Stuck in Traffik

Well, yes and no. It may have been my low expectations, but I did enjoy it.

Have you read the book? No? Well, that's good, as almost no movie compares favorably with the book. Yes? Well, that's good, because they almost didn't follow the book at all, save for tone and some characters.

That's not to say it's bad, not at all. They follow a lot of the spirit of the book, but change a lot of relationahips. They understand that to pull a lever over here means a gear turns over there and they can't have everything the same. Internal continuity (save for one thing that bugs me) remains intact.

Will Smith is one of those people who make or break the movie he's in, largely based on whether he comes to act or he comes to be Will Smith. Thankfully, he comes to act and brings a surprisingly nuanced performance to his character. His slow spiral into insanity is both convincing and powerful. Interestingly, I find I liked Will Smith's performance solo better than with other people - he's still very good later in the film, but he starts to slide a little towards being Will Smith around other characters than I might have liked.

The book's punchier, I think, especially in the meaning of the title, which is changed here for Hollywood purposes. It still works, but I like the original better.

And holy crap is it dark - scenes are flooded with black, incidental music is used sparingly at best, and the tension hums in the theater. The entire atmosphere is bleak, suffused with only the faintest glimmers of hope.

Really, the weakest link in this production is the CGI - it's not bad, per se, but it's not especially good, either. I think actors and makeup would have been more convincing. Very rarely do I find CGI that actually convinces me it's really there, and 'I Am Legend' comes nowhere near that mark. The infected are far too plasticine, far too cartoonish to really convince me that they're there. Not a deal breaker, but a slight disappointment.

Still, the film was surprisingly good. While the CGI was disappointing, I thought it was better paced than the book, even if the book is still better. Definitely worth seeing.

Sigh. I wanted so much more.

At the end of the last centure, New Line Cinema lined up all their ducks and dollars to make a big, expensive gamble on a high-concept fantasy trilogy, using a relatively unknown (cult, at best) director named Peter Jackson. It was a huge bet - for the money they were spending it was everything or nothing on the roll of the dice.

As we all know, the public embraced and supported this endeavor. Peter Jackson loved his material, as did his actors, and everything from set design to casting to scripting worked. It was nigh perfect.

But when it calmed down, when the money stopped rolling in, New Line Cinema needed a new cash cow, and so they decided what worked before could work again, and they lined up their next major high-concept fantasy trilogy, Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials.

I've heard that The Golden Compass is the most expensive film New Line Cinema has ever made. That, like The Lord of The Rings, if this fails it means dark days, perhaps even the end of New Line. Oh, the imprint will live on - it will just be folded into its sister companies, something they trot out when they think it will be better marketing.

But it depresses me to think that The Golden Compass may very well be the film that sinks New Line Cinema, because it sucks so very, very much.

The books are fantastic, but it's not that it just sucks in comparison to the books. We went with a friend who had never read them, and he agreed. Sucktastic.

You see, they cut down all the characters and plot. Oh, sure, the framework is there, the basic skeleton's the same, but there's no meat on these bones. And it's not the cast's fault - the casting is superb. And the cinematographer's not to blame, becase it looks beautiful.

Which brings me to script and director, both of which have the same basic problem.

They don't believe in their audience. They dumb it down, and move it around, hoping that they can make it more palatable to more people, and not offend anyone without compromising a story that is, by its very nature, somewhat divisive. The irony is, of course, that of the three books The Golden Compass is the least offensive, but hey, let's start early, right?

If you're going to gamble, if you're going to bet the bank on one roll of the dice, then don't water it down. If you're going to gamble, gamble big. Go large or go home, as they say.

And when you leave, take Chris Weitz with you.