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Post by The Escapist on Jul 20, 2019 16:44:05 GMT -5
So, with a new HBO/BBC television adaptation coming later this year, I thought we should have a thread about the best fantasy book series ever. For those who don't know, His Dark Materials is a trilogy by Phillip Pullman that starts with a girl's best friend being kidnapped and ends with multiple universes joining together for a revolution against God. It's as creative, conceptual, and ambitious a series as you're ever gonna read, and over a decade after the shitty film adaptation of The Golden Compass, it looks like HBO are stepping in to do it right:
Any other fans on here? Anyone looking forward to the TV adaptation? Has anyone ever gone to a certain bench in a certain park in Oxford and cried? Get on it!
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Post by eva on Jul 20, 2019 17:49:48 GMT -5
James McAvoy AND Ruth Wilson?? Sold
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Post by theyknowwhatimean on Jul 20, 2019 18:29:44 GMT -5
I don’t see James McAvoy as Lord Asriel—bearded Daniel Craig looked more the part.
Still I’m looking forward to it. Was gonna read the books again this summer but will leave it now so that I can watch this (relatively) cold. Hopefully they serve the source material well. Then maybe The Book of Dust companion series can get adapted too!
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Post by carlober on Jul 30, 2019 3:54:34 GMT -5
I'm looking forward to it. I read the books... well... at least 15 years ago but I was obsessed with them for a period. The film was average, but I agree that Daniel Craig looked more the part.
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Post by The Escapist on Nov 3, 2019 16:10:41 GMT -5
I don't know. The casting is great, the establishing shots are gorgeous, but the dialogue felt really generic and the pacing was far too quick. We should have seen Lyra playing with the Gyptian boy at the start so that it felt like thread lines together rather than random stuff being shown to us. Not bad, but nowhere near as good as it could have been. 6/10. Still gonna check out the rest.
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Post by bringmethemonkey on Nov 3, 2019 20:42:22 GMT -5
Starts tomorrow here - really looking forward to it - guardian gave it 5 stars not that that means much
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Post by Lennon2217 on Nov 3, 2019 20:56:28 GMT -5
The reviews have been very mixed to say the least. Was hoping it would be really good. Kinda dug the world the movie presented. I wanna see it get more fleshed out.
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Post by theyknowwhatimean on Nov 10, 2019 7:48:00 GMT -5
The reviews have been very mixed to say the least. Was hoping it would be really good. Kinda dug the world the movie presented. I wanna see it get more fleshed out. I liked this tweet from Pullman:
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Post by Lennon2217 on Nov 10, 2019 7:49:26 GMT -5
The reviews have been very mixed to say the least. Was hoping it would be really good. Kinda dug the world the movie presented. I wanna see it get more fleshed out. I liked this tweet from Pullman: The good news is there will be a second season no matter what. The reason is they shot seasons 1 and 2 at the same time! Already in the can.
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Post by carlober on Nov 10, 2019 12:51:59 GMT -5
Is it any good?
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Post by theyknowwhatimean on Nov 10, 2019 16:47:22 GMT -5
Okay. It's warming up now. I was quite pleased with that second episode. It still feels a bit flat and lacking in momentum, but the performaces were better (still not sure about Ma Costa though) and the dialogue didn't seem so stiff and awkward this time. Also, I absolutely love the Art Deco set design and costumes for the Mrs Coulter and Lyra scenes.
One of my criticisms last week was I didn't think the show succeeded in establishing a distinct feel for its fantasy world like Game of Thrones and other epics before it have, right from their first episodes/movie installments; but, now we've seen a bit more of Lyra's world, it is starting to feel different enough to our own for this to be a fantasy worth escaping into.
And my positives from last week, chiefly how it's been shot and scored, carry over. It's very slick and (wanky lingo incoming) aesthetically pleasing.
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Post by Lennon2217 on Nov 10, 2019 17:29:15 GMT -5
I wanna keep watching so I guess it’s working.
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Post by theyknowwhatimean on Nov 17, 2019 18:12:05 GMT -5
I wonder whether this show wouldn't've benefitted from having less time to work with?
I mean, did they really need eight hours to adapt a 400-page book? Seems a bit excessive, like Peter Jackson's Hobbit movies. Pullman's writing has more philosophical subtext and layers to wrestle with than Tolkien's, but tonally the texts are not a million miles apart. They're both on the lighter end of the fantasy genre. For film to capture the essence of either novel, it must not become overly baggy; and I think His Dark Materials is struggling to establish a sense of urgency at the moment.
Still, I'm looking forward to when they're all in the North. And the arrival of Lin-Manuel Miranda as Lee Scoresby might freshen things up next week.
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Post by nataliemckinney on Oct 22, 2020 22:48:35 GMT -5
Anyone excited for Season 2?
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Post by The Escapist on Oct 23, 2020 4:44:30 GMT -5
His Dark Materials only REALLY gets cooking with The Subtle Knife, so I've known from as soon as the show was announced that I'd be more hyped for S2 than S1. Can't wait to see how it all pans out (heh) from here. Also, theyknowwhatimean, started The Secret Commonwealth. Seventy-five pages in, enjoying it so far.
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Post by darmin on Oct 23, 2020 5:36:44 GMT -5
I can’t say that I’m excited that much but I’m waiting for it. For nostalgic reasons mostly, also I liked a lot Mrs Coulter she s great. I remember reading and discussing these books as a kid w my best friend, after reading all Harry Potter books. Our opinion was that the first book and ideas were great and original, but the second and the third ones were a bit underwhelming, maybe even rushed. The final was like “eh? That’s it?” Nevertheless these books impressed me.
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Post by nataliemckinney on Oct 26, 2020 21:01:50 GMT -5
I can't lie. I'm really only watching to see Mr. Scoresby. And yes, I know what's coming... :(
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Post by The Escapist on Nov 6, 2020 14:57:43 GMT -5
theyknowwhatimean , around 200-odd pages in The Secret Commonwealth, enjoying it so far. One thing I just noted, though - do you ever get that thing where a completely unrelated actor stumbles into your mental picture of the story, despite going against a good deal of the author's descriptions? It's just happened to me with Marcel Delamere. I'm reading the scene at the banquet of the Magisterium, where he's being all cut-glass and diplomatic, and I suddenly found that Patrick McGoohan was acting the part in my head! He's American, and not in the slightest bit relevant, but something about the way the dialogue is written just fit the way he played the baddies in Columbo. I can particularly imagine him delivering the line "I think you're very wise to use the word troubles. Perhaps a little more than anxieties but a little less than alarms, hmm?" to Peter Falk with perfection. It's lovely when it happens, but the downside is when the character then gets described as having olive-coloured skin or a completely bald head, and you feel that no, the author's got it wrong, it's bloody Patrick McGoohan!
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Post by tiger40 on Nov 6, 2020 17:54:03 GMT -5
I've never watched it but to be honest these fantasy things aren't really my cup of tea. But I do know that there's a new series starting soon in the next few weeks I think.
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Post by The Escapist on Nov 8, 2020 16:00:06 GMT -5
The dialogue is just so shite.
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Post by theyknowwhatimean on Nov 8, 2020 19:41:54 GMT -5
The dialogue is just so shite. I don't know how Jack Thorne gets so much work, to be honest. His scripts for this are so workmanlike. My only hope is that the other writers credited on upcoming episodes have been able to inject some bloody pep into these scripts. Because at the moment it's sorely lacking.
I dunno, man. When I think of my favourite fantasy screen stories, like Peter Jackson's Hobbit and Lord of the Rings trilogies, and Alfonso Cuarón's Harry Potter film The Prisoner of Azkaban, they have (I think) such a great verve to them, a freewheeling spirit, whatever their shortcomings may be. Both directors have a keen eye for the grotesque; but there's real heart in the storytelling too, and an admirable sense of fun. By comparison, this is just a bit bleh.
I know those projects above were made for the big screen--with budgets to prove it--but the makers of this show clearly have enough money behind them to build aesthetically interesting sets: so how about moving the camera around a bit so we can see them? That way we might feel more enveloped in this fictional reality, as we do with Pullman's note-perfect prose. I would think any director given a project like this would want to invoke Spielberg, the master of depicting the innocence of children amidst adult uncertainty. And yet, all the dialogue scenes seem to have been treated in that televisual way where the cameras are rooted to the spot, capturing medium close ups of the actors reading their lines one at a time. Rigid.
Anyway. Fuck it. If it finds a groove and picks up, great. If it doesn't, the books will still be there for us to enjoy as we please. How you doing with The Secret Commonwealth?
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Post by The Escapist on Nov 9, 2020 5:43:08 GMT -5
The dialogue is just so shite. I don't know how Jack Thorne gets so much work, to be honest. His scripts for this are so workmanlike. My only hope is that the other writers credited on upcoming episodes have been able to inject some bloody pep into these scripts. Because at the moment it's sorely lacking.
I dunno, man. When I think of my favourite fantasy screen stories, like Peter Jackson's Hobbit and Lord of the Rings trilogies, and Alfonso Cuarón's Harry Potter film The Prisoner of Azkaban, they have (I think) such a great verve to them, a freewheeling spirit, whatever their shortcomings may be. Both directors have a keen eye for the grotesque; but there's real heart in the storytelling too, and an admirable sense of fun. By comparison, this is just a bit bleh.
I know those projects above were made for the big screen--with budgets to prove it--but the makers of this show clearly have enough money behind them to build aesthetically interesting sets: so how about moving the camera around a bit so we can see them? That way we might feel more enveloped in this fictional reality, as we do with Pullman's note-perfect prose. I would think any director given a project like this would want to invoke Spielberg, the master of depicting the innocence of children amidst adult uncertainty. And yet, all the dialogue scenes seem to have been treated in that televisual way where the cameras are rooted to the spot, capturing medium close ups of the actors reading their lines one at a time. Rigid.
Anyway. Fuck it. If it finds a groove and picks up, great. If it doesn't, the books will still be there for us to enjoy as we please. How you doing with The Secret Commonwealth?
Workmanlike is the perfect word for it - you get the sense the writer just made a list of what the audience needed to know in each scene and then scribbled the characters names over each bullet-point and there you go, dialogue. So many scenes were clear lay-ups to have some fun and none of them were interested: a guy coming across a girl who has a talking animal, for instance. Loads of stuff to make funny or freaky or surreal there, but no, he just walks up and goes "Is that a talking animal?" and she goes "No, it's a daemon" and runs off. There you go, scene. Miss Coulter torturing a witch is a vibrant idea for some drama, but again the dialogue is just your standard "I will ask you one more time..." "No, I will not betray the prophecy child!" stuff. But then rather than sprinkle some wit and personality throughout every scene, the script instead forces them all into very clearly marked Lighthearted Comedy Scenes, which are just not funny at all. You say other writers will be doing the episodes later on? I'll be honest, I don't see myself being really interested if not. It's just boring. No flair, no personality, no sense of fun and adventure. Just lots of pretty CGI establishing shots put before people standing around saying things. I'll stick to The Secret Commonwealth, which I am really enjoying! I was very sceptical about an adult Lyra, wanted her story to end where it did, but Pullman has walked her right back into my heart with incredible ease. I'm a little cautious about the idea of the mythical stuff from La Belle Sauvage coming back, I thought they were the weakest parts of that book, but I love anything with the Magisterium and the way the story is fragmenting out into lots of connecting strands is quite pretty, too. Plus, a bit in it gave me an idea for a short story which I will completely rip off, safe in the knowledge that Pullman himself - in his intro for The Writer's Tale - said that stealing other ideas is one of the best things you can do to get writing.
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Post by darmin on Nov 15, 2020 6:49:03 GMT -5
Ruth Wilson is still slaying, everything else is a little bit meh...
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