Dec 11 2007
The Golden Compass
The story previously known as The Northern Lights. I’m re-reading it now, because it’s been too long and I want to know what the differences are between the film and the book.That’s an important point. I have read the story, but I can’t remember the details. Consequently the film did not seem sacrilegious because I was never sure what was real.
It was excellent, in my humble opinion. I really enjoyed it, no provisos. The daemons were believable and fun to watch. The panserbjørne weren’t so great. It seemed that checking to see if polar bears’ noses actually looked like that was a step too far in terms of research. The noses were decidedly odd.
Sam Elliot as Lee Scoresby was awesome. What a great accent! The best by a long way was Lyra. She really held the whole thing together. I am very excited about the sequels. A lot of people have said it was too fast-paced, though I didn’t get that impression at all. Can anyone comment on what they thought was too fast, or what elements should have been expanded on?
The religion was definitely toned down, that was obvious. There was a clear separation of Magisterium and Others which wasn’t in the book. In the book, it was the Master who poisons the tokay at the start…
Update: It seems the spelling of the name of the armoured bears is very imprecise. In my mind it was something like panserbjorne. The copy I’m reading at the moment (Scholastic, 1998) has panserbørne. Translated (and US) copies add the ‘j’ back in. That’s what I’ll go with, as it seems more linguistically accurate.