Chris Weitz Blames New Line For 'The Golden Compass' -- Do You?
Filed under: Sci-Fi & Fantasy, New Line, Celebrities and Controversy, DIY/Filmmaking, Newsstand, Religious, Fan Rant
Now rolling in New Moon millions, Chris Weitz is being more open about his troubles with New Line and The Golden Compass, a film that sank one studio and sent him into a tailspin. Rumors abounded as to what went wrong on that film, and as recently as last week, New York's Page Six was claiming that residual stress was causing him to leave the industry.Weitz denied any such thing to Variety, and announced he was leaving the world of the supernatural behind with his next film, The Gardener. The film centers around a hard working Mexican gardener and his efforts to protect his son, and Weitz will be making it alongside his new best friends forever, Summit Entertainment. His new friendship enabled him to take a parting shot at New Line. Weitz praises Summit and Stephenie Meyer for trusting him with New Moon, an experience that was the polar opposite of the debacle that was The Golden Compass.
Weitz claims that New Line didn't trust him to handle the content of the book, that the film was taken from him in editing. Heavy-handed hacking resulted in losing nearly 30 minutes of footage from the film, and neatly exercised the edgy thrust of Phillip Pullman's book. "It was an utter violation of my status as a director and the worst thing that has happened to me professionally ... I was treated badly, it was almost like they never read the books. They seemed frightened of offending the right." Out of loyalty to the cast and crew, Weitz said he "bit through my tongue" when Compass was released.
As a fan of Pullman's His Dark Materials series, I'd love to see all that missing footage to see if it could salvage Weitz's film, and if New Line really neutered it.
Go below the jump for the rest
My gut watching it was no one involved, not even Weitz, seemed to understand the so-called "touchy" content, and that more emphasis had been put on the glittery steampunk effects than the script. I remember I described it to other Pullman fans as "they took the book, threw darts at it, and adapted the pages with holes in them" because it was so far removed from anything in the book. But hey, that could have simply been a hack editing job, though I am skeptical 30 minutes could restore every plot hole.
Some of the blame has to be put on Weitz. The sets were beautiful, but nothing was particularly convincing, and none of it felt like a world you could live in. Nothing from the daemons to the character descriptions seemed to match the descriptions of the book -- a fannish nitpick to be sure, but if there's one thing Lord of the Rings proved in spades, it's that you can honor the fine points without losing the scope. Many of the actors were miscast (Eva Green and Sam Elliott being notable exceptions) or misdirected. The latter is an excuse I'd like to give the young Dakota Blue, who was so bland and empty as Lyra that it rendered the spunky heroine into empty exposition. Again, poor performances can be a creation of bad editing, but I believe that there would be a scene or two of hope if that was the case.
The whole product felt like it was by a team that didn't care about the text at all. It was a job, an Insta-Trilogy that a studio and a filmmaker latched onto because they could see a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. I'd love to believe that Weitz was truly railroaded on the film, but nothing I saw of the finished product suggested there was much to ruin. What do other Pullman fans think? Could The Golden Compass have been salvaged in editing, or do you think more was rotten in the college of Oxford than Weitz would have us believe?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
11-23-2009 @ 10:52AM
Kenji Meadu said...
I would give money to see that version.
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11-23-2009 @ 11:08AM
mdk said...
This movie came out like two YEARS ago, was way gay and sucked. Who cares?
So Weitz lucked into directing an ep of the Twilight franchise, whose audience consists of legions of fat 15 year old emo chicks who would pay top dollar multiple times to see the flick even if it was merely 2 hours of twinkly lights onscreen interrupted by occasional stills of shirtless, male, Abercrombie models (actually, I think that's a pretty spot-on description of the "plot" of New Moon anyway), this does not make him less of a hack. I'll wager, actually put down money, that the suits could have selected just about ANYONE to direct and the armies of hormone-charged, brain-dead teen girls would have shown up in the same massive numbers.
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11-23-2009 @ 11:00AM
frank said...
I enjoyed "Golden Compass" and have never understood all the criticism. It got me interested in the books...and any book that encourages kids to read is a good thing (although I am not a kid.) I thought it was fantastical like the book. The bears were really cool. In all I thought it was exciting and it left on a cliff hanger making me want to see more. Sam Elliot really stole the movie for me. He's one of my favorite actors, and seeing the movie prior to reading the books was absolutely perfect because his image was ingrained in my imagination throughout reading the series! I wish they had continued to make the Amber Spyglass and the Subtle Knife to finish out the series. I felt cheated that they didnt give the trilogy a fair chance...and apparently critical articles like this continue in not giving it a fair chance.
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11-23-2009 @ 11:44AM
dogcow said...
I loved the books, and what surprised me about the film was how it somehow made flying airships, talking armored polar bears, and hot witches somehow...boring. I don't think 30 more minutes would have cured that.
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11-23-2009 @ 3:21PM
Brett said...
I was upset when the "Director's Cut" never materialized. I am confident that there is a much better film in there, and I felt cheated out of seeing the ending, which was shot and included in the trailers.
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11-23-2009 @ 11:52AM
Gordon said...
What we did see wasn't perfect. It wasn't bad, either, I don't think — but it could very easily have been better if it had at least half an hour more characterization — and the book's actual ending. The movie just STOPPED, because New Line wanted to save the rest of it for the beginning of the second movie. Smart move, guys.
So yeah, I'd believe New Line screwed it up in the editing room.
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11-23-2009 @ 2:31PM
Sarah E. said...
Could it be Summit trusted him because no matter what he did it would be much better directing than the first and there is a fan base that is going to see the movie anyways? His direction made the movie significantly better but it still had cheesy dialogue that was directly adapted for the most part from the book that bugged the crap out of me. I would definitely give his future projects a chance.
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11-23-2009 @ 12:29PM
tederick said...
I generally agree, the film does not work tonally and the overall conceptual approach is weak. That's not a function of editing (though the editing is utterly, noticeably atrocious), just poor directorial vision.
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11-27-2009 @ 3:58PM
Christopher said...
people are claiming that Weitz has regained his mojo with
the killer record breaking opening weekend of NEW MOON.
just because a film makes tons of $$$ doesn't mean its
actually a good film. for instance in terms of writing, plot
and character development the t.v .series THE VAMPIRE DIARIES is sooooooooo much better than the TWILIGHT
franchise films.
also i like THE GOLDEN COMPASS. it was one of the few
sci-fic/fantasy films that i've seen that i recommnded to my
friends. so what's all this about it being a debacle???
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11-23-2009 @ 1:11PM
Rodney said...
Weitz's direction was bland and vision-less - not unlike Chris Columbus and his first two Potter flicks - he took a world full of imagination and wonder and made a film completely devoid of both.
But unlike those Columbus-era Potter movies, he didn't have the strong material to rely on since the material was neutered by the studio.
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11-23-2009 @ 1:51PM
Patrick said...
I'm inclined to believe Weitz on this. I thought the casting, acting, and effects were more or less perfect. Richards was *perfect* as Lyra (innocent, daring, bold, impertinent - sassy British accent and all). The effects and setting were absolutely beautiful and perfectly captured the essence of Lyra's world.
No, I think the real problem was with editing and the screenplay in general. I think the extra 30 minutes that was cut out could have made a huge difference even if they just included the proper ending and had the Bolvanger and Svalbard sequences in proper order. Cutting out the true ending and reversing those parts of the story made it lose all coherence (not to mention making no sense geographically). They also cut a number of important character development scenes that would have made the characters much more vivid. It also would have helped if they hadn't given away the whole premise for the story in the prologue but had instead let viewers discover it gradually as Lyra does in the books.
Finally, I wish they had simply kept the theological elements rather than trying to sanitize them at the expense of the story. I am somewhat unique in that I am both a strong conservative Christian AND a Pullman fan, and in fact I've written an extensive blog post analyzing the philosophy of His Dark Materials from a Christian perspective, which you can read here: http://prelator.wordpress.com/2009/02/16/his-dark-materials-book-review/. But for me, the anti-Christian elements in HDM is something to spur constructive philosophical debate and to be responded to directly, not protested and censored. I am deeply saddened that it was pressure from my fellow evangelical Christians here in America that helped motivate New Line to neuter this powerful story and ruin the potential for the entire series to be produce in film.
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11-23-2009 @ 2:20PM
Rodney said...
Don't forget that Weitz himself adapted the screenplay, which was poorly-constructed, badly paced and suffered from every-piece-of-dialogue-is-exposition syndrome.
He had lots of ambition, but, sadly, he has little skill as a filmmaker.
11-23-2009 @ 2:25PM
martisco said...
Weitz is full of it. The problem was the screenplay adaptation and the directing, not just the studio's choices. People who hadn't read the book felt utterly drowned in boring expository talk; people who have read the book were merely dropping their jaws in disbelief at how badly a production team could just... not... GET IT.
By any rule of screen adaptation this one sucks. When adapting a novel for film, you must make choices - you must choose which scenes you wish to lovingly highlight, and which scenes must be telescoped and which must be dropped. The screenwriters did none of that, instead opting to belabor the plotine over character, drama and any sense of wonder. Every bit of plot in the book got its 15 seconds of exposition... meanwhile, the utterly KEY relationship between Lyra and her daemon was barely touched on at all. How can you screw that up??? Pan was just an animal who tagged around with Lyra in this film. Instead, the filmmakers bizarrely felt that this story was somehow all about the great love between Lyra and Iorek, which at times started to feel just creepy. Sure, Iorek was Lyra's great ally, but this story is NOT about them!
Daniel Craig as Lord Asriel... oy. Craig is a fine actor in his own right, I love him as Bond, but he is NOT Lord Asriel (think: Timothy Dalton, who played him on stage). By the time they were showing made-up scenes of Asriel being captured in the North and saying "Wait, let's talk this out like gentlemen," I was throwing stuff at the screen. WTF? Having Asriel act completely out of character for the sake of some formulaic chuckles?
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11-23-2009 @ 3:52PM
Tom said...
Weitz himself forgets the only thing he's ever done that was worth anything was "American Pie". New Line screwed itself in so many ways, and "Golden Compass" didn't help. Maybe they should have took care of all the hands that fed them i.e. Peter Jackson, and so on.
Weitz just got lucky that he was an experienced enough to direct and Summit hired him to over-see the next in there long line of "Twilight" cash cows. If I was actually a fan, I'd be upset that they keep changing people behind the scenes so they can push these movies out like an assembly line.
New Line crumbled because of bad business, "Golden Compass" sucked and I fell asleep. So Weitz and New Line can both say what they want. A studio can only blame themselves for a bad product, same goes for a director.
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11-23-2009 @ 4:26PM
Edd Miles said...
I am in the fairly unique position of having met Chris Weitz shortly after the Golden Compass' premier. At the time, he gave the impression that he didn't like the cut, he agreed with many of my critisms (He had already read my review, which was nice to hear!). Having said that, not all the flaws were in the cut, the over-reliance on SFX for one, and some of the charachter portrayals were way off. (And the song "Lyra" over the credits - Ugh!)
I do believe there's a better film in the material than we have seen yet, and I remain hopeful we will see it one day. It probably wont please me (I'm the die-hard book fan movie directors fear!) but it could certainly make us all happier. Plus, if it sold well, that might give them encouragement to make the next two, and hopefully not ruin them!
-Edd
Forum Administrator, HisDarkMedia.com network
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11-23-2009 @ 6:07PM
DwDunphy said...
Honestly, both the Golden Compass book and movie were not all that great. The source materials (pardon the pun) needed a lot of adaptation just to get started, but in New Line's zeal to put up a new franchise to replace Lord Of The Rings (and to compete with parent Warners' Harry Potter) the project was jump started.
Weitz can take his shots at the post-production shortcuts, and may be right to it, but he gladly signed on to something that was weak from the start and that is all on him.
As for his success with New Moon, he needn't break his collar bone while trying to pat himself on the back. This movie would have been a hit even if it was shot on an old 1980s camcorder. It has every sales pin pushed in already, he was just the means to a foregone end.
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11-25-2009 @ 12:13PM
CwMovieFan said...
I love the books and thought the movie was really entertaining. Sure it wasn't as good as the books but it was still a good film. I would love to see a director's cut of the film. But what I would really love to see is The Subtle Knife brought to the screen with the same cast (which isn't happening of course). It depresses me that The Golden Compass failed while a movie as awful as Transformers (or its sequel) becomes such a hit. Proof again that the masses are submental dweebs.
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11-23-2009 @ 6:03PM
terrymcbeer said...
The Golden Compass was a great book and the movie was just OK. You could tell as you watched that a bunch was cut and it's completely believable that the studio didn't want to offend.
The problem with the Golden Compass, was always that Volumes 2 and 3 were utter tripe that, rather inelegantly, led an assault on religion and god (both literally and figuratively) that most people who enjoy good writing would find lame, not just Christians.
I worked in a bookstore when the 3rd book in the series came out and, man, I've never seen so many angry parents.
I was sad that the Golden Compass bombed, I'd like to see a Director's Cut, but bottom line...even a good Director's Cut would be like the Matrix. A glorious start to an incredible flame-out.
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11-23-2009 @ 11:04PM
H said...
This is a good point, terrymcbeer. The children's mission wasn't just to kill a priest, it was to kill God himself. This story excludes a large portion of a potential audience by doing this. Orthodox Christians weren't the only ones offended, they were just the loudest group. These books insulted anyone who had any hint of religion, from the orthodox to agnostics who simply believe in a vague higher power. This left a very narrow audience.
The books were popular because they were (arguably) well-written, controversial and catered to a niche group. The movie wasn't well-written and although it enjoyed the same fire-fueling controversies, many people already knew what to expect, so the surprises and shocks were gone. I don't think every popular book can be made into a successful movie; this is a prime example of a book that should've stayed a book.
11-24-2009 @ 2:20AM
Will said...
I thought Compass was a fine film, with some excellent casting, including the child casting. The look of the film was nice as well -- not utterly fictional-looking/exaggerated like the Harry Potter films. It felt like a real alternate world, as indeed it should have.
I regret that the sequels were not made, but I discovered the audio-play adaptations of the books are well worth listening to.
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