Well, I saw the movie.

If I’m offended, it’s not because of any religious sensibilities, it’s because of the violence they did to the book. Which wasn’t even that good.

They didn’t take out the religion, they added it in. Who the hell were all these old dudes in robes supposed to be? And the poison scene in the beginning? They totally took all the seriousness out of the hands of the people around Lyra, who were supposed to have been devoting their lives to her. The bear, they completely changed his history, taking his heroism away and replacing it with a wussy loser’s history. The gyptians didn’t tell Lyra her story, Mrs Coulter did. They made Mrs Coulter …well, they didn’t do much to Mrs Coulter, but they didn’t need to add all that stuff either. Basically, every part of the book was completely changed, pretty much always for the worse, except one part: the end. They didn’t change the end. Because they skipped it entirely!

They did switch parts 4 and 5 (out of 6), though. Which I thought was an odd structural choice of Pullman’s so that kind of made sense. But they changed so much else I’m sure it was purely by accident that they did so.

Date: Dec 7th, 2007 · Comments RSS · Tags: Entertainment