His Dark Materials Article: Did the Movie live up to the books?

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posted by angel_02

I read the books of this series before seeing the movie as I always do with book to movie adaptions and have just seen the movie. I think they did quite well with it but I'm not sure it lived up to the books. They changed hair colours of Mrs Coulter, Lyra and even Serafina, small details that may not matter too much but is it hard to dye hair? Already that is beside the point as the actors playing the characters did a very good job and i think were well chosen. I was a bit disappointed that the cut a fair bit out, the movie wasn't long and they could have easily added mais in without it getting tedious, I was also disappointed with the ending as they didn't finished it in the same place as the books as i would have liked to have seen. All though i do think the movie was quite good for and adaptation of a book and did very well, but thats just my opinion.

dave likes this

honey_dreams I agree, angel_02, and I also read the novels before watching the film adaptation. However, I could not enjoy the film as much as I may have done if I had not read the books. There were too many differences to the book, some I allowed, some I nearly choked on my words in my hasten to critisise. I felt it was one of those films where it needs to have been its own story in order to work. I thought the casting was acceptable- although (as you mentioned) some characters had details missing, like hair colour or name pronounciation. The ending completely phased out for me, a huge anti-climax to what I hoped it could have been, and the film itself didn't hold one tenth of the original charm and brilliance of Phillip Pullman's noble world. Thank you for reading my opinions.