THE GOLDEN COMPASS teaser poster.
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GOLDEN COMPASS Director Answers Questions
By: Jarrod Sarafin, News EditorDate: Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Source: MTV
It's not often when a director will sit down with fans before a high-profile movie gets released and answers tough questions relating to his project. That's exactly what Chris Weitz, director of THE GOLDEN COMPASS, just did for a Q&A session over at MTV. He was asked some strong fan-related questions about the adaptation of the Pullman series and how much he cut or left in the final cut.
Here's a sample, the first question being about the religious angle of the story...
QUESTION #1 (from Simon):
Some changes were made in the adapting process — taking out talk of religion, original sin, beating death, etc. — to avoid controversy. And yet, some religious groups are still upset. If you can’t please everybody either way, if it’s not possible to avoid controversy by taking religion out, do you feel more or less emboldened to put it back in the rest of the films?
ANSWER:
It’s very important that people understand that nobody just hands you a couple hundred million dollars and says “Go ahead, knock yourself out!” What you have is a dynamic — you could call it a debate — between me, the filmmaker, and them, the studio — that, one hopes, results in a good film. Sometimes I win, sometimes I lose. It is my job to fight, by hook or by crook, for the best adaptation of the book possible. It is their job to get the movie to pay back its investors. Even Peter Jackson had to deal with this dynamic, which is why there were shorter theater releases and longer DVD releases of the LOTR movies. But also consider that there was practically nothing that might be deemed controversial in LOTR (other than what you might consider some reflexive racism on Tolkien’s part).
So, how does one go about adapting a book that has controversial elements into a film that a very wide variety of people can enjoy, without betraying the original? One tries to be clever about it. I realized that the overt stating of some of the themes in “The Northern Lights”/”The Golden Compass” would never — this is important to make clear — never EVER get across the goal line. There isn’t a wide enough audience for that — yet. If I wanted to popularize this series of extraordinary books and open them to a wider reading public than ever before, I was going to have to make some compromises. But I also knew that as a filmmaker one has more means of expression than dialogue, and that dialogue is a more subtle business than characters saying exactly what the characters say in the book. Sometimes I transpose elements - for instance, the biblical ideas that Asriel addresses towards the end of the book are voiced in a different context (and at shorter length) by Mrs. Coulter at Bolvangar in the film. Sometimes I turn textual or narrative arguments into visual ideas.
What I would say to fans of the book who are worried about the fidelity of the film is - just see the film. Then we’ll have a good point of reference from which to talk. Or, of course, don’t see the film if you think that the book itself is harmed by departures from the text. Philip Pullman likes to quote James M. Cain on this issue. Once, when somebody asked him if he was worried what a movie adaptation would do to his book, he said, “What do you mean? The book is right over there, on the shelf.”
Now, one thing that some of the extremists who have attacked the film are right about is that I would be happy if it made more people read the books - not because I am pursuing any sort of atheist agenda (this is a ridiculous idea), but because they are great works of literature, beautiful, permanent, and unassailable. They’re not going anywhere. And as for those who are concerned that I have not used the word “Church” but only the word “Magisterium” for the bad guys, and that sort of thing, I would advise them to do a little research into the meaning of the word “Magisterium” for starters. Some people will only be satisfied if the film I’ve made is an outright attack on religion, which to me shows that they have misapprehended the meaning of Pullman’s books as much as the “other side.”
It’s true, though, that “The Subtle Knife” and “The Amber Spyglass” tread in territory that is much more controversial than the first book. This is also addressed by a bunch of questions that I will lasso under the heading “what next?” Well, though I saw it as my duty to build the franchise of “His Dark Materials” on as solid a grounding as I could, it would all be in vain if the second and third films did not have the intellectual depth and the iconoclasm of the second and third books. The whole point, to me, of ensuring that “The Golden Compass” is a financial success is so that we have a solid foundation on which to deliver a faithful, more literal adaptation of the second and third books. This is important: whereas “The Golden Compass” had to be introduced to the public carefully, the religious themes in the second and third books can’t be minimized without destroying the spirit of these books. There is simply no way to adapt them without dealing with Lyra’s destined role, her secret name, and the war in the heavens. I will not be involved with any “watering down” of books two and three, since what I have been working towards the whole time in the first film is to be able to deliver on the second and third films. If I sense that this is not possible, there’s no point my continuing to work on them.
Let me also kind of round up some of the other questions in the same vein that I have received - let’s call them the “Religion” questions. First off, I would like to state what I think about Philip Pullman’s books and their view of religion. A lot of people — mostly those who haven’t read the books but are only repeating what they have read in some biased chain e-mails — are saying that Philip is “against religion” or “against Christianity.” These people don’t really want to engage with the very subtle philosophical and theological ideas in “His Dark Materials.” There are many grand ideas and themes in “His Dark Materials,” and Pullman asks us to question a lot of cherished and engrained beliefs; but if I had to boil it down, I would say that Pullman is against the abuse of religion for political power. He is against forcing people to believe what you believe, and against accepting something you are told without thinking about it. Which makes it ironic that none of the people who have attacked the film from a religious angle have seen the film!
To read much more from this Q&A, click here.
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As for the movie, I must say that I'm looking forward to it. But some of the CGI work I've seen so far doesn't look real promising. Hopefully the final product will look better. I love this genre, so I hope it does well so we can get the sequels as well.