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Originally Posted by Lal1 --Lalwende
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Originally Posted by davem
I've already heard of HDM being removed from some school libraries - can we expect a boycott of the next book?
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Not in the UK. In fact the head of the church recommends that all schoolchildren read it!
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I assume you are referring to the head of the Anglican Communion. It is the official state church/religion, but I do believe you have a few other sects over there which he cannot in all fairness speak for.
Sadly, Pullman has just recently been pulled from high school libraries in one local catholic school board here--despite the recommendation from the library committee that it not be banned!
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Originally Posted by Lal2--Lalaith
There was very little in the way of extended dialogue, for example, just look at rushed exposition compared to the leisurely and quite challenging intro to FotR.
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You know, I was wondering about the balance of Pullman's three books and how there's so much explanation of the entire concept in the first book and whether that could profitably be extended to the latter two movies.
Perhaps, just perhaps, this is a case where it would have been preferrable for the film makers not to observe the independence of the three books, but to be more leisurely at explaining it all and integrate the three. After all, PJ moved Boromir's death and that hasn't drawn nearly the outcries that some of his other 'creative rewritings' have. The GC writers could have introduced Will and his universe a bit, even Mary and hers in explication of dust and alternate universes, spent some time depicting just what this heresy of Asrael's was all about--make us feel just how revolutionary and upsetting this idea would be for Lyra's world. And why the native northern cultures were so dead set against these intruders but accepted the Intercessionists. Does it need some other narrator's eyes than Lyra's?
I did like the way dust was represented both when a character was killed and when Lyra used the Compass. Of course, visually the movie is finely done, very finely done. To one who has seen Oxford even briefly, the alternate version of its towers and buildings was most intriguing.
I wished there was more to Lyra's childhood with the Gyptians as there is quite enough proof there about the existence of 'Others' even within Lyra's world, although I suppose that single early scene with the children battling establishes her character. And I so much enjoyed the book's descriptions of the Gyptian ship as she sailed down the Thames and hid out. There's a love of a grand river there that was completely eclipsed by the movie. And Mrs. Coulter's party is such a grand way to express the nasty business of this world and that was missed too.
Of course, right now I have no idea just where the first movie should have ended, if all this was to be incorporated. Still, it is possible that the complexity of the ideas could have been given more justice if they had been spread out more between three movies and not crammed into one. However, I must add that those here who've seen the movie but not read the book thoroughly enjoyed the movie and its pacing.
But it doesn't begin with a sweet and beguiling Shire so there isn't that to draw the audience in.