May 4, 2009
“Narnia vs Golden Compass”
An editorial at NarniaFans.com compares the film versions of CS Lewis’ Narnia series to the His Dark Materials film. Perhaps unsurprisingly the comparison is less than favorable to Pullman’s trilogy, and appears to blame the relative failure of the His Dark Materials films on the purported anti-religious message of the books: “They have the same basic plots, the same basic creatures, and so on. Looking at the posters, cases, and trailers, you would think they were very alike, but when you look deeper, you see that they are very different indeed. This fact shows itself through the success of the books and films of their names.”
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5 Comments:
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Kinders says:
Quite – hence the “Perhaps unsurprisingly”. I haven’t seen The Golden Compass or Prince Caspian but I thought the first Narnia film was dire!
I also agree with Tristan’s comment on the site that the books don’t share any “basic plot” or “basic creatures”. That seems to be editorial shorthand for “they’re both fantasy books”.
May 5, 2009 8:02 pm | link
Serafina_tikklya says:
I didn’t read the entire article, but personally, except that they are both juvenile fantasy books, I really don’t see a comparison. And since I am a fan of HDM, I liked “The Golden Compass” much better than the first Narnia film (I didn’t see “Prince Caspian” because I did NOT like the first one!).
I tried to read the Narnia books as a child and as an adult, and did not like particularly them – in fact I couldn’t get through the first one either time.
May 6, 2009 1:38 am | link
Grissha says:
Well, in the way I see it’s more simple: TGC movie crashed because it wasn’t so good. I mean, at least the Narnia movies had their very ENDINGS in there.
New Line Cinema busted it up because thay made the biggest cinematographic stupidities one can make: cutting off the movie’s climax, and several (almost all of the) character development scenes. While Narnia movies still got both, so it’s nothing to do with tematics, it’s a purely cinematic question. After all, “Da Vinci Code” bashes the Church and it was a sucess nonethless, here it comes Angels and Demons movie.
May 8, 2009 8:48 am | link
RT says:
“After all, “Da Vinci Code” bashes the Church and it was a sucess nonethless, here it comes Angels and Demons movie.”
And they were based on bad books and the first film was dire, and so, apparantly is the second. There seems to be very little correlation between how good something is and its popularity.
Same basic plot and creatures?! Daemons, mulefah and armoured bears are very different concepts to talking badgers, giants and god-lions.
May 16, 2009 12:59 am | link
well it says ‘less than favourable’ although if it is at the narniafans site i reckon they are probably more than a little bit biased. nevertheless i think the narnia films are better anyway
May 5, 2009 7:28 pm | link