The Republic of Heaven

It seems no one noticed it, but Chris Weitz revealed something at Comic Con which was obvious, ok, but not official until now.

“The last film that I made was recut by the studio, and my experience with it ended being quite a terrible one.”

and Weitz adds, about his new movie (Twilight: New Moon):

"I now remember how much fun it can be to make a film"

Some links:
http://www.cinemablend.com/new/Comic-Co ... 14059.html
http://www.ropeofsilicon.com/article/co ... with-video


Well... At last we now "officialy" know it was not his full and personnal decision to recut movie and give up the amazing finale it deserved. The movie we saw is not Weitz's, but the one the studio recut to (try to) please a larger audience - which happened to be a mistake...

I always had the feeling that Weitz was someone who trully believed in this movie and wanted to do something good. I don't know if the movie he wanted was indeed great, but I'm at least sure it was better that the one we saw. If Weitz' vision of the movie corresponds to the 27-minutes 'pre-production' movie, it would have been really huge.

When buying the DVD, I noticed something leading me to think Weitz was frustrated. I explain what I mean : looking at the movie trailer, Fra Pavel comes and see the Head of Magisterium and, entering the room, he bows, over the logo of the Magisterium, where a few Latine words appeared (meaning something like "a Church above all other"). In the movie, only the logo remains and in the comments, Weitz says something like "Here, we deleted some inscription", followed by a meaningful silence...

(Edit for having a more explicit title)

those are some harsh words
lets hope someone else thinks they can remake it better,

i just want new line to sell those rights or make a sequal!

reflective wrote:those are some harsh words
lets hope someone else thinks they can remake it better,

i just want new line to sell those rights or make a sequal!

I hope that New Line will put out a recut version, ending and all.
Then SOMEONE will pick it up, and reboot the series. Although it will be hard to see anyone but Dakota play Lyra...

Agreed. I can't see anyone but Dakota able to fill that role either. But I must admit on bein torn on who Will should be.......

I don't think that such commentaries help to bring a recut on dvd.

Michael555 wrote:

reflective wrote:those are some harsh words
lets hope someone else thinks they can remake it better,

i just want new line to sell those rights or make a sequal!

I hope that New Line will put out a recut version, ending and all.
Then SOMEONE will pick it up, and reboot the series. Although it will be hard to see anyone but Dakota play Lyra...

I dont care how old Dakota will be..
i really want her to play Lyra again.. no one else would be good enough for that role.

beee.

I know. She just WAS Lyra.

Dakota was brillant. But no matter the huge pleasure I had to see her in this role, she's not the only child in this world. I'm sure there are other fantastic little girl for that role. Those girl will simply be another Lyra (if we ever have another movie, of course...)


Anyway. Weitz seems decided to speak.
Time :

(...) And it was a pleasure to be able to deliver faithfully on a book. With Golden Compass I felt that by being faithful to the book I was working at odds with the studio. But Summit understands that it's Stephenie Meyer's world, and really it's about recreating the experience the reader has, in some kind of faithful manner. Creating a picture that doesn't violate too badly the picture they have in their minds.

Was there technical stuff that you learned on Golden Compass that was useful here?

There was, yeah. It was really CGI boot camp. That was over 2000 special effects, and each one went through 200 or more iterations of, you know, what the talking ferret was doing at that point. Now to do werewolves and so forth is frankly no biggie. I mean, you still have to get things right, and take care of the process, but the bizarre things that you do -- like, now we're going to go check the DPX files, and oh, we're going to have a CineSync with Tippett, cause they just uploaded the files to the FTP server -- that kind of stuff is now, yeah, OK, we're going to do that. Whereas the first time around I was like, what? We're doing what? What are you talking about?

The effects really did look good in Golden Compass.

That is the most successful element of it, I think. The effects were beautiful and elegant. I'm really keen on settling down the special effects into the world around them, rather than trying to blow anyone away. That's something I'm a stickler about.

Haku wrote:Dakota was brillant. But no matter the huge pleasure I had to see her in this role, she's not the only child in this world. I'm sure there are other fantastic little girl for that role. Those girl will simply be another Lyra (if we ever have another movie, of course...)

agreed. while the film was blessed with a very strong cast, it's clear that this particular film franchise was not meant to be. if we all agree that HDM is an enduring story, i'm sure there will be other sorts of film adaptations in the future, just as we see the play restaged by different theatre companies.

also, thanks for posting all this stuff for us haku!

Ah, he told me (via the internet) many months ago that he would have some strong words for the studio when the dust (no pun intended) settled. I'm glad he has had the chance to air his feelings to a degree. Best of luck to him.

Q: How is this compared to The Golden Compass just as a development process?

Chris: It’s been an easier process. Let me see how am I going to put this? I found a lot less interference from Summit in terms of…and a lot more understanding the books than A-Line had of Golden Compass. So I think there’s a studio that understands the importance of the books…the studio…the members of which who have read the books and appreciate them and do not just see them as engines of possible profit. So that makes a tremendous difference. It really does.

http://www.twilightlexicon.com/2009/09/ ... w-part-ii/

A-Line instead of New Line. Nice buddy.

Nice one Chris!

Wish chris or debre forte got twitter and we could pester them on there! lol. I think he'd be happy to allow the movie to be what it was supposed to be!

its very easy for mr. weitz talk about it in this terms and way when almost two years already gone. I think he is responsable for the decision of the recut too, not just New Line - that yes, was the most responsable dor the decision, of course, thee was a LOT of money in the history. Its very foolish and naive this interview from Weitz putting the two movies almost in the same level. This meanless novels is obvious more easy to adaptad, and he is directing a sequel that was sucefull, so, is easier to make another box office hit. Summit is not differente from other studios; they are not more "cool" or faithfull with material of the book; the point is the material is so more differente from his dark materials, and the money, one cost almost 200 milions, and the other one so less thant that; this type of comment just can be made from a silly director, for sure.

Umm, can anyone tell me what 'recut' means? I understand it must be bad...

Philharmonic wrote:Umm, can anyone tell me what 'recut' means? I understand it must be bad...

It means they took the film and moved all the scenes about - after it was filmed...
so it was re edited. Or re-cut. Examples being the ending was cut off, and the main events in the book were reordered.

...I am shocked and appaled.

What was wrong with it in the first place (before recut)?

It wasn't family friendly enough. New Line didn't think they were going to be able to sell a dark movie like this during the Holiday season so they completely softened it. They edited out the Aurora sequence, they cut out other scenes so they could make the fim under two hours and they re-shot certain scenes to make their version of the film make sense, and presto! You have the theatrical version "The Golden Compass".

And what's funny is that New Line made extreme changes, but yet they shot themselves in the foot by doing so, if they would've stuck with the original order that Chris Weitz wanted we'd probably be talking about "The Subtle Knife" release date by now.

I beg to differ, Michael. If New Line hadn't shot themselves in the foot, we would be talking about TAS release date by now.

I meant funny as in that it was ironic because New Line forced all these changes to make a successful film, but they screwed themselves OUT of a successful film by doing what they did. Pretty disgusting if you ask me.

Can you imagine TAS on the big screen? I can just imagine the controversy. SCANDALOUS!