No Country for Golden Compass Ending Removers for Commercial Appeal Raising Purposes

I woke up Friday morning at 8:30 AM, hit up some class and then left a review session early to bolt out to the first Golden Compass showing of the day. I know the reviews were mediocre, except Roger Ebert’s review, (thumbs up / down dude) which on top of being a 100 / 100 hailed it as the next great fantasy trilogy.

So… I was disappointed, to say the least. I honestly wish the movie was an hour longer, which is a weird thing to say about a movie I was disappointed with. They cut out the climactic ending of the first book and I simply couldn’t understand why. It’s a great ending, an ending that ties up some loose ends while creating new ones leading into a great sequel, an ending that is visually fantastic, an ending that made the rest of the story sit just right, as a great ending should. I racked my brain; maybe they didn’t finish the special effects in time for the release date? No, that’s ridiculous. Even if they had to get a sweat shop of animators hopped up on crack to keep them awake for a month straight, the studio would figure out a way to get it done. What could it be? Thankfully I have someone to blame for my angst. Tonight I glanced over at an Entertainment Weekly that was open to an article about said film. It told a tale of a young director named Chris Weitz who had lost his way. Apparently he was having a mental breakdown during the filming of About a Boy. He decided with his next project he’d go big, so he headed to the North Pole for a spirit journey or some shit and wrote the film adaptation of The Golden Compass by hand because a boat short circuited his laptop when he plugged it in. Touching story and all (a single tear drips down my left cheek as I type), with one tiny problem: You’re script kinda sucked the life out of one of my favorite books of all time. When they originally announced this movie the script was by Tom Stoppard, known to me as the scribe of such films as Shakespeare in Love and Brazil, but known to more cultured folks as a serious big hitter in the literary world. Apparently his script was rejected because it had long wordy chats about philosophy and tangent universes and such, my favorite parts from the book. Good old Chris went on his spirit journey and wrote the simplified version the studio wanted. The worst part is I might have liked his iteration had the ending not been cut, which brings me to the little paragraph in the EW article that peaked my interest. The studio cut the ending because they wanted it to end upbeat instead of on a down note. Instead of having Lord Asriel kill Lyra’s friend and cut into a tangent universe on a mission to kill God in a spectacular of visual effects as the universe rips apart with dust, the movie just ends with Lyra flying away with Roger. God forbid the studio could have any clues that these movies are really about a man’s attempt at killing God and the girl who partakes in original sin when it all goes down. New Line: shame on you. I can only hope the DVD will have the extended edition with some more exposition and the original ending. Please, pretty please.

All that being said, all the animals were great, the special effects were really top notch. The acting jobs were great, including the animals. They all reflected the facial features and motions of their respective humans. And damn, those polar bears can fight. Even after writing this frustrated rant I do want to see it again… whatever that means. Let me know what you guys think, I’m interested.

– Rich

No Country for Golden Compass Bashing Religious Zealots

Hello fair readers. Today for the first time in a long time I’m going to generate some original content for the Trifecta that is not simply just a plug for my movieweb article (which I’ll still be plugging). In fact, let me just get the movieweb article plugging out of the way immediately: My newest edition of Rick’s Rants: Quips on Television’s Finest has just been posted up on the site as of this evening. In it I rant about It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia (my new favorite comedy) and the Futurama movie Bender’s Big Score. Rick’s Rants has officially been upgraded into the Column Section of Movieweb instead of the TV features which will hopefully bring in more readers. As always here’s a link to the article: Rick’s Rants. Hope you all enjoy.

Since I’ve been writing these movieweb articles I haven’t had a chance to write about movies, so now I’ll return to form to discuss two very important ones.

This weekend marks the opening of what has been my most highly anticipated film release all year: The Golden Compass. I’ve been a big fan of the books since my friend Pam highly recommended them to me about a year a half back. I plowed through the trilogy and have since been touting them as some of my favorite books. Ever since the announcement of the first cast members I’ve had high hopes that this trilogy could achieve Lord of the Rings status. Now that the opening is upon us it’s become pretty clear that it’s not going to. In fact, I’d say there’s even a danger that the rest of the trilogy won’t get made despite the big name actors that have attached themselves. Why you ask? It seems that the Catholic community has condemned a movie none of them have seen yet. I’m not really surprised, part of what I liked about the books is the obvious Christian bashing, but apparently the movie does a pretty good job of staying non-partisan. Its all about tolerance people! You don’t see the Atheists of the world out protesting the Passion of the Christ or Jesus Christ Superstar do you? If you’re into Jesus or any of those other fairy tales the Bible has to offer I encourage you not to miss a significantly better fantasy story called the Golden Compass.

I’ve seen countless trailers, the first 5 minutes of the movie and tonight, despite my best efforts, couldn’t help but read some early reviews. The consensus seems to be that it looks great but is confusing to newcomers who aren’t familiar with the books. This of course doesn’t bother me one bit, except that there’s potential that my non-Dark Materials-initiated friends, who I’ll drag to see it with me this weekend, will bitch at me because they didn’t like it. Even more devastating though is that the masses might not like it, and if the masses don’t like it, there won’t be more movies (a single tear drips down my left cheek). All I can do at this point is hope.

The second movie I wanted to talk about is the movie that everyone is talking about: No Country for Old Men. Critics have thrown caution to the wind in praising No Country as the clear front runner for Oscar season and are calling it the best movie of the year. Densen, our guest writer, loved it and thought it was hilarious while Warsh, quite oppositely, thought it was great, but doesn’t deserve all the critical acclaim it’s recieving. It’s been a few weeks since I’ve seen the film and I’m now officially ready to state my opinion on it. I loved it and I think it justly deserves all the critics’ praises. Up until I’d seen No Country I thought that Capitán Vidal from Pan’s Labyrinth was the scariest realistic character ever portrayed on the silver screen. Bardem’s Anton Chigurh certainly takes the prize. Javier Bardem deserves an Oscar for his performance, and something tells me he’s going to get it. There’s been a fair amount of controversy over the ending or the lack there of. When I left the theater I was shaken to the core, maybe more so then ever before from a movie. Obviously No Country was very abrasive and violent, but I think the dominating contributing factor to my core shaken-ness was from the fact that I had very little closure when I walked out. I’m very interested to know what people thought about this movie, so drop a comment if you have time. Danny has promised a new article by the weekend and I’ve been bugging Warsh as often as I can, so please keep checking the Trifecta.

– Rich