Disclaimer 1: Mild spoilers contained, for both the HBO series and the novel it is based on.
Disclaimer 2: I've read and thoroughly enjoyed Phillip Pullman's trilogy of the same name. I've re-read the first book, "The Golden Compass", multiple times. I was interested when I heard that HBO would adapt the series to a mini-series format -- I think that books like Pullman's, with a richly-imagined world, often feel flat when compressed to a 90-120 minute film.
So, I was hoping that HBO's effort would be better than the 2007 film adaptation, "The Golden Compass", which I did find flat and frankly boring.
And, I was excited to read that HBO had cast Dafne Keen as the book's central protagonist, Lyra. I thought Ms. Keen was the best part of 2017's "Logan" -- which to be clear, I very much enjoyed.
Finally, I'm very aware that adapting a novel for film or television is going to require changes, sometimes because the visual medium makes it possible to take short-cuts that prose can't. And sometimes it's just necessary to trim narrative tendrils that, while interesting, don't really serve to advance the central plot in a way that most viewers care about. (I'm looking at you, LotR's Tom Bombadil!)
All that leading to me saying that while I had high hopes, and I try to set aside my anal tendencies to nit-pick an adaptation for every little change they've made to a favorite novel, I am, ultimately, finding myself disappointed in HBO's telling of the story.
I've watched three episodes of it now. I do think it's better, on balance, than the 2007 film, and I think that's due in large part to the time budget the TV series has. But if I had to distill what bothers me about this adaptation into a single word, I'd reach for "flat" again. The novel was often slowly paced, written lyrically, and wove a very rich world. Lyra's journey was allowed to unfold in the novel at a pacing that worked, at least for me.
Particularly with her discovery of how to use the alethiometer, a sort of magical compass that points at "truth" -- in the novel, she spent long hours fiddling with it, until she began to grasp intuitively how to use it. This was a slow process, and though it was clear that she was gifted with respect to the device, her learning to use it was through effort and practice, and we saw how she began to understand how to ask questions of it.
Whereas, in last night's third episode, we see Lyra learn to use it essentially in a single go, because she urgently wanted to. It was a "Use the force, Lyra!" moment that turned the novel's deliberate pacing into something more akin to a super-hero moment. Peter Parker gets bit by radioactive spider, bam! Bruce Banner gets irradiated by gamma rays, bam! Lyra wants to know what happened to her friends, bam!
While I understand why HBO decided to hit fast forward on this, it's ultimately an example of the TV adaptation feeling flat and forced to me.
HBO has made other changes that I can understand the rationale for, but don't think really improve upon the novel. For example, I'm reasonably certain that in the novel, no one was seen to be traveling between Lyra's world and others in the multiverse it is part of until the very end. HBO shows, very early in the series, one of Lyra's antagonists traveling to what is clearly our modern London, to enlist the help of a hacker to gain information about someone he suspects has also been traveling between the two worlds. While bringing this forward in the narrative isn't a fatal issue for me, it's a curious choice -- it not only doesn't really help the main plot (Lyra and the Gyptians helping her trying to discover what's being done to kidnapped children), but it also lessens the dramatic impact of the novel's end, wherein Lord Asriel is seen to travel to another world. Once again, I feel like it's a sort of general flattening of the novel's narrative.
Finally, I'm surprised to find that I don't enjoy Dafne Keen's portrayal of Lyra as much as I'd hoped. Not sure if this is because I keep superimposing her character in "Logan" onto this, or if her performance just feels a bit... "Going to eleven" at times?
In another adaptation of a favorite literary series of mine, "Lord of the Rings", the films made changes that I thought ultimately helped to slim down and focus the narrative (hasta la vista, Tom Bombadil!), but also made some that I thought were dumb and unhelpful. Making the dwarf Gimli the butt of jokes, for example, was pointless and unnecessary. For me, most of HBO's changes feel like that -- "No good reason" -- than for improving upon the source material. And that's a shame, because the source was just fine.
Disclaimer 2: I've read and thoroughly enjoyed Phillip Pullman's trilogy of the same name. I've re-read the first book, "The Golden Compass", multiple times. I was interested when I heard that HBO would adapt the series to a mini-series format -- I think that books like Pullman's, with a richly-imagined world, often feel flat when compressed to a 90-120 minute film.
So, I was hoping that HBO's effort would be better than the 2007 film adaptation, "The Golden Compass", which I did find flat and frankly boring.
And, I was excited to read that HBO had cast Dafne Keen as the book's central protagonist, Lyra. I thought Ms. Keen was the best part of 2017's "Logan" -- which to be clear, I very much enjoyed.
Finally, I'm very aware that adapting a novel for film or television is going to require changes, sometimes because the visual medium makes it possible to take short-cuts that prose can't. And sometimes it's just necessary to trim narrative tendrils that, while interesting, don't really serve to advance the central plot in a way that most viewers care about. (I'm looking at you, LotR's Tom Bombadil!)
All that leading to me saying that while I had high hopes, and I try to set aside my anal tendencies to nit-pick an adaptation for every little change they've made to a favorite novel, I am, ultimately, finding myself disappointed in HBO's telling of the story.
I've watched three episodes of it now. I do think it's better, on balance, than the 2007 film, and I think that's due in large part to the time budget the TV series has. But if I had to distill what bothers me about this adaptation into a single word, I'd reach for "flat" again. The novel was often slowly paced, written lyrically, and wove a very rich world. Lyra's journey was allowed to unfold in the novel at a pacing that worked, at least for me.
Particularly with her discovery of how to use the alethiometer, a sort of magical compass that points at "truth" -- in the novel, she spent long hours fiddling with it, until she began to grasp intuitively how to use it. This was a slow process, and though it was clear that she was gifted with respect to the device, her learning to use it was through effort and practice, and we saw how she began to understand how to ask questions of it.
Whereas, in last night's third episode, we see Lyra learn to use it essentially in a single go, because she urgently wanted to. It was a "Use the force, Lyra!" moment that turned the novel's deliberate pacing into something more akin to a super-hero moment. Peter Parker gets bit by radioactive spider, bam! Bruce Banner gets irradiated by gamma rays, bam! Lyra wants to know what happened to her friends, bam!
While I understand why HBO decided to hit fast forward on this, it's ultimately an example of the TV adaptation feeling flat and forced to me.
HBO has made other changes that I can understand the rationale for, but don't think really improve upon the novel. For example, I'm reasonably certain that in the novel, no one was seen to be traveling between Lyra's world and others in the multiverse it is part of until the very end. HBO shows, very early in the series, one of Lyra's antagonists traveling to what is clearly our modern London, to enlist the help of a hacker to gain information about someone he suspects has also been traveling between the two worlds. While bringing this forward in the narrative isn't a fatal issue for me, it's a curious choice -- it not only doesn't really help the main plot (Lyra and the Gyptians helping her trying to discover what's being done to kidnapped children), but it also lessens the dramatic impact of the novel's end, wherein Lord Asriel is seen to travel to another world. Once again, I feel like it's a sort of general flattening of the novel's narrative.
Finally, I'm surprised to find that I don't enjoy Dafne Keen's portrayal of Lyra as much as I'd hoped. Not sure if this is because I keep superimposing her character in "Logan" onto this, or if her performance just feels a bit... "Going to eleven" at times?
In another adaptation of a favorite literary series of mine, "Lord of the Rings", the films made changes that I thought ultimately helped to slim down and focus the narrative (hasta la vista, Tom Bombadil!), but also made some that I thought were dumb and unhelpful. Making the dwarf Gimli the butt of jokes, for example, was pointless and unnecessary. For me, most of HBO's changes feel like that -- "No good reason" -- than for improving upon the source material. And that's a shame, because the source was just fine.
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