of Iofur without his suspecting because there’s an
emotional truth there. She understands now the profound fear and lonliness at
the idea of being without a daemon…Plus unlike the film and series, the
book doesn’t have Lyra in the throne room five minutes after her crash-landing.
The advantage of the novel form is that we are able to interestingly spend time
with her observing, learning information and mulling things over.Anyway, I think that’s probably at the
heart of it. The novel carries the day on a consistent, truthful following of
where the story wants to go thematically and emotionally. And those are not
this series’ strong suits. This episode doesn’t feel like a character climax
for Lyra, just another thing she has to tick of her ‘to do’ list.I think I even prefer the film’s
reordering of events in a way because at least it demonstrated some
understanding of the materials they were working with: they had made something
far more whimsical and less nuanced and they used the bear fight for what it
had become in their hands – a diverting stop in a simple quest.Of all the parts of the novel this is
the one which I think is he most clearly open to interpretive adaptation. In
the book we have the feel and scale of something more seated in the
metaphorical world of the children’s story. But since this adaptation moves
things towards a more literal and gritty feel, it could have done with applying
that to this conflict. Write in some real sense of philosophical or emotional
conflict here. The fight itself felt empty, really. Like you say, I didn’t feel
what they were fighting for. Even the sense of Lyra’s peril felt a bit without
teeth, as it were. I like this Iorek fine but I didn’t particularly dislike
Iofur, and I didn’t get any sense of them embodying two different ideals. We
were kind of meant to take it on faith that Iorek was the goody because… well,
Lyra met him first, I guess.
Well, and Iorek calls him a tyrant, so that’s good enough, right?
Really though with the time they have on the series, it shouldn’t have been impossible to show Iofur’s delusional reign. Pullman’s description of his unkempt palace, and the anxious attempts by the other bears to become more human, is one of my favourite parts of the book. Why the show decided to leave all that out is beyond me, though I suspect they underestimate the intelligence of their audience.
In the book it feels like there are two fundamentally different ways of life for the bears at stake in their fight. The show just told us Iofur was bad, but didn’t do much beyond that.The main the series has done is made me appreciate Pullman’s craft as a storyteller more, because he managed to get so much more meaning out of basically the exact same story beats.
Gosh same here re. your last point! Northern Lights has been such a foundational text for me since I was twelve I’m amazed how much more I’ve discovered about its qualities by seeing them in contrast with a mediocre telling of the same beats.With the bears, I guess that idea of a conflict of political philosophy is a harder story to tell visually. But I keep getting the sense these adaptors feel like it’s enough to do things as close to the book as budget will allow and not really engage in any creative/interprative adaptation. This bit of action could have used to tell all sorts of different stories, culminate many a different theme or idea. But HDM seems to be a series without anything much on its mind.
This show could have used an episode or two of world building early on to give the bear fight any emotion at all. It just didn’t have it. I should have cared that good bear killed bad bear..but I didn’t. I should have cared about anything, but I didn’t. I’m thinking back to GoT, when the guy was fighting to avenge his sisters rape and murder. We were given enough of the back story, spent enough time with the characters, that when they fought, it made you feel something. This fight just lacked any power. Too bad.
I was very disappointed with the way they shot the bear fight. I wanted to see Iorek tricking Iofur, pretending to be debilitated and then going in for the kill. Even if it was something as obvious as him winking at Lyra, I wanted to see that he was using strategy. Instead we got what looked like Iofur genuinely gaining the upper hand, then a close-up of Lyra, then a Greek Tragedy-style recitation of what we didn’t see. (“You tricked a bear!”)I also couldn’t believe they didn’t show how Lyra fell from the balloon without being injured. I assume she slid down the ice slope that was nearby, but why not show that?
She landed in a snowdrift. ‘She was so battered that she could hardly think. She lay quite still for several seconds before feebly spitting out the snow in her mouth, and then she blew just as feebly until there was a little space to breathe in. Nothing seemed to be *hurting* in particular; she just felt utterly breathless.’
Once again I’m a day late to the party because I forgot (for the 5th week in a row) that the show was on, which tells you how I’m feeling about it generally. I’m also getting persnickety about dumb things like “Lyra! Are you ok?” is just NOT how Iorek talks. No doll daemons for the bad bears is another strike against the production team for not understanding about daemons. Also, WHERE IS WILL’S CAT? That she was on a chair when Boreal was at the house and that she appeared to trip the bad guy (and screech like something out of a Monty Python sketch) did nothing towards setting up her later role, if they even bother. I hope we have seen the last of Serafina and Lee together because just UGH. Every time. Terrible stilted dialogue, and even Kaisa’s random voice over a couple episodes back made more sense to me than these two do in terms of filling us in on Lyra’s role. Plus, as you say, repetitive.Alsoa, the lame bear fight, Lyra is all “Ok, now on to my father” and when Iorek took her to Roger I felt like her reaction was “Oh, right, Roger” which does not work AT ALL with her previous Roger obsession or with later events. The first several episodes I felt like the series was really true to the spirit of the books even if not true to the details. The past 2 episodes have nearly lost my interest entirely. I don’t even know what to hope for in episode 8. I’d like to end this season wanting to watch season 2 and right now I don’t much care.
I don’t know why this site has such a hard time saying it, but this series sucks. It’s the most non-magickal, utterly pedestrian take on a fantasy novel I’ve ever seen. The cast is all wrong & better suited to a PBS upstairs/downstairs drama. The Gyptians look like a ridiculous ragamuffin group, in pseudo ‘New Age’ rags, that’d be discovered by the Enterprise on ST:TNG; instead of the regal ‘masters of the waters’ that they are. Lyra is played like a dunder headed loon, as opposed to the fierce intellect she is. Mrs. Coulter is a one-dimensional villain, w none of her seductive evil. Don’t get me started on Miranda’s Scoresby. Overall, the series is a messy trainwreck of sloppy storytelling & lazy stylistic choices. For all the dismissal it receives on these sites, the Golden Compass film is heads, shoulders, knees & toes above this adaptation. Go back & compare for yourself.
I rewatched the movie (formerly known by me as “the awful movie”) tonight on your suggestion and I have to agree. There are some choices I don’t love but movie Lyra is so much better (and better presented – I loved how the first scene of her leading the group of kids in the chase/battle at Jordan made her leadership of the kids running out of Bolvangar so much more organic and believable), and everything about the daemons is so much more on point. I also give the movie the edge on the Gyptians overall, Lee Scoresby, Asriel, Iorek, Iofur, and much to my surprise, Mrs Coulter. I love the casting of Ruth Wilson in the show but I don’t agree with her degree of unhingedness. I prefer Nicole Kidman’s cool calculatedness. Oh, and movie Billy and Roger are both 1000 times better.
Thank you. I’m glad you took the time to compare them. I’ve long been a champion of the film. I love it. It’s infinitely better than people give it credit for. If nothing else, I’d kill to ride in that sky ship w Sam Elliott’s Lee Scoresby & Ian McKellen’s Iorek Burneson. 😉
Jack Thorne has explained on Twitter that they removed the bear’s jaw going flying because this is a family show and such violence is inappropriate. To which I say “If you can’t make this a family show without toning it down, don’t make it a family show.”
I can’t do it anymore. I have started to work on a fanedit. Final shot of the movie as Lee’s baloon soars cuts to the first shot of the baloon soaring from the show. Lyra falls and I’m incorporating the movie scene from the fall as well (like a double-Lyra since there are so many worlds and universes). Once she falls, she reunites with Iorek, Roger, visits Asriel, we again cut to another movie leaked scene (when Roger & Lyra arrive in Asriel’s lab). Then we watch the actual TV show scene and next week I’ll incorporate the ending. Every Will/Boreal scene has been deleted. This will be my definitive version. I also re-arranged the order from the Samoyeds capturing Lyra – they now take movie Lyra to Bolvangar, and, later on, Iorek takes her to Svalbard. The no-jaw was the turning point for me. I can’t do it anymore. I can’t pretend this show is superior to the film, because it isn’t.Let’s face it: if the movie had the complete ending and over 150min it would easily be an 8/10. So much more daemon/human connection, so many things the movie got right and the show is just getting very, VERY wrong.
‘You can exist without your soul, you know, as long as your brain and heart are still working.’Think of severed children like Dementor victims. Except in this reality, the Dementors are called Spectres of Indifference.
There were a lot of problems with this episode, but one that really bugged me was how the hell did the Magisterium know what went down on Svalbard? Coulter had to go there in person to get her claws into Iofur. Is there some sort of armored bear press corps sending out dispatches by telegram?
I haven’t been as down on this adaptation as you seem to be, but this episode was the first one to actually make me mad.The editing was all over the place, and they COMPLETELY fucked up the fight between Iorek and Iofur. Just utterly ballsed it up.They’re ARMORED BEARS. WHY WOULD THEY HAVE A ONE ON ONE FIGHT OUTSIDE OF THEIR ARMOR?! And the whole ‘Iorek, you tricked him!’ thing doesn’t make any sense because they didn’t stage the fight that way at all. It read like Iorek reacted to Iofur trying to kill Lyra with a sudden burst of rage, not ‘Iorek played lame to trick Iofur into over-extending himself and then ripped his face off.’