The Golden Compass
Dec. 30th, 2007 08:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eorWent to see a matinee show of "The Golden Compass" with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
derien, littleredhead, and groundctrl this afternoon. I was the only one of the group who hadn't read the book. I really liked the show.
First, this movie is beautiful. It is steampunk and architecture freak heaven. The buildings are to die for. The beautiful brass technology is shiny and bright. I'm sure I missed more than I caught.
During the opening bits when it became obvious that a kid was the main character I rolled my eyes and prayed the two hours would end soon. Doesn't it seem that movies with a kid as a main character play entirely to the kid and make the characters alternately too cute and too old? I was pleasantly surprised. The main character is a kid, but this movie doesn't pander too unnecessarily to kid egos, or play off main character cuteness, or make the main character more sexual than her age.
The daemons were also a pleasant surprise. There was a lot of potential for the kids' daemons to be cute animated kids movie character stand ins. You know the characters I mean, you see them in every new Disney movie. Although there was some daemon cute, for the most part the daemons were functional.
I want to give specific mention of the fight scenes. They were completely confusing and fast and absolute mayhem. No long slow-mo shots. No people involved in long dialogs in the middle of the battlefield. Battles that actually scanned like battles. Yes, they were hard to follow, but that's why they call it the fog of war.
This movie crammed a lot into its runtime. It does feel a little rushed in places and you don't get much of the getting from here to there, but it's a wild ride. There's something to be said for going at it for two hours straight.
derien, littleredhead, and groundctrl this afternoon. I was the only one of the group who hadn't read the book. I really liked the show. First, this movie is beautiful. It is steampunk and architecture freak heaven. The buildings are to die for. The beautiful brass technology is shiny and bright. I'm sure I missed more than I caught.
During the opening bits when it became obvious that a kid was the main character I rolled my eyes and prayed the two hours would end soon. Doesn't it seem that movies with a kid as a main character play entirely to the kid and make the characters alternately too cute and too old? I was pleasantly surprised. The main character is a kid, but this movie doesn't pander too unnecessarily to kid egos, or play off main character cuteness, or make the main character more sexual than her age.
The daemons were also a pleasant surprise. There was a lot of potential for the kids' daemons to be cute animated kids movie character stand ins. You know the characters I mean, you see them in every new Disney movie. Although there was some daemon cute, for the most part the daemons were functional.
I want to give specific mention of the fight scenes. They were completely confusing and fast and absolute mayhem. No long slow-mo shots. No people involved in long dialogs in the middle of the battlefield. Battles that actually scanned like battles. Yes, they were hard to follow, but that's why they call it the fog of war.
This movie crammed a lot into its runtime. It does feel a little rushed in places and you don't get much of the getting from here to there, but it's a wild ride. There's something to be said for going at it for two hours straight.
