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Author	Topic: The Golden Compass... An Exciting Adventure? (Spoilers Allowed)
Dark_Jedi_Kenobi Title: Manager: • Prequel Trilogy Registered: Oct '04	Date Posted: 12/13/07 11:01am Subject: RE: The Golden Compass... An Exciting Adventure? (Spoilers Allowed)
	I understand that a film like this raises tension and issues regarding religion, but let's keep our focus here. This thread is for discussing the film, not religion or the reactions of various organized religions to the film. If you want to discuss religion, I invite you to visit the Senate. -----signature----- *Host of the PT Trivia Challenge Game 12: Question 10 Posted!* http://boards.theforce.net/prequel_trilogy/b10669/23314477/p4/?184
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JediTrilobite Registered: Nov '99	Date Posted: 12/14/07 10:37am Subject: RE: The Golden Compass... An Exciting Adventure? (Spoilers Allowed)
	I really enjoyed the movie. I thought that the pacing was all out of whack, but the acting was good and visually, there were some fantastic scenes there. -----signature----- Ever wonder what happened during the clone wars? Visit: http://www.theclonewarz.net My Blogs: http://carryyouaway.blogspot.com , http://jeditrilobite.wordpress.com , http://tk3220.wordpress.com TK-3220, NEG VT Rep
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Vortigern99 Title: Manager Emeritus Registered: Nov '00	Date Posted: 12/15/07 4:34pm Subject: RE: The Golden Compass... An Exciting Adventure? (Spoilers Allowed) - Date Edited: 12/15/07 4:35pm (1 edits total) Edited By: Vortigern99
	Well, I'm glad someone liked it enough to chime in and defend it. My wife and I agree that the film does not outright suck; it is certainly visually stunning, and Nicole Kidman in particular delivers an engaging performance. The subplot with the Ice Bears vying for the throne of their kingdom is enthralling, if all too brief; and the final battle (with the witches vs. the Gyptians vs. the wolf dudes) was extremely well crafted and quite exciting, particularly for a nighttime battle, which is no mean feat. But overall the film was dull and tedious -- I for one kept waiting for it to end -- and the characters, especially the protagonist, were lackluster and uninteresting. I understand the film does not do the book the least amount of justice, which is a darn shame and a horrednous missed opportunity. -----signature----- "I knew from the beginning I was not doing science fiction. I was doing a space opera, a fantasy film, a mythological piece, a fairy tale."--George Lucas My "Vader's Origins" thread: http://boards.theforce.net/Classic_Trilogy/b10002/8708417/p1
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ThrawnRocks Registered: Apr '04	Date Posted: 12/15/07 7:14pm Subject: RE: The Golden Compass... An Exciting Adventure? (Spoilers Allowed)
	I'm sad to hear this movie is getting bad reviews. I have yet to see it, but I was hoping that it would be really good, since I love the books. Of course I will still see it though. And this more or less confirms what I've been saying since I first heard about this movie: even if it sucks, there is simply no way they can mess up the Liquid Awesome that is the armored bear fight. -----signature----- My Icons: http://www.powow.com/thrawnrocks/icons.html Impeach President Bush Roan Fel's badassery knows no bounds. "The next Allston book should be all Syal and Myri, all the time." - Jello
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Charlemagne19 Registered: Jul '00	Date Posted: 12/17/07 6:06pm Subject: RE: The Golden Compass... An Exciting Adventure? (Spoilers Allowed)
	I just got back from The Golden Compass today and thought I'd throw my thoughts the way of this group. I actually enjoyed the story a great deal. I confess that I didn't recognize Hugh Jackman and Daniel Craig until the very end. It rather hurt the story and I think they should have just stuck with less recognizable stars and saved themselves some of the astronomical $250 million dollar budget of this thing. Seriously, when you make a movie that costs that much, you really need to start considering feeding a small 3rd World Nation instead. I'd like to say that it was worth the price tag but given each Lord of the Rings film and Star Wars film was worth only $100 million dollars, I've got to wonder where the Hell all of the money went since it doesn't really seem to be that extravagent of a movie. There's some attractive bits here and there but it seems like you could have probably made this same movie without some of the CGI shots on a television budget. I'm not a fan of His Dark Materials like my friend who insisted I go see it. Thus, I went in with only a vague idea of the world's mythology. I have both positive and negative things to say about seeing it without familiarity with the original work. On the positive side, I was still able to make sense of the basic cosmology. On the negative sense, I'm absolutely sure that huge bits were cut out of this storyline that would have made it seem a great deal more interesting and entertaining. In fact, the only reason that I was able to understand it is because I'm pretty acquainted with D&D and was able to grasp the concept in relative terms. "Oh, Daemons are these peoples Magician's Familiars. One dies, the other dies. Fine, gotcha." I'm fairly sure that my parents and niece were completely lost. I also was sure that Hollywood was dancing around what would have made the story a lot more understandable. For example, it took a bit to pick up on the fact that the Magisterium was the Catholic Church/Church of England. It's been a while since the Catholic Church was able to dictate policy in the world so I was wondering who the Hell these people were. Once I figured out that Lord Azrael was supposed to be Galileo and we were doing a thinly veiled retelling of his persecution it was much easier to get around. Instead, I was wondering where the Magisterium was the World Government/The High Council of wizards or what. It's a radical statement by Lord Azrael when he says "In these other worlds there are worlds where there is no Church and No God!" But if you haven't even explained Authority=God then I have no idea what the HELL Daniel Craig talking about when he mentions "And in these other worlds there are worlds where there is no Magisterium and no Authority!" If you're worried about the implications of a line, remove the line rather than just change the names and remove all context to them. This movie is different from the Harry Potter films they're so trying to emanate in that I'm fairly sure that the directors had no sense of wonder at the material. The settings clearly have a bit of majesty in them but we lack the sweeping vistas and utter weird of the implied fantasy of other worlds that would have made this work. Even in "Rise of the Cybermen" you had HUNDREDS of zeppelins and airships flying around to accent the alienness of the world. Giving the Gypies (I'm sorry, Gyptians) all dirty clothes and bows doesn't make them exactly reak of a new culture either. Bizarrely, they actually treat a Polar Bear Kingdom with complete straight deadpan seriousness. Overall, I'm not entirely displeased with the movie. The lead child-actress acts the Hell out of the part despite the fact that everyone else is sleepwalking through their roles except for Nicole Kidman and Craig. I couldn't understand a word of what the damn girl was saying half-the-time but that's my fault for being unable to pierce her accent rather than any fault of her acting. Nicole Kidman absolutely slinks through the role and manags to turn Mrs. Coulter, a name with the perfect Conservative connotations in our world, into something imminently watchable for Dads and Uncles like myself bringing their children/nieces to the location. Really, she plays such a charismatic young woman with a depth of love for our protagonist that its difficult really to hate her despite the fact she's engaging in inhuman and evil experiments for the Magisterium. Again, they really needed to better show the authority of the Magisterium because in today's modern world there's a slight level of disbelief that the Catholic Church can build secret laboratories in the middle of Norway with hordes of Russian Cossack soldiers to experiment on children to remove their souls. Hell, even the GOP would have a little trouble pulling that one off. Really, this movie needed an extra thirty minutes or even an hour to fully be developed since you had Christopher Lee and Derek Jacobi on the cast just to walk on and say a bit of plot exposition. When you have Christopher Lee YOU DAMN WELL BETTER USE HIM. It was really like watching money burn at times. Daniel Craig, however, did manage to do a nice job in his role but I think that he played the role too angrilly. This is a character that should have been portrayed with the lovable eccentric uncle vibe rather than the hardass religious rebel he's treated as. The surprise revelation about him at the end only makes him come off as a hypocritical jackass for stringing along the protagonist as long as he has. His "niece" in this case. Still, if you have children, they probably will enjoy it. I hope they make another one so they can try again. -----signature----- Check out Halt Evil Doer!: The RPG setting for Super Heroes! Halt Evil Doer PDF: http://tinyurl.com/555axt
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Vortigern99 Title: Manager Emeritus Registered: Nov '00	Date Posted: 12/17/07 7:41pm Subject: RE: The Golden Compass... An Exciting Adventure? (Spoilers Allowed)
	Charlemagne19, that is almost exactly how I feel/think about the film, except with the small inversion that I liked Daniel Craig's performance very much, but the little girl was only passable. Other than that, I couldn't agree more with just about every point you've made. Oh, and uh... Hugh Jackman? Did I blink and miss him??? Or did you mean Ian McKellan? There being only a slight difference between the two actors.... -----signature----- "I knew from the beginning I was not doing science fiction. I was doing a space opera, a fantasy film, a mythological piece, a fairy tale."--George Lucas My "Vader's Origins" thread: http://boards.theforce.net/Classic_Trilogy/b10002/8708417/p1
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Charlemagne19 Registered: Jul '00	Date Posted: 12/18/07 12:36am Subject: RE: The Golden Compass... An Exciting Adventure? (Spoilers Allowed)
	Vortigern99 posted: Charlemagne19, that is almost exactly how I feel/think about the film, except with the small inversion that I liked Daniel Craig's performance very much, but the little girl was only passable. Other than that, I couldn't agree more with just about every point you've made. Oh, and uh... Hugh Jackman? Did I blink and miss him??? Or did you mean Ian McKellan? There being only a slight difference between the two actors.... I was told he was in the movie but turned out to be incorrect. -----signature----- Check out Halt Evil Doer!: The RPG setting for Super Heroes! Halt Evil Doer PDF: http://tinyurl.com/555axt
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Healer_Leona Registered: Jul '00	Date Posted: 12/23/07 3:27am Subject: RE: The Golden Compass... An Exciting Adventure? (Spoilers Allowed)
	Grand ideas, often brilliantly stylized, nifty gadgets and CGI and still an overall dispappointment with no heart. I haven't read the books and plan to even more so now as there just seems to be so much missing with this film. -----signature----- I want to swim away but don't know how Sometimes it feels just like I'm falling in the ocean
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raisedbywolves Registered: Jul '05	Date Posted: 12/28/07 1:24am Subject: RE: The Golden Compass... An Exciting Adventure? (Spoilers Allowed)
	Interesting discussion. I'm a big fan of the books and sort of figured the movie would be disappointing. Charlemagne's review depresses me the most, as it's obvious from its comments about things like the daemons and "Asriel's big reveal" at the end that these important elements of the story were given absolutely no emotional context. Haven't seen it yet, but now that I know about its... ummm... less satisfying aspects, I guess I can go enjoy the visuals. (As far as religion, yes this is an extremely anti-authoritarian coming-of-age story we're dealing with. Lyra loses her trust for her parents, her government, her church and in the end in her own innate abilities, one by one these are shown to be illusionary. She discovers she has to muddle through, just as we all do.) -----signature----- What She Saw: http://boards.theforce.net/Before_the_Saga/b10475/21886008/?0 Proud (if erstwhile) padawan to Master Darth Pixel. It's not Darth Real Life, actually - I prefer to think of it as my very demanding Jedi Master.
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Vortigern99 Title: Manager Emeritus Registered: Nov '00	Date Posted: 12/29/07 7:44pm Subject: RE: The Golden Compass... An Exciting Adventure? (Spoilers Allowed)
	I talked to a reader of the books today who saw the film... and loved it. His explanation was that since he had read the book, he understood all this backstory and emotional context that the movie, he had to admit, failed to show. So, go figure. I'm glad some people like it, as it does have its winning qualities. -----signature----- "I knew from the beginning I was not doing science fiction. I was doing a space opera, a fantasy film, a mythological piece, a fairy tale."--George Lucas My "Vader's Origins" thread: http://boards.theforce.net/Classic_Trilogy/b10002/8708417/p1
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raisedbywolves Registered: Jul '05	Date Posted: 12/30/07 12:30am Subject: RE: The Golden Compass... An Exciting Adventure? (Spoilers Allowed)
	Well, I went to see the movie with my brother yesterday and I have to say: Vortigern, I guess I can halfway understand what your friend who'd read the books meant when he said that for him, knowing the characters, it worked. But for me it was just way too flat. So many things were left out that it became a rote fantasy film. The Good: - Loved the girl who played Lyra, and that she was allowed to act like a little snot. - Nicole Kidman was great too. Also the writing for her character singlehandedly saved the slightly anarchic message of the movie from being buried in a pile of vague due to worries over anti-religious content as she explains that people don't know how to act properly, so they need the Magesterium to keep them in line. Also, Lyra shouldn't suffer incision because the process is still dangerous and because she's not "just anyone" like the other children. For me the slimy doublethink and Lyra's outrage about it got the point across. - Iorek "I lift heavy objects" Byrnison. Loved McKellan as the voice actor. He even smacked his opponent's jaw off, something I really expected would be left out. - The effects. It was pretty. The Bad: - The director just wasn't qualified to get the audience emotionally involved with the more esoteric aspects of the story. Everything that had to do with daemons (besides the fact they looked great) was woefully underplayed, making the whole reveal of what the Gobblers were doing at Bolvangar awfully anticlimactic. The whole scene with Tony Costa was indeed FRUSTRATING and contained no hint of the fear and loathing a person in his condition in Lyra's world should have inspired. - Bolvangar was also frustrating. Don't know whether the movie would have had to be PG-13 but for God's sake, ramp up the Kafka/mental institution vibe and make the incision machine really frightening! - Derivative images. I disliked the Gyptians' character design intensely. Also, moving photographs. Where have we seen that before?! - The compass-reading procedure. Sparkly, montage-tastic and annoying. The Ugly: - Infinitely worse than the compass-reading procedure was the way dying peoples' daemons went out in a cheerful burst of fireworks. That's just wrong. - If the filmmakers couldn't be bothered to put Iorek's actual backstory in the movie, they could've saved a lot of time in the film by not making up another, equally elaborate one. - There was a tendancy to miss the point of the things that happened. We hear that a witch was involved with one of the Gyptians when he was young, and that witches live for hundreds of years, but miss out on any indication that this disconnect might have been tragic for them both. Similarly, the reason Iorek won his duel which was that his opponent no longer thought like a bear and thus could be tricked like a human was almost entirely in the movie, except that they neglected to add maybe one line about it. Stuff like this just excised the poetry right out of the story. Sigh. - THE ENDING. Wrong, wrong, wrong. I can't believe they were that desperate to end it in an upbeat fashion. It's as though ESB had ended with Luke blasting off to Cloud City, monologuing to R2 about how sure he is that no matter what Yoda said, he'll have no trouble rescuing his friends using his new Force powers. And then he's going to end the Empire and make everything right! Roll credits! Seriously, I just cannot overstate the wrongness of this ending. I guess all there is to say about this is, go read the book. It's fantastic. The movie, not so much. -----signature----- What She Saw: http://boards.theforce.net/Before_the_Saga/b10475/21886008/?0 Proud (if erstwhile) padawan to Master Darth Pixel. It's not Darth Real Life, actually - I prefer to think of it as my very demanding Jedi Master.
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ThrawnRocks Registered: Apr '04	Date Posted: 12/31/07 3:33pm Subject: RE: The Golden Compass... An Exciting Adventure? (Spoilers Allowed) - Date Edited: 12/31/07 4:03pm (3 edits total) Edited By: ThrawnRocks
	raisedbywolves posted: - THE ENDING. Wrong, wrong, wrong. I can't believe they were that desperate to end it in an upbeat fashion. It's as though ESB had ended with Luke blasting off to Cloud City, monologuing to R2 about how sure he is that no matter what Yoda said, he'll have no trouble rescuing his friends using his new Force powers. And then he's going to end the Empire and make everything right! Roll credits! Seriously, I just cannot overstate the wrongness of this ending. Ending? What ending? They didn't end the movie! There should have been another 15 minutes in the movie. I loved what they were doing in what turned out to be the end, because I thought that they were going to continue on and it would be the ultimate climax thanks to the contrast with their hopeful musings only minutes before. But no! They cut out the real juice of the ending and made a terrible happy ending that only exists to create demand for the next movie. Not to mention the lack of the proper ending made Craig's character completely useless. I don't know why they bothered casting someone of Craig's talent if they weren't going to use him. Asriel as a character has two moments in the book: the beginning and the end. The beginning is rather simple, and quite frankly any actor could have done that. But Craig could have really shined had they included the ending. I am extremely disappointed with this. Actually, the ending shows all the symptoms of the problem with this movie. It felt like they were just trying to go through the motions of the book, rather than actually make a movie out of it. They had scenes and moments that were almost complete, but didn't take that next step to really finish the scene. For example, the bear fight. It was totally awesome and I'm glad the kept the violence. I think it was as close an adaptation of that scene as I could hope for, but then they missed the "punch line" of the scene (not in the sense of a joke, but the point that the entire scene was leading up to), there was no mention of Iorek's deception, or the fact that Ragnar lost because he wanted to be human. Similarly, we have both the witches and the Tatars, but both their shorelines were completely cut out, so their inclusion seemed awkward at best. In the book, the tatars are mentioned almost from page one as a threat descending upon Europe, and so their appearance in the North makes total sense and is a partial fulfillment of that storyline; but in the movie, I'm not sure they were mentioned at all until they showed up as the guards of Bolvangar, reducing them to little more than stormtroopers. As for the witches, there was basically useless as all the emotional content of the witch/Gyptian scene as raisedbywolves pointed out, and also the fact that the witch civil war subplot was completely taken out. It's just frustrating how they had a lot there, but they didn't use it. I guess I could say that about the entire movie, but I'm not quite ready to wrap up my thoughts yet. One of the big complaints I saw in the months leading up to this movie was the fact that they were going to play down the religious issues, but if anything, they played it up. Sure they didn't go right out and say that the Magisterium was a part of the Catholic Church, but it was so heavily implied especially if you know the controversy leading up to the film with the Church. They should have just grown a pair and said it, because all the beating around the bush just made them look desperate and stupid. Plus why the hell was Christoper Lee there? He was in it for ten seconds, and if you're going to have such a high profile actor, use him for heaven's sake! In addition, I'd like to point out that the Magisterium trying to take over all the parallel universes was extremely stupid, and not from the book at all. In the book they seemed to see all that as blasphemy. And the focus was put very much on the Magisterium as evil, and much less on Miss Coulter which was the complete opposite of the book. In the book Coulter is the face of evil and the face of the Church which is this far off thing that is mentioned but never really seen. Also it would have been nice if they had gone all out in the revelation scene and talked about Adam and Eve rather than beating around the bush. Speaking of that scene, despite my small complaint of it there, that was really one of my favorite scenes in the movie. It was executed differently in the book, but the differences here managed to give more perspective on the characters. In the book I believe the scene is with Lord Asriel instead of Coulter, and the revelation that Asriel is Lyra's father was a little more forced in the movie, but it was really interesting seeing Coulter's perspective on things. She had was was clearly supposed to be a very "christian/family values/sex is evil/save teh children" moment there which helped her live up to her namesake ( ) when she was explaining the whole daemon/dust thing along with puberty. And then her explanation of how Original Sin ties in with all this was perhaps annoyingly vague, but at the same time a very interesting character insight. This was a beat very well played, though I think they could have even gone a little farther with it. I've mentioned this a little, but the casting was excellent, and the acting was excellent. Dakota Blue Richards was very impressive and did a wonderful job, especially given that she has never been in a movie before. But she is one of the few people used to their fullest extent. Ian McKellen completely fulfilled his role of the awesome bear, almost exactly like the book. But the person who stole the show for me was Sam Elliott as Lee Scoresby. While awesome in the book, he was much more of a bit character, and I feel he benefitted more from this movie than any other character. Nicole Kidman was wonderfully creepy as Miss Coulter, thought I feel she really could have used another scene or two (which should have been the ending specifically, but in general, I would have liked to see the character fleshed out a little more). I've already mentioned that Craig and his character were criminally underused while Christopher Lee shouldn't have even been in the movie. All the Gyptians plus Eva Green were good, but really got zero development, and were were just supposed to like them for no reason at all, which is ridiculous. The character who was over-used was Roger. I hated the kid, and Roger was barely in the book anyway, so I disagree with this decision. But what's worse, they played up his character, but then they never gave us the payoff ending. The effects were wonderful, though. Visually is was an absolute wonderful interpretation of the steampunk world that the characters live in, while keeping the elements that keep it slightly different than the very classic steampunk look. Brilliantly executed, and I loved the Gyptian boat, which was way cooler than I ever imagined, and Lee's airship was really great. I felt that the polar bears could have been a little bit better, but they were really good as they were. My final complaint before I wrap up is the pacing. It was just off. It went too fast. We were given a new character almost every scene with little time for development of the characters we already had, and then we were supposed to develop some sort of emotional connection with them. The scenes exist in the book, but they just weren't in the movie, so it seemed odd when Lyra seemed so attached to the characters. As I said, it felt like they were just going through the motions of the book as quick as possible without really delving into the book. This was a huge weakness. I know most of my post is negative, but really I felt like it was mostly a good movie and 90% of a good adaptation, but the missing 10% was really crucial. Overall it should have probably been an hour longer. That would have been time enough to include the ending and the much needed development, and slow down the pacing a little. But the fact that this movie was so close to doing it right, make the fact that it didn't all the more annoying and difficult for me to handle. EDIT: In other words, read the book EDIT2: On the point of the Catholic Church, I should be a little more specific. While it is the Catholic Church in that world, it probably has more in common with Calvinism than it does with modern Catholic Church. This is explained in the backstory of the book which you only pick up in passing during the book, but figuring out on your own where the split occurred is a whole lot of fun in the book. I can see why they cut out this part due to time constraints etc, as it was a small and not too significant part of the book, though I am a little disappointed that wasn't there. -----signature----- My Icons: http://www.powow.com/thrawnrocks/icons.html Impeach President Bush Roan Fel's badassery knows no bounds. "The next Allston book should be all Syal and Myri, all the time." - Jello
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Radical_Edward Registered: May '02	Date Posted: 1/1 6:43pm Subject: RE: The Golden Compass... An Exciting Adventure? (Spoilers Allowed)
	I've got to agree with raisedbywolves. 90% of the film was a faithful and proper adaptation, 10% was missing. The problem is that the missing 10% is equatable to making a film adaptation of Lord of the Rings without any reference to the Ring(s). I was also disheartened by some of the comments by folks who haven't read the book, particularly Charlemagne's. Their interpretation of how the movie should have been made me realize that there were major problems with the film that I didn't even notice and was able to gloss over mentally because of foreknowledge of the story. For example, Charlemagne's suggestion that Asriel should have been played more as a happy uncle than a stern relative made me realize that the relationship between him and Lyra was sorely misrepresented in the film. I'm not addressing this particular point to be nit-picky, but because it is an important point that has severe reprocussions both in the missing ending and in the sequels. Asriel is supposed to be a loveless hardass, a disciplinarian who has been more grooming Lyra like a kung-fu master would his pupil than stewarting his innocent orphan relative, only showing the briefest affection to keep from totally alienating the girl (Hence the line in the film where the Master tells Coulter that taking Lyra away from Oxford would be against Asriel's wishes for her education) Lyra stands by him not out of love but because she admires his strength and tanacity and resourcefulness, virtues that are key to her and which she emulates throughout the story. Also, I can't express the limits of my frustration about how the Ice Bear and kidnapped children plots were reversed. The Ice Bears were the big Plot, the climax of the story, not a measily subplot to throw some excitement in mid-stream. Rescuing the children should have been the lesser subplot (in the book, Lyra frequently scolds herself for forgetting about the kidnapped kids and reminds herself that she has to get something done about that...eventually) I was going to say more about the ice bears, particularly how "the ice bears having a kingdom was handled in a completely deadpan way" (grr...yet another failing of the ice bears' plot reduction) I don't think I'd be contributing anything by continuing, so I'll stop here and stew in silence. -----signature-----
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Vortigern99 Title: Manager Emeritus Registered: Nov '00	Date Posted: 1/1 6:51pm Subject: RE: The Golden Compass... An Exciting Adventure? (Spoilers Allowed)
	Radical_Edward, I welcome your ruminations on the differences between the book and the film. Having not yet read the book, but having been disappointed by the underwhelming yet full-of-potential movie, I'm intrigued to understand where the filmmakers went wrong, and how they diverged (to their detriment) from what is by all accounts a rippingly good novel. Pray continue with a full account of the ice bears' significance! -----signature----- "I knew from the beginning I was not doing science fiction. I was doing a space opera, a fantasy film, a mythological piece, a fairy tale."--George Lucas My "Vader's Origins" thread: http://boards.theforce.net/Classic_Trilogy/b10002/8708417/p1
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ThrawnRocks Registered: Apr '04	Date Posted: 1/1 10:17pm Subject: RE: The Golden Compass... An Exciting Adventure? (Spoilers Allowed)
	Radical_Edward posted: I was also disheartened by some of the comments by folks who haven't read the book, particularly Charlemagne's. Their interpretation of how the movie should have been made me realize that there were major problems with the film that I didn't even notice and was able to gloss over mentally because of foreknowledge of the story. For example, Charlemagne's suggestion that Asriel should have been played more as a happy uncle than a stern relative made me realize that the relationship between him and Lyra was sorely misrepresented in the film. I'm not addressing this particular point to be nit-picky, but because it is an important point that has severe reprocussions both in the missing ending and in the sequels. Asriel is supposed to be a loveless hardass, a disciplinarian who has been more grooming Lyra like a kung-fu master would his pupil than stewarting his innocent orphan relative, only showing the briefest affection to keep from totally alienating the girl (Hence the line in the film where the Master tells Coulter that taking Lyra away from Oxford would be against Asriel's wishes for her education) Lyra stands by him not out of love but because she admires his strength and tanacity and resourcefulness, virtues that are key to her and which she emulates throughout the story. I think that Craig's Asriel was very true to the character. What would make Charles say that is the fact that without the ending, or the plot exposition about his history with Miss Coulter, he just looks like a hardass without reason. Both those put his character in more context and give him a character arc which he is sorrily lacking. -----signature----- My Icons: http://www.powow.com/thrawnrocks/icons.html Impeach President Bush Roan Fel's badassery knows no bounds. "The next Allston book should be all Syal and Myri, all the time." - Jello
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