The Republic of Heaven

Australis wrote:The Bad. Obviously, having the film limp to a lame conclusion with a terrible couple of final lines in the balloon... Tony's death and Lyra inscribing a coin for him. Tony's dried fish; a moving moment in the book that could have made it to the screen.

These are two scenes that seemed to suffer from the same attitude - that when the story reached the brink of tragedy a new ending to the scene was hastily pasted over the actual one. So, where in the book the Tony Makarios episode comes to a close with a very touching ending in keeping with the tone of the episode, one which says a lot about Lyra's character growth and ratchets up the stakes in preparation for Lyra's own trip to Bolvangar. In the film, most of the episode is played in keeping with the book (if not brilliant it is at least workmanlike and communicates a little of the fear and sadness present in the book). But the film shies away from following this story to its conclusion and shoehorn in hope and redemption that doesn't belong there when at least the little boy is reunited with his mother, who promises everything will be all right (and how is a movie-goer to know any better than to believe that Billy might find Ratter again?).

The same aversion to tragic conclusions is of course shown on a wider scale (it might be a test audience's reaction that cause that Little Cut but I imagine it was already a contentious issue for the makers). While the film has matched the books build towards a grand climax the film suddenly pulls back on the brink of paying it off and replaces it with the terrible, uplifting closing lines we all know so well.


I was thinking about Atonement earlier and wistfully imagining Joe wright as director of Northern Lights: THERE'S a director who can adapt book to screen. Atonement is a very literary book - a book about literature - and he manages to match its every bookish trick with a cinematic one to create a version of the story which is not a pale shadow of something written down, but strong in its own right. There's a director with imagination.

I think if there's one way of summing up all the many faults I find with TGC it would be that: it lacked any imagination. It lacked the imagination to see beyond the ephemera of the book, or the imagination to see how all the elements were linked together as a grand whole, or to understand the layers beneath the surface of concepts like daemons. Fantastical inventions like armoured bears felt awkward under Weitz's unimaginative interpretation.

You can see my wishlist here: http://www.bridgetothestars.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=206183&start=40

I think that all the footage has been made, it just needs to be edited and put in there at the right places and we'll have a movie that most will be happy with...

I'm curious. Would most of you people complaining about the movie say that the biggest flaw was that the editing was shoddy and the missing ending?
Because then a extended edition might answer your prayers.

I'm still for a Subtle Knife adaptation. I believe Weitz will do the next to with more justice (especially since New Line isn't REALLY part of the project anymore, so he'll have more freedom).
While I don't think Weitz is completely at fault, he is to blame for some of it. To be redeemed he should create a perfect Director's Cut and make the next two with gusto and the way HE WANTS to do it... he seems to have the right vision, he just needs to get a strong arm and execute and not worry about toning down the violence or religious overtones.

While obviously Lord of the Rings were better films... I'll give the studio the fact that this is a much harder film to make, and I think they handled it decently. If not for the sloppy edits, I'd say they did excellently. Oh well, we'll have to wait for the extended cut that WILL come.

I'm curious. Would most of you people complaining about the movie say that the biggest flaw was that the editing was shoddy and the missing ending?
Because then a extended edition might answer your prayers.

Well, the whole point of this thread is to discuss what people thought was wrong BEYOND the generally accepted editing problems, and if you read the previous posts you'll see that those are far from the only problems some people have with the film.

As for whether it's the biggest problem... it's hard to say. Everyone seems to have a great deal of faith in Weitz that the film he intended was really good, but we have no evidence that the film, pre-hack-job, was significantly better than the one we saw.

The film would have been inevitably better for having the intended ending, but it's a great leap of faith to assume that all the missing footage is great stuff. I personally have enough problems with Weitz's direction to have some doubts that even a director's cut would be very good.

Kyrillion wrote:The film would have been inevitably better for having the intended ending, but it's a great leap of faith to assume that all the missing footage is great stuff. I personally have enough problems with Weitz's direction to have some doubts that even a director's cut would be very good.

Fair enough.

Pagdzin tulku wrote:The bear had his jaw torn off without a single drop of blood? Wow, that's clever.

I thought there were a few showers of blood there...

Northen_Lights wrote:

Pagdzin tulku wrote:The bear had his jaw torn off without a single drop of blood? Wow, that's clever.

I thought there were a few showers of blood there...

There were... maybe this guy is thinking of the trailer. It was a pretty gory knock-off

Oh, right. I haven't seen many of the trailers...

Well at least I THINK that's what he must be thinking of... because there were definently some sprays of blood.

I do agree the film needed a little more blood and grit. The violence was definently there, it just lacked blood... if you think about it, it was a very violent film.

In response to all the blood complaints: if they had shown any blood, the film would have automatically received an R rating in the USA. This would have caused serious problems for their target audience, since it was mostly marketed as a family film. The bear fight did seem violent, but if you watch it again you'll see there wasn't any blood and that was so it could remain classified as only fantasy violence which can have a PG-13 rating.

but what was with lord of the rings? There were blood and it was PG-13.

My mistake, I was thinking of flying or spurting blood that gets an instant R rating, according to DutchCrunch (who makes commercial movies) in this thread that discusses violence and the film's rating.

krebbe wrote:My mistake, I was thinking of flying or spurting blood that gets an instant R rating.

Wrong again... unless flying heads don't count. (Again, Lord of the Rings: ROTK)

I know there was a little flying blood in the scene, but not enough to make it rated 'R'. Personally, I'm just thankful they actually showed the jaw ripping off, (very unconventional for a PG-13 film no matter how much blood was shown.)

Flying heads with blood on them don't count, it's the kind of spurting blood seen in Braveheart, Gladiator or the 300 which gets an automatic R rating. I'm not even sure if the black orc blood would have been looked at that strictly, as it looks more like the stuff that comes from squashing insects than killing people. I don't recall seeing red blood spurting in Lord of The Rings.

krebbe wrote:Flying heads with blood on them don't count, it's the kind of spurting blood seen in Braveheart, Gladiator or the 300 which gets an automatic R rating. I'm not even sure if the black orc blood would have been looked at that strictly, as it looks more like the stuff that comes from squashing insects than killing people. I don't recall seeing red blood spurting in Lord of The Rings.

I think you're correct with that assessment... but LOTR was pushing a PG-13 rating anyway. Obviously Golden Compass could have used a little more blood and grit, but I can also forgive the fact that any blood that could be to have would have been miniscule in real life as well considering they were bundled up under layers of clothing up in the North where all the fighting took place...