Re: The Golden Compass
Posted: 18 Dec 2007 05:12 am
This article makes me sad. I'm glad we didn't get the Tom Stoppard version (although "it remains true to Lyra's impertinent nature and to Asriel's cold-hearted one; it makes vividly clear the charged relationship between a person and her daemon in Pullman's world" sounds good), but I'm extremely disappointed that Weitz's early script wasn't used. It sounds so much better than what we got. Three hours would have been fine by me, too, or even cut down to two and a half. There's no need to keep an epic movie under two hours. Relevant passage (skip if you still haven't seen the movie/read the book):
I want to read the actual script, but that would probably just make me feel worse!Weitz's early draft, though still long — 156 pages and likely three hours of running time — is sharper, funnier, and more streamlined than Stoppard's. It's also more exciting, more coherent, and significantly better than the final product. It vividly and more clearly creates the various world Lyra inhabits: Jordan College, London society, the Gyptians' boats, the ice bears' palace. It includes wonderful scenes left out of the final film: Mrs. Coulter's great London party; the Gyptian spy Jacob's last words, spoken by his daemon; Lyra's meeting with the witch's consul in Trollesund; Lyra's talk with Iorek about loneliness; Lyra's discovery that the nurses at Bolvangar have gone through the intercision process; the ice bears, all so nervous about acting human.