The Golden Compass

The Golden Compass is the first book in Philip Pullman's trilogy "His Dark Materials".
Over a decade after its first publication its finally made into a movie. The Golden Compass has a great cast, and it does a good job of following the source material, but it also has has a few flaws.

Pros: The best thing about The Golden Compass is its cast, because the actors fit their characters perfectly. For example, Nicole Kidman does a fantastic job of portraying the wicked Mrs. Coulter. Ian McKellen provides the perfect voice for the armored bear Iorek Byrnison. The role of air ship pilot Lee Scoresby is played persuasively by Sam Elliot.
I could go on, but I feel that it's time to mention the movie's other strength: the plot twists.

One of the biggest plot twists occurs when Mrs. Coulter tells Lyra that her uncle Lord Asriel is really her father, and that she is her mother. Its hard to believe that Asriel and Mrs. Coulter were married. The other twist occurs when Lyra finds out that her mother is the leader of a organization called the Gobblers. The Gobblers job is to assist the Magisterium in its attempt to separate children from their daemons before they can learn about dust.

The dust mentioned in the book is not the type that you find in your house, its cosmic dust. Lord Aserial believes that this dust can open portals to other worlds, but he needs to go north in order to do more research. Lyra wants to go north as well, so she decides to travel with Mrs. Coulter in her zeppelin. Its at that point when the special effects start to get in the way of the plot and characters.

Cons: The heavy use of special effects is one of the movies major flaws. They draw the viewer's attention from the most important aspects of any movie, which are the plot and characters. While the characters are one of the movie's strong points, the plot sadly is not.

The movie rushes from one place to the next so fast that its hard to keep up. As a result the plot becomes disjointed, and the characters don't become a developed as they should be.

Final Verdict: The Golden Compass isn't a bad movie, but it could have been better. Hopefully the next movie will be longer and won't rely as much on special effects.

Despite all the twists and turns in the beginning the plot of The Golden Compass becomes predicable towards the end. Which is sad considering how well the movie stuck to the events in the book.


Scores (Out of ten):
Story: 6.0
Acting: 8.0
Direction: 7.0
Visuals: 6.0


Final Score (Out of 10): 6.8

How the rating system works:
9-10.0=A
7-8.9= B
5-6.9= C
3-4.9= D
0-2.9= F

This year so far
Scores out of 10
Ghost Rider 4
300 8
TMNT 7
Fracture 5
28 Weeks Later 4
Shrek the Third 7
Ocean's Thirteen 8
Live Free or Die Hard 8
Transformers 8
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix 8
The Simpsons Movie 9
The Bourne Ultimatum 9
American Gangster 9
Hitman 3