Hello my Beautiful Watchers, seeing as I was so slow in fulfilling my Patreon sponsored
request to compare the dumpster fire that was The Golden Compass film adaptation to
the book it was based on the powers that be time to make a whole other adaptation of it,
I figured perhaps I should have a look at that as well to make up for it so let's return
to the wonderful world of daemons, dust, sapient polar bears and a lot of child murder.
So much child murder…
I covered most of the book’s backstory in said video, but here's a quick reminder of
the relevant information.
His Dark Materials, a trilogy comprising of The Northern Lights, the Subtle Knife, and
The Amber Spyglass was published throughout the late 90s and was the work of British author
Phillip Pullman.
The first book’s name was changed to The Golden Compass during publication in America
due to the locals getting excessively attached to the working title.
They’ve received some pushback over the years from religious groups who believed the
evil theocracy that rules the alternative earth the story is set in was a massive subtweet
about the Catholic church.
In 2007, The Golden Compass was adapted into a film that it's generally agreed upon fell
pretty far from the mark of doing justice to the source material.
Fortunately, a few years later Pullman re-acquired the rights to his story and as he’s by all
accounts a pretty chill dude about letting people buy them, another attempt at bringing
his most popular works to screen became pretty much inevitable.
The BBC One rose to the call this time around, commissioning a three series TV show to cover
each of the books.
While the exact amount hasn’t been confirmed, this was reportedly the most expensive undertaking
in the studio’s history, taking a full four years to complete and premiere in 2019.
HBO was brought on board to handle American distribution.
As was mentioned in my last episode about Good Omens, this time period saw every executive
and their mothers scrambling to find the next big thing to fill the vacuum left behind by
the end of Game of Thrones.
Part of the extreme cost came from their commitment to show CGI daemons in as many shots as possible,
I assume out of a desire to avoid the criticism that thrones received for leaving out the
Direwolves as much as possible.
Phillip Pullman himself was brought on as an executive producer and was apparently kept
very much involved in the writing process, always a good sign.
A gentleman by the name of Jack Thorne took on the role of showrunner.
He began his career in the UK writing for original TV shows like Shameless and Skins
and had past experience working on semi adaptations like Enola Holmes, however, his most widely
known recent work was on the stage as he converted a story by transphobic author JK Rowling into
the script for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.
Believe it or not, Tom Hooper, the architect behind the Great Cats Tragedy of 2019 cajoled
his way into directing the first two episodes, apparently simply because he was a big fan
of the books and wanted to be a part of the adaptation.
Thankfully he was succeeded by a string of directors with less obvious black marks against
their names.
As is evidently the way of post-thrones shows, an attempt was made to force their way into
our hearts and minds utilizing sheer star power.
Dafne Keen of Logan fame was cast as Lyra with James MacAvoy and Ruth Wilson filling
the roles of her terrible parents, Lord Asriel and Mrs. Coulter.
In a surprise move, Lin-Manuel Miranda was cast to play Lee Scoresby, the Texan aëronaut.
Now I’m not complaining as I don’t think it's possible to dislike the guy, it's just
a bit of a trip to think that he and Sam Elliot have now played the same person.
My personal theory is this was because Tom Hooper was planning a coup that would allow
him to take over the show by force and turn the series into a musical, but was foiled
before he could enact it…
But a more likely reason is Lin was just hot shit at the time.
I’m starting to feel bad about complaining about child actors all the time so I’m just
gonna say Dafne Keen was better than the actress in the movie.
I was impressed with the soundtrack that, as usual, I can’t play any of on youtube.
It was composed by Lorne Balfe whose resume boasts the Call of Duty series, two Assassin’s
Creed installments and Netflix’s The Crown.
I also liked the show’s commitment to visual storytelling.
Why have someone exposition about the Magisterium’s insane levels of power when you can casually
pan around to show that their average church is the size of a small city?
Before going any further I’d like to remind all present that my reviews are by their nature
not possible to keep spoiler-free so if you’ve not experienced this story for yourself and
would like to sans pre-knowledge of all it’s plot twists, now is the time to excuse yourself.
And if you happen to be in need of a place to find it, good news!
It’s available on Audible!
And it's really good, it's a full cast of actors voicing all the different characters.
Over a dozen people working together to make it more immersive.
It is just one in thousands upon thousands of titles available in Audible’s unrivaled
online archives that could be at your fingertips.
With membership, you’ll receive a credit every month that can be used to purchase ANY
audiobook regardless of price.
The credits don't expire and anything you gain with them will remain yours permanently
regardless of what the future holds.
Membership also grants you access to the plus catalog which is entertainment you get for
free, you don’t even need to use a credit, you just get gifted a huge range of original
entertainment, guided fitness and meditation, sleep tracks for better rest and podcasts.
Audiobooks have really been a game-changer for me personally as I work my way through
so many novels each month but I am also obliged to do other things by the cruel fates of life,
like “driving”, “exercising” and “housework”.
Audible has allowed me to combine these things into a much more bearable union.
You can start listening right now with a free 30-day trial by going to audible.com/noble
or texting noble to 500 500.
That's right, I finally changed it from “The Dom”.
Only a year or two after I stopped using the name.
As the film had been made in the wake of The Lord of the Rings and clearly wanted to be
it so badly it sacrificed elements of the book, and the series was being made in the
wake of Game of Thrones, my concern was that history would repeat itself but thankfully
that didn’t happen too much.
To be fair the book was already pretty dark and involved plenty of scheming political
machinations so if anything Thrones just paved the way for His Dark Materials to have a free
hand to be more loyal to the book.
And I do want to stress this, plot-wise it follows the events of the book very, very
closely and unlike its predecessor does so in the correct order.
There were some minor changes, for example, poor Billy Costa was once again subjected
to the dark fate intended for Tony Makarios only this time the emotional weight of it
wasn’t squandered.
Despite seeming like the best possible time to be wearing it, and it being the defining
feature of their species, for some reason Iorek and Iofur take off their armor before
fighting to the death.
The complicated truce that the Magisterium maintains with powerful industries of education
is never directly spelt out in the book and becomes apparent through people's actions
over the course of the story.
The show however gives it a name: “Scholastic Sanctuary” and it's brought up at least
once per episode to drive the point home.
But as I said, these things are pretty minor and overall plot-wise it's almost word for
word page to screen.
Thorne seems to be something of a book fanatic's dream, at least in his attitude towards the
job.
“I mean, the most important thing is being loyal to the books, and trying to tell those
books as well as we possibly can,”
“The advantage of television is we can slow down.
In the film and on stage they had so much plot to get through, so much plot to churn
through, whereas we’ve got the luxury of having time to get to know Lyra, and spend
time in her world.”
So as a result we get pretty comprehensive coverage of Lyra’s adventure.
If you’ve not read the book or seen the show some of this might not make sense to
you out of context but watching my Lost In Adaptation about the film can bring you up
to speed if you so desire it.
Her early life in the college at Oxford with her exasperated teachers and close friendship
with Roger the kitchen boy.
Her foiling of the Master’s attempt to poison her Uncle Asriel (who she later learns is
actually her father) and learning about Dust and the effect it has on adults.
Roger and a bunch of other children getting abducted by a group dubbed the gobblers.
Being given a rare magical device called an alethiometer before getting taken into the
care of a woman named Mrs. Coulter who turns out to be an abusive control freak and the
leader of the gobblers.
Running off and getting briefly kidnapped before being rescued by the Gyptians then
starting a quest with them to rescue the lost children and hiring Lee Scoresby and helping
Iorek Byrnison recover his armor so they can help with this too.
Traveling to the north and finding that poor kid with his daemon cut away from him, then
getting separated from the group and taken to the lab where she nearly suffers the same
fate save for the intervention of Mrs. Coulter, who it turns out is her mother.
After the lab is destroyed by the Gyptians she and a small group head to Svalbard, the
land of the armored bears to rescue her father being held prisoner there.
Lyra gets captured again until Iorek turns up to reclaim his rightful place as king of
the armored bears and kills his usurper.
The battle between the bears and the Magisterium, though sans the witch army, and this time
around we get the depressing ending in which Lyra’s awful father Asriel murders her friend
Roger in order to open a bridge to a parallel universe.
Best of all, this adaptation actually understood the assignment regarding the Alethiometer
and how it's 100% not and never was referred to as a Golden Compass.
So yeah, any significant differences to the novel aren’t due to things being changed
or left out, but rather quite a few things were added that are kind of in a gray area
adaptation-wise because while they didn’t feature directly in the book they could well
have been happening in the universe outside of the POV characters’ awareness.
Everybody gets their own sub-arc in this: Mrs. Coulter, The Gyptians, the Magisterium,
everyone.
Even Lee Scoresby, the aëronaut along for a paycheck, is now on his own little quest
to repay a life debt to Iorek Byrnison.
The runtime is bolstered yet more by their borrowing of characters and events from The
Subtle Knife, the next book in the series.
While the idea of other worlds existing parallel to Lyra’s is established right away, you
don’t get any indication that our Earth in particular exists in the Dark Materials
multiverse until book 2 but in the series right from episode 2 you see Lord Boreal,
a character barely mentioned in The Northern Lights bouncing back and forth between universes
and investigating Will Parry, one of the lead characters from The Subtle Knife.
We also get to see a bit more of Will’s life before he started his adventure, dealing
with school life and caring for his mother's mental illness.
We then get a look at his accidental killing of an agent sent to search his house and his
embarkation on his quest to another world.
Now you might have noticed that I was specifically praising the accuracy of the plot and not
necessarily the characters.
Now this is because in my humble opinion they are ALL to the last man, child and armored
bear: subtly not quite how they were in the novel.
With Lyra for example, they toned down her childish adoration for her father and her
mother before she exposed her darker side to her.
FYI I don’t mean that as an insult she IS a child.
She still clearly wants to go on adventures with Lord Asriel but she’s not so obviously
desperate for his approval like she was in the book so his constant betrayals of her
feel less crushing, and her telling him where to shove it at the end is less satisfying.
They’re all kind of like this, you know.
Asriel is a bit friendlier, Ma Costa is imbued with more directionless anger about her situation,
Mrs. Coulter is a lot more emotionally vulnerable or you know just openly a rage machine, Lee
Scoresby is now a rogue and a pickpocket and they don’t portray Boreal’s sexual attraction
to Lyra.
The list goes on.
So all in all I think the best way I can describe this show is it's the same, if expanded story,
but not quite the same characters.
In general, people seem to be fairly positive towards it, but you won’t find many die-hard
fans and I kind of agree it's good but… there’s just- there’s something missing
here to make it really engaging and it's really hard to put my finger on exactly what.
It might be the pacing, I mean that would be ironic considering the way the film rushed
things was a huge issue but with eight one-hour-long episodes to a single book, even with the parts
they borrowed from the Subtle Knife, it sometimes feels like maybe the show had just a little
too much time to work with and was dragging things out to fill the run time.
I still think it's a close enough adaptation to restore cosmic balance after the awful
film adaptation though so huzzah for that.
Looking to the future, apparently, season two suffered a bit due to the Covid 19 pandemic,
requiring an entire planned episode to be cut and season three is currently on hiatus.
Because I am a sweet sensitive boy, reading these books and their excessive amount of
children suffering horrible fates taxes my nerves somewhat so if you’d like me to cover
these other seasons at some point you’re going to have to convince me to in the comments.
Be compelling and flattering.
Thank you for joining me, my beautiful watchers.
Don’t forget that the dreaded Youtube algorithm is a deadly beast hungry for the flesh of
any channels that fail to get enough likes, shares, comments, and new subscribers so any
of those things you want to throw my way would be deeply appreciated.
Check out my patreon page for episodes I can’t show on youtube anymore like Howl’s Moving
Castle and A Series of Unfortunate Events.
Take care of yourselves out there and I hope to see you next time.