The Golden Compass director Chris Weitz sends this message directly to all Sraffies
“Dear fans of His Dark Materials,
For the past three years I (and a gigantic cast and crew of fans of the books) have been working to adapt The Golden Compass (aka Northern Lights). As you can imagine, the process can be both exhausting and exhilarating, and full of both challenges and surprises. Sometimes you discover reasons to modify the chronology or narrative path of the books in a way that serves the movie and the trilogy better.
I have decided, along with Scholastic and New Line and, most importantly, Philip Pullman, to shift the concluding three chapters of Book I of His Dark Materials to the beginning of the second film of our trilogy, The Subtle Knife.
To me, this provides the most promising conclusion to the first film and the best possible beginning to the second.
It has always been my main concern to portray Lyra’s world and her adventures with integrity. Throughout this process I have been in close contact with Philip Pullman; and I would not be doing this without his approval. As Philip has said, His Dark Materials is not three stories but one story – the story of Lyra. And where we pause to take a breath in the telling of it is a matter of choice and taste. But I hope that when fans see the film they will find their fears put to rest and their hopes fulfilled. For the film to be judged on its own merits is all that I can ask for.
Many thanks for your time. I believe you will find The Golden Compass a fit tribute to His Dark Materials when it comes out in December; and in the meanwhile promise to work diligently on burnishing its details and providing a solid footing for the launch of The Subtle Knife.
Very Best
Chris Weitz”
Philip Pullman has responded with this message of his own:
“The ending makes every kind of narrative sense. The National Theatre production ended the first part plumb in the middle of The Subtle Knife, and nobody minded that because in the only terms that mattered it worked brilliantly. Every film has to make changes to the story that the original book tells – not to change the outcome, but to make it fit the dimensions and the medium of film. I’m very happy with the work the filmmakers have done, and no-one wants this film to succeed more, or believes in it more firmly, than I do.”
Voldy, that’s blatantly not the case; go and read the statement again.
They have ripped the last 3 chapters off the book, and they won’t appear until the second film… if it ever gets made…
Sorry, scratch that comment, I didn’t see there were another 2 pages of replies!
DO NOT GO SEE THIS MOVIE!!!!!!!!!This movie lours kids into a false religion!Please,the book talks about killing God and this is serious!There is a God.The first people who belived in God before “0 a.d.”sacrificed lambs because they sined[did wrong],but God in his human form [Jesus] came down and was the most purest lamb and sacrificed himself for all of us.Please,just visit a christian church this Sunday.
What? They cut out the last three chapters??? NOOOOOOOO! Can’t they see that they’ve made a huge mistake? The first book (as others have so rightly pointed out) doesn’t make sense without its original ending. Not only the whole explanation of dust/1st betrayal/bridge to the stars aspects, but also the fact that each of the books ends with a tragedy. Without this ending, the 1st movie becomes very lopsided, and loses its direction and goal, which is to show us the creation of a link between different worlds and hence the start of the chain of events that leads to the events of the other books. The reasons could vary from the benign (an overlong film, necessitating a shift of scenes to what is after all the shortest book) to the nefarious (studio execs panicking over how an audience might react to an open-ended ending with a sad element).
People have compared this to what happened with the Lord of the Rings films, which broke the story at different places to the original books. What many haven’t realised is that the Lord of the Rings was originally written by Tolkien as a single book, and was only divided into three volumes at his publisher’s insistence due to economic factors. Hence one could argue that the division between the three books is slightly arbitrary anyway, and where the movies broke off could therefore be viewed as another way of dividing up the story.
Pullman in contrast didn’t write His Dark Materials all in one go, but in three separate instances. Hence he has chosen very carefully where to break off his story, ending with cliffhangers with associated, tragic deaths. And, on the whole, it works; it leaves you aching to know what happens next, and sets the scene for the next part beautifully. It puzzles me deeply why he has gone along with Weitz’s assessment of the change, since he’s an intelligent, enlightened man; I fear he might be keeping his true views to himself in case it jeopardises the success of the movie and likelihood of future films.
And we all have to remember that there’s NO guarantee, until New Line start to see their bank accounts filling up, of the other movies being made. That might be one reason they’ve simply called it ‘TGC’, instead of ‘His Dark Materials: TGC’, in the style of LOTR. If this movie bombs, which it could still do (look what happened to Eragon…), then the others won’t be made, which will mean the ending scenes might never see the light of day, and the film looking even more perplexingly incomplete. We’d then end up with a ‘Ralph Bakshi’-type LOTR film, for those in the know, and it’d be years/decades before we see another attempt.
I hadn’t minded the other changes they had made up until now. Even the religion one, which let’s face it doesn’t have all that huge a role in the first book (although it’s sure going to bamboozle the film-makers in the second and especially third ones!). But this is too far. I’ll still go and watch it at the cinema, but I won’t be looking forward to it even half-as-much as before :(.
hey
We can’t exactly have a wait and see approach coz then if the movie ending is rubbish what can we do coz the movie is already out there! The ending is awesome! Why cut it? Subtle Knife starting like that??? How can they end it like that, the bears fight… then? The point of the break between those two books is so we can be introduced to Will and find out about him before we back with Lyra who is the person we really want to know about!!! I think the decision is STUPID!!
What if the film flops??? Then we don’t even get to see that scene anyway!!!
Where I live ppl are e-mailing parents to boycott the film coz they try to kill God??? Half my school aren’t aloud to watch it now!!
But if they leave the last scenes in then maybe people will like it and we will then see the rest of the films!! (eg. Pirates of the Caribbean- brilliant first film, rubbish second film but did ppl watch the third, YES!!)
Even if the second book wont be as good, we will still have a awesome first one!!
This is a terrible idea.
I can understand that the film-makers might have concerns about TSK proving harder to make into a good film than TGK, but I cannot accept that this is the solution. Pullman’s pragmatic defence of the decision will surely convince no-one who has felt the thrill and power of his fearless storytelling. Indeed, I would be interested to hear anyone explain how hacking off the final act and tacking it on to the beginning of TSK makes any kind of narrative or dramatic sense. It betrays cowardice that I am sure emanates from the realm of marketers and their test screens; implying that the audience will not tolerate a cliff-hanger, nor cope with the sudden change of scene at the start of TSK. Comparisons to LOTR are weak and barely relevant – Tolkien’s book was grand in its imaginative scope, but in terms of his storytelling, craft and pacing it was a sprawling mess that absolutely required reshaping. HDM, in contrast, is a tightly and ingeniously crafted machine in three distinct parts, and each should be a complete opus. The effect of TGC will be severely reduced without its climax, a climax that is essential to all the major characters.
Concessions over the sometimes shrill anti-religious message seemed acceptable, since the heart of the argument concerns the evil of dogmatic authority in any form, but this is a compromise too far. It hurts the story, mutes it and trivializes it.
Instead of book i mean movie!
Look two up- last sentence
Have just seen the film and frankly im disgusted. had they in fact continued the story into the beginning of the subtle knife, as misintrpreted by the previous comment, it could have worked wonderfully, but no they ended it in a happy clappy family fantasy fun esque way with lyra and rodger embarking on a journey togetehr bla bla bla. rodger is murdered, lyra is betrayed and the film should have ended with her crossing the bridge to the stars, that was a perfect ending in the first place. apparantly pullman supports this ending which no one can argue with but i just think its a great shame to dumb down his masterpiece of a story so that millions of people will be left thinking ahhhh what a cute ending, ahhhhhhh it shouldnt be cute, its supposed to be tragic1!!! sorry if im ranting, just really annoyed right now x
Millions of people are left thinking “what a great story! I can’t wait to see what will come next”. I too was wondering what heppened to the ending, but I can at least live with it. It was a great movie, and it has followed the story quite well so far. PP also agreed on this decision, and because he is the writer of these books, I would have to say that I’m not afraid of loosing something important. Just because he ruins your image of the story, doesn’t make it bad. I guess you just don’t look at it the way he does..
I would have loved to see the final 3 chapters in the movie, but I can live with it as long as they show up in the next movie. I can allways sit down afterwards and see all the movies in a row to get the whole picture. If your so mad about his decision, please wait until they arrange a marthon in a theatre near you with all the movies. It will end tragic, so you should be able to walk away with a smile afterwards.
PS. To all you christians out there. The people who made the drawings of a certain prophet got wide support from all over the world, because people should have the right of free speach. PP should too, but you keep on complaining about it! If you don’t like it, then don’t go see it or read it. Stop complaining and grow up.
As a fan I am deeply, deeply hurt by the way Philip Pullman has so easily let the ending be altered. I agree with what a lot of you are saying, this is motivated by marketing. While the whole story is about Lyra, it isn’t right to just cut off the last 30 pages or so of the story. Philip Pullman wrote it that way for a reason, didn’t he? If he wanted the ending to be happy-go-lucky-cliff-hanger then he would have wrote it that way. Let us all just hope that when (not if, because they will make sequels) (thank you commercial America!) they make the next two movies that they don’t chop anything else up.
My main concern with the switching of the chapters is that; Rogers death, the guilt that Lyra feels at putting Roger in the very danger she was trying to save him from, her confusion over the fact that one man she thought she could turn to and aspire to be turns out to be just as selfish and manipulative as everyone else she despises, as well as introducing the odd relationship between the two rival figureheads who appear to be polar opposites will all just get shafted into a 30-second footnote at the start of the second film.
It’s a scene that deserves so much more than that.
i think they should not have cut the mountain scene because now it just makes it look like a stupid kids movie . people will think ”oh ill take my kid there and oh bears and a stupid little girl evil mother and father is james bond” if they put the end in th subtle knife it would confuse everyone because next thing you know ther is a completly different character and youre like where has Lyra gone? they are just trying to get us to go see the next movie!!! i saw it in cinema but then the film stopped and i was like what th heck? it was to weird.
What I want to know is, have the French/any other countries seen the last 3 chapters already? Because I just bought a book in France which is a storybook of the film with an abridged plot (it’s for 8 year olds) and loads of screenshots, and it goes right up to the end… so I’ve seen screengrabs of Lyra arriving at Asriel’s and him looking shocked etc etc, right up to Lyra walking through a door in the sky… so why would these shots have been sold to a publishing company in France at least a year before they’ll be seen on the big screen??!?!!!
i was excited to see the scene where roger dies and the energy created opens up a big hole in the sky, but it wasnt in the movie and i was upset, sigh maybe next movie.
I love this movie when I got to the last level of the game, it showed a clip that wasn’t in the movie (I already saw the movie before I got the game) so I new something was up. Then I found it on youtube so I watch ALL the golden compass videos and all the “originial ending” clips were made with sketches I want to see the movie edited ending. But thanks for a great movie, also my daemon is romulus he can turn into a sparrow,mouse, and jakal
I hope that uh… oh! I hope to get a chance to see the real ending so… please get the real ending WITHOUT the skecthes.
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The fact that the other two books were not filmed is yet another indictment of the Church of Rome (as if we needed one!) I will happily go to see the Narnia films although not a Christian, and enjoy them, so why can’t so-called Christians allow films that they disagree with to be made? H.G.Wells was right when he linked Catholicism to Fascism, when he wrote his last pamphlet in 1945, ‘Why we should bomb the Vatican’. Although I don’t go as far as that, what we should we do when confronted by evil? The world is full of people who want other people to ‘toe their line’. In this case, a church that hides the abuse of children and resists the use of condoms, a church run by a nasty little man who was in the Hitler Youth AT THE AGE OF 14, when he didn’t have to be – when Jews were being beaten to death in the streets!