Monday, July 03, 2006
His Dark Materials Turn Green
The Guardian has reported that The first film of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials Trilogy of children's books, to be called The Golden Compass instead of The Northern Lights, has finally been greenlighted by New Line. This follows several years of entertaining development hell where director Chris Weitz was on then off then on again and arguments were raged over the toning down of the anti-Christian aspects of the books. Now it's all go for a Fall 2007 release with Weitz on board and a budget of around $150m.
The books were certainly very entertaining reads, though I must admit I remember very little of the plots of these books now. They did rely on a lot of talking and a lot of oppressive atmosphere, both of which tend to make the move to the screen rather badly. We will have to wait and see how many unnecessary action scenes they add to pep all that boring character stuff up.
The film is sure to be a handsome and tasteful piece of big budget fun, but then so was the first Chronicles of Narnia and I really found myself hating that movie by the end of it. Lunatic religious groups aside, the film kept its Christian leanings mostly absent from its text. However, every film has subtext whether the studios like it or not, so if the film-makers disgregard it, it becomes loose, wild and open to unexpected interpretations. Narnia is a story with Christian DNA, so the religious side was going to show up whatever happened, but it is not this by itself that annoyed me - only that, by upping the military aspects of the film (ie. emphasising the big battle for the finale), meant that it was a particularly harsh, blood-and-thunder form of Christianity that came through. The kids became only heroes when they were given weapons. By Father Christmas, of all people. Equally, Edward - the Judas character - was the only child I identified with. He was curious, free-thinking and open in his emotions, yet he was utterly vilified in favour of his dull, do-as-you're-told cretin of a brother.
All of that means we shouldn't worry about the playing down of the anti-Christian subtexts of Philip Pullman's work. It is in the DNA of the story, and will come out if you are looking for it. The problem will be that, removed of its meaning, a lot of the business with 'Dust' (the mystical substance that makes all life possible) will become incredibly dull, expositiony nonsense - especially as one of the main characters spends most of the third book doing research on it.
Another problem is that Lord of the Rings has already done the anti-Christian thing much better. Tolkein made sure no characters prayed to deities and that salvation always came from people staying loyal to their friends and finding the strength within themselves to carry on.
If all of this is rendered irrelevant by the sight of armoured polar bears beating the shit out of each other at the North Pole, we shall find out next Christmas.
Source: The Guardian
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If it had gone through a proper development process, it'd be ALL about the polar battle bears. They keep trying to leave that true-to-the-book shit in.