Customer Reviews
Is this Philip Pullman's Northern Lights ? - By: Mr. J. C. Schofield, 03 Nov 2008 
Philip Pullman's Northern Lights is a wonderfully written book. Packed with great imagination & depth. The characters, particularly Lyra's are well thought out & have a richness about them. The story line is challenging &in many parts takes a different path, than you're expecting. It takes on contentious issues cleverly & weaves a magical & dark storyline out of them.
Not since Tolkien's Trilogy has there been a series of fantasy books that have been acheing to be put on the silver screen.
Then the first film arrives, with it's American book title name 'The Golden Compass'. Visually the film is stunning especially on Blu Ray & if it was a Walt Disney film we'd all say aaaaww great swash buckling action.
But it's not it's suppose to be the reproduction of a masterpiece of fantasy. Is it possible to betray a book more than the film makers have done here, I think NOT !! All the parts of the storyline that really gave this book a real edge & made it stand out from the rest have been omitted. A gourmet meal turned into a happy meal. The storyline loosely ( & that's being kind )follows the book.
The film ignores the end of the book completely & rounds off any sharp edges that I'm sure they thought might damage the rating.
Director Chris Weitz, you should hang your headin Shame.I can't help wonder why you didn't stick to directing films like Antz & American Pie & let someone like Peter Jackson breath life into this book.
And Philip Pullman how could you stand back & watch them do this to your wonderful book.
The only hope is that Weitz strayed that far from the storyline he can't possibly make the second book & they'll have to remake The Golden Compass' again.
Devotees of Pullman must have physically wept when they saw this Disney style adaption.
Movie: 2/5 Picture Quality: 3~4/5 Sound Quality: 4/5 Extras: 4/5 - By: LGANS316, 26 Aug 2008 
Version: U.S.A / Region A
VC-1 BD-50
Running time: 1:53:17
Disc size: 48,426,421,480 bytes
Movie size: 25,958,633,472 bytes
Average Video Bit Rate: 22.63 Mbps
DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 24-bit
(BonusView) PiP Secondary Encode
VC-1
Movie size: 21,609,013,248
DTS 5.1 1509Kbps 24-bit
Contains moderate to heavy application of Digital Video Noise Reduction (DNR)
The names were changed to protect the innocent - By: B. Chandler, 24 Aug 2008 
Come to think if it the whole story is about protecting the innocent.
Lyra (Dakota Blue Richards) was raised relatively unsupervised which lead to a wild child hood of mock-wars & mischievousness. An excellent liar who saves her from many situations, she may someday find her assets are liabilities. A chance visit by her uncle, Lord Asriel (Daniel Craig), will change her life for ever.
Well movies can not be the book & many times for brevity speeches are cut & locations are rearranged (from a 400 page book to a 110 page script.) But you have to draw the line some where. Unfortunately this is one of those times where they left the actionin & changed the story form a multifaceted mystery to a black & white good guy vs. bad guy. We may as well have been watching Saturday afternoon cowboys with black & white hats. Some of the facets were skillfully woven into the non-verbal part of the film with the hope that you read the book & know what is happening. Still the focus switched from a coming of age story to free the slaves & what not. And what is with introducing a bad guy from the next installment to an earlier scene at Jordan collage that masking the turmoil of conciseness at the college?
I do agree that the movie needed to stop short of the cliffhanger end of the book. Let us see what happens when Lyra brings her father what he needs.
On the plus side, the costumes & props were excellent. The CGI did not overwhelm the story. Daemons knew their place. The music matched the scenes & did not overwhelm the dialog. They did a great job of choosing the actors. We can hope they will be around for "The Subtle Knife" (2009)." Nicole Kidman made a perfect Mrs. Coulter & the added scene where she slaps her monkey give hope to becoming more complex character. The voice of Iorek Byrnison (name changed) is Ian McKellen of "The Da Vinci Code" fame.
Well with any luck things may straighten out by the next installment.
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The Blu-ray comes with a bonus disk that has more footage on it than the movie its self. Watching this dark material & re-watching the film may give more insight to the story.
Even worse then the narnia spoof - By: chatfan, 27 Jun 2008 The trailer looked great & I had high hopes for this movie. Especially after seeing stardust. But this is a hopeless childish movie, produced for another braindead generation that thinks over the top means big bucks.
Too bad, they got a good cast, great sets but really poor directing. And it is missing the sense of fun & wit Stardust had so much of. Absolutely no joy to watch.
A quality HD transfer, shame about the movie - By: Vinman666, 18 Jun 2008 The high definition transfer to this Blu-ray disc is excellent: rich saturated colours & awesome levels of detail. Sound quality is equally good & although I don't have the ability to play the uncompressed DTS HD soundtrack the dynamic rangeis apparent evenin standard stereo. In this respect it's one of the best Blu-ray discs I've seen so far.
That was the good news (and reason for the 3 stars); if only the conversion of book to movie had been even remotely as good. The special effects are very good & Lyra's Oxford is well realised; Mrs Coulter is also subtly played by the excellent Nicole Kidman and...unfortunately that's about as far as I can go with compliments.
The strengths of the book(s) are Philip Pullman's expert story-telling, allied to a complex - but accessible - plot & wonderful characters.
Of course condensing everything from the book to a 2 hour film would be impossible but what we are presented with is a series of action sequences linked by ham-fisted exposition. For example, the episode with Billy Costa (who has merged characters with Tony Macarios), once found separated from his Ratter, should emphasise the relationship between human & daemon & build the requisite tension to what is happening at Bolvangar but the opportunity is wasted. Then there is the pointless re-naming of Iofur Raknison to 'Ragnar' (one can just imagine the Focus Group brainstorming a generic scandinavian name: "Ooh I know, how about Ernest Borgnine's namein The Vikings!") & the weakening of Iorek Byrnison (why not rename him too: Erik the Ice Bear, anyone?) by having him (1) expelled from Svalbard as a coward & (2) almost killed & only just saved by Lee Scoresby. Iorek's character is supposed to be the practically indestructible rock that underpins Lyra's (and, later, Will's) resolve for what follows. Those are just 2 examples of many.
The removal of the true ending of the book from the film & the general watering down of the religious undertone sums up what many fans of the book feared would happen: Hollywood has chickened out (again). The bar for intelligent fantasy book transfers to film has been raised by Peter Jackson, & this movie falls woefully short of that level.
The BBC Cover to Cover talking book, read by Philip Pullman with a cast providing the dialogue, is vastly superior to the BBC Radio dramatisation (I've got both) but even the latter is better than the film. If you haven't read the books, I encourage you to do so - the film is passablein a Dark Crystal/Hawk the Slayer action-fantasy genre but the books have so much more depth.
