He did knock Ioreks FUCKING JAW STRAIGHT OFF. I felt that was a fair compromise for the PG audience.
Still, I was left kinda dissapointed by this film. I mean, lets be honest here, there is one reason, and one reason only, that we are being bombarded with endless fantasy flicks at the moment: The Lord of the Rings. Given this, I am repeatedly astounded that none of the films most closely comparable to it (Eragon, The Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe, this) have absorbed any lessons from it whatsoever. Though I would say this was a better outing than either of the other two I've mentioned (lets face it, it would not be hard to be better than Eragon), it still suffers from the problems of being flat, lifeless and plasticky, in my view, for the following reasons:
1: Too much fucking CGI. The main reason the special effects on LOTR are so good is that they used as little CGI as they possibly could. So many things in the Golden Compass could have been models and looked ten times better. Was there even any location shooting AT ALL? I don't want to see a CGI polar bear wearing CGI armour carrying a CGI girl across a CGI snowfield, fuck it. Go find a real fucking snowfield, stick a stuntwoman on a horse in a blue suit, then take your shot. Then you just about have my permission to digitally erase the horse and whack in a polar bear. I'm not an unreasonable man.
2: Inconsistent and shallow art direction. The whole look of the thing was far too cobbled together. The design of the technology, clothes and whatever was all inconsistent. It also went far, far away from the book. What the fuck where those whirring blue things on all the vehicles? The books make it pretty clear that technology in Lyras world is roughly stalled somewhere in 1930, with a few anachronisms (basic atomic power, for example) and obvious fantasy elements. I suspect someone somewhere got a bit carried away with Pullmans slightly changed vocabulary (anabaric power, atomcraft, etc.) Nowhere does it mention spinning blue plasma globe power systems and hologram projectors. Lyra is supposed to be amazed when she visits our world in The Subtle Knife. I would not be fucking amazed at anything in our world if I lived somewhere with shit like that. Also it makes the anachronisms almost unbearable. You're telling me these people can invent plasma powered fucking airships, but they can't figure out how to make an automatic rifle? The design elements are even worse. The clothes worn by the Magisterium officials and the scientists at Bolvangar, for example, bear almost no relationship to those worn by, say, the people at Mrs. Coulters party.
3: Paint by numbers music. Whoever composed the music for this film, I bet he does like, one soundtrack a week, and he's probably very bored by it. Not only was it unremarkable (I can't remember a fucking note), but it also seemed poorly thought out and not at all related to the film, conceptually.
In short, not engaging or deep or well thought out enough by a long shot. Still, entertaining, and the battle at the end was fab. I hope they make the sequels, just because I really, really want to see the battle between the Clouded Mountain and Lord Asriels fortress committed to screen. Although I also kind of don't, because I'm sure it would spoil my Milton meets World War One on acid vision of the whole thing.
