I heard this movie was going to be some sort of sci-fi film, so I went in with low expectations of nerd humor, average directing, average writing, and some silly twist. At worst, I'd be Villaged. Alas, even my low expectations for movies could not prepare me for this crapfest. Mind you, this is coming from someone who can always find something fun, silly, or stupid about a movie and still walk away and go, "meh, it wasn't that bad." The Golden Compass, however, has redefined the world as I know it.
I think this is how it went down in the writing room:
Larry: silence... typing on the keyboard
Curly: silence... writing
Mo: silence... brainstorming
All silence. Why? Because if they would have talked, they would have realized that I, as well as my friend, heard the phrase "ball sac" at least a dozen times. I honestly don't know to what they were referring, but I think it was a city of some sort. I was laughing too frequently at its occurrence to figure it out.
On top of that, there was another memorable zinger uttered by some polar bear: "you want to— ride me?" By that point, I had already been primed by the thought of traveling to a city of "ball sacs" that I lost it when I heard one about "riding me." Clearly, these writers were retards.
It gets better.
(continued)Apparently they were C-students in screenwriter school (oh wait, they never went to screenwriter school— they were producers-turned-screenwriters who thought they could save a buck by writing and directing their own movie). Anyway, had they gone to school, they would have flunked out, because the entire time I was screaming to myself, "Joseph Campbell would shit on his 'demon' if he had to sit through this perversion of his research." You see, Joseph Campbell was the guy who did a bunch of research into how most "classic" literature of human folklore tends to feature hallmark elements, which then create, essentially an epic story. Long story short,
Star Wars,
Lord of the Rings, and basically every other movie featuring some sort of a hero on a quest have him to thank.
This movie? This movie abused his research. The producers must have sat down, read the
Cliff's Notes version of his research, and thought to themselves, "HEY! If we toss a few hundred million dollars on the table, hire some teenagers to write our script, and hire a seven year old to be our lead actress, I bet we can make billions!!!"
Then, another producer said, "Why make billions when we can make— millions?"
And, you know what, because they're fucking clueless, they went with the second guy.
That's the kind of stupidity that went into this movie.
The Wikipedia page says it was supposed to be some sort of Christian allegory. I'm normally good with allegories, and frankly, after staring at my watch for about 114 minutes, I couldn't find
any. At the very least I was expecting some sort of Jesus reference, and alas, nothing. An entire 114 minutes of rushed scenes, painful dialog, and failed archetypes, and the net total? Nothing.
At least
Lord of the Rings left me wondering what was next. Was the ring gonna take over Frodo? Was the shire actually gonna be destroyed? Yousa people gonna die!?!?!
Fuck, even
Attack of the Clones had me more on the edge of my seat!
Let's get serious for a moment, though.
In its defense, it looks like there was considerable chopping on the edit floor. It was clear that they wanted a trilogy from the get-go, and it seems like they really wanted a
Lord of the Rings— but they rushed it. Nobody spends over $100 million on a single film and does that shitty of a job unless they rushed it. The battle was too dark to see, the actors were nearly expressionless, the cinematography was amateur, and the CG was, frankly, not believable.
Off hand, I'd guess that the production staff of this movie must be related to the production staff of
Narnia. They understand the key elements that need to go into an epic tale: you need the hero, the sidekick, the villain, the mystical weapon, the call to duty, the three trials'n'tribulations, the fate of the world hanging in the balance, a climax, and a resolution. Yes, they knew these elements.
But like anything, it's one thing to have an understanding of the elements, and it's quite another to execute them successfully. It's easy for novel writers, because much is left to the imagination. The writer has virtually unlimited space, endless description, and the power of his reader's mind. A movie director, on the other hand, has a couple hours, celluloid, and an ADHD audience. Where the novelist can write shit and still get away with it by blaming it on his reader, the movie director, on the other hand, cannot.
Some directors pull it off. This guy didn't.
They thought they could win an Oscar if they rushed it. They were wrong.
They thought a mediocre grasp of epic literature was good enough. It wasn't.
In the end,
The Golden Compass points to true "suck." The acting sucked, the directing sucked, and the writing reaches a level of suck that Dirt Devils admire. Givers of blowjobs drool at this movie's sucking ability. Citizens of "ball sac" eagerly await the day this movie reaches them, so that "ball sac" can be sucked by this movie. All that I can hope for is that in a few years my memory of this movie will turn to dust...
...whatever the hell "dust" is anyway.
By the end of this movie I had given up trying to answer the important questions. I had given up trying to figure out what the hell "dust" was, why it was so important, why the evil people were supposed to be evil, why the good guys were good, why the kids were getting the demons chopped off, why people were flying around in metallic blimps, what the heroine's father was working on, what the significance of the other universes were, what the energy was, and, well, basically every important question.
Alas, by the minute mark 45 I had realized that none of the important questions were going to be answered, because this movie's grand role was simply to serve as an extended trailer for
The Golden Compass 2: The Search for More Gold.
No, in the end I had relegated myself to attempting to answer the simpler questions: does the demon help you masturbate; and, more importantly, does he watch you poop?
Those were the kinds of questions that, at the end of the movie, seemed the most plausible, important, and most likely to be able to answer without dumping $200 million dollars on a couple of crap sequels.
Shitty, unimaginative, predictable, and boring. These are the hallmark features of
The Golden Compass.
God this movie sucked.
I never hate movies, yet this movie I hate: it was that fucking bad.
Where is my eye bleach?
The goggles? Oh, right— they do nothing.
I feel dirty, I need a shower. I feel dirty, I need a shower. I feel dirty, I need a shower. I fee—
