His Dark Materials stills up

[prog]

colorwheel notes that some publicity stills of The Golden Compass are available. Either they are rushing to public with them, before letting their FX people drop some daemons into the shots, or the film treatment is mangling how the daemons are supposed to work. ("You can only see them when they want to be seen" or some shit.) Look here I'm already being a HOW DARE YOU CHANGE ANYTHING fanboy but for christ I'd think this particular point pretty damn important, wouldn't you?

I hope the films are so good that I'll be bawlin my eyes out at the very last scene of the last film. Which is, now that I think of it, maybe one of my favorite ending-endings I've ever read.

Also if I randomly punch you in the face sometime it's because I used my Bene Gesserit training to foresee that at some point in the future you'd say "The name's Asriel. Lord Asriel. Hurr hurr hurr. Because it's James Bond get it?"

Comments

my best line from the 80s

[jtroutman.livejournal.com]

Bene Gesserit, eh? who do you think are? the cuisinart hat rack?

[aspartaimee.livejournal.com]

i know a lot of people are stoked, but i have to say i don't get His Dark Materials. i read the first and half of the second.

come to think of it, i didn't read all the dunes either.

[taskboy3000.livejournal.com]

I second this opinion about both Dark Materials (read the Golden Compass), and Dune (the first and second ones were compelling reads, the others trash).

What am I missing about the Dark Materials saga? I should also point out that the Harry Potter saga fails to capture my imagination.

Am I just getting to old for fantasy?

[ruthling.livejournal.com]

Thirded. Thought Golden Compass was ok, the other two boring and infuriating by turns.

Don't remember how much Dune I read. Too much, no doubt.

I don't think it's an age thing, but I'm not sure what it is, as I have friends on both sides of this issue. (then again, I have friends who liked AI)

[jtroutman.livejournal.com]

Mmmh. AI was an interesting movie. Flawed in many ways, but it does a very good job of wedging into your brain, and I found myself thinking about the various plot twists and statements on humanity long after I had watched it. I recall that after watching the movie, I had to immediately watch something else because I didn't want that to last thing I had seen before dreaming that night.

There is so much fiction of all genres out there now, and most of it is just dreck. I just don't have the time to wade through all of the crap fantasy and sci-fi out there like I did when I was a teenager (I used to read 5-10 books per week). I do enjoy the good ones, when I get enough pointers from other people to know they are worth the effort.

[radtea.livejournal.com]

I never got through the first chapter of Dune, and felt HDM was not quite there. I've enjoyed the Harry Potter books. For what it's worth my kids (ages 12 and 14, and big fantasy fans) weren't too keen on HDM either.

Personally, I have long had a rule that I don't read books with pronouns in the title--it's just way too cheap a narrative hook. I forgave Pullman that because it's a quote from Milton and all, and lots of people raved about the books. But they just lacked something, and I've never been able to figure out what it is. One aspect may be the relative lack of humour. Maybe I'm just superficial, but stories that take themselves too seriously, even ones about the end of the multiverse, don't grab me much.

All of which is too bad, because I think Pullman's crypto-gnostic theology is pretty cool.

[toonhead-npl.livejournal.com]

I heard the daemons are going to have organic web shooters. L A M E

[modpixie.livejournal.com]

as much as i love his dark materials and would thrill at a good movie version, i have my doubts that chris weitz would be able to pull this off. one of the things that really struck me about the HDM books was how well pullman dealt with class, and, well...i have this fear that weitz (who really doesn't do class well) would cast mike white and tim blake nelson as the gyptians. plus, he's not a very interesting director visually.

[radiotelescope.livejournal.com]

See, I have very specific opinions about Pullman's writing. I thought _The Golden Compass_ was the first book of a really brilliant and insightful fantasy trilogy, but then Pullman wasn't able to write that trilogy and came out with _The Subtle Knife_ and _The Amber Spyglass_ instead. I'd say you should stop with _TGC_, but I can't even go that far; once Pullman spun out, it became obvious that he never had any idea where he was going, and was just throwing random implications around.

So my big hope for the movie is that someone -- and I really don't care whether it's Pullman -- is able to come up with a completely new ending. Ideally, one synthesized from the elements of _TGC_.

[prog.livejournal.com]

I like this. I enjoyed the whole trilogy but I definitely loved the first book far more than the latter two.

Yes, I actually wasn't all that impressed by the larger resolution of the story, as much as I really liked the bittersweet final scene.