Comments on: Comments on 14484

Post number 14484

adrianhon — Tue, 05 Feb 2002 14:05:29 -0800

His Dark Materials Trilogy to be co-produced by New Line. Philip Pullman's Whitbread award-winning trilogy of fantasy novels for children is one of the best series I've read in a long time, and it's equally entertaining for adults. If books were food, then Harry Potter would be a beefburger and the HDM trilogy would be a gourmet meal. Also: Philip Pullman on How to Write a Book. Anyway... let's just hope they don't screw the films up.

By: darukaru

darukaru — Tue, 05 Feb 2002 14:13:40 -0800

Oh MAN. And if you thought the fundies were coming down hard against Harry Potter, just wait till they hear about what happens in the third book.

By: vacapinta

vacapinta — Tue, 05 Feb 2002 14:14:56 -0800

Let's hope. I've been recommending this series to everyone esp. the Potter fans out there. Pullman manages to create some dark and original mythologies even as he pulls together elements of Medieval magic and Christian Gnosticism.

By: vacapinta

vacapinta — Tue, 05 Feb 2002 14:19:43 -0800

One mark of the books magic is that reality seems so much paler in comparison. A friend lamented, "How painful it is to not have a daemon."

By: Marquis

Marquis — Tue, 05 Feb 2002 14:25:48 -0800

An excellent series (and The Amber Spyglass was a Booker nominee). Should translate quite well to the screen - far more deep and far-reaching than HP, but also much, much darker. These are books that respect their readers.

By: fujikosmurf

fujikosmurf — Tue, 05 Feb 2002 14:34:35 -0800

I like the books... but I don't see a movie version coming out very well. I'm guessing it's going to be another Mists of Avalon... great looking, but fucking the whole message of the story up. I have no faith in adaptions.

By: Kafkaesque

Kafkaesque — Tue, 05 Feb 2002 14:45:39 -0800

I can't wait for the movie version of Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. Now that's entertainment.

By: laukf

laukf — Tue, 05 Feb 2002 14:46:37 -0800

Love the books, which I read back to back over Christmas. However, I can't really see this translating into film at all. I still can't believe I read a book with a talking bear in it.

By: Electric Elf

Electric Elf — Tue, 05 Feb 2002 15:01:16 -0800

Oh, no. I was hoping against hope that Pullman wouldn't sell the movie rights. Then again, hopefully whoever they get to direct this will do something closer to the LOTR adaption than the Harry Potter adaption. That doesn't mean I'll go and see it, even so.

By: NortonDC

NortonDC — Tue, 05 Feb 2002 15:08:27 -0800

Hah! I'm in the middle of The Subtle Knife (book two), which inspired this little post. I'd been reading a bunch of heavy non-fiction (Nickel and Dimed, Fast Food Nation, Working, John Adams) and was looking for a good ol' story to break it up. I had an "eh" reaction to the first Harry Potter book, but the first half of this trilogy has tight grip on my imagination. Good shiznit, highly recommended.

By: jazon

jazon — Tue, 05 Feb 2002 15:34:53 -0800

Both my wife and I have read the trilogy, and gave a copy to our niece. In a couple years our daughter will be old enough to take the series on as well. I'm in agreement with Electric Elf, in the wish that the films are more LOTR than Harry Potter. I hope they pull it off. I had heard Jo Rowling being quoted, when Amber Spyglass (the third book of the Trilogy) came out, saying was strongly influenced by Pullman's work.

By: owillis

owillis — Tue, 05 Feb 2002 15:40:47 -0800

I'm just waiting for the faithful adaptations of Tales of A Fourth Grade Nothing, Superfudge and the spine-tingling Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. The line starts here. Indeed.

By: Arqa

Arqa — Tue, 05 Feb 2002 15:41:33 -0800

"...let's just hope they don't screw the films up..." - we all know they will though, don't we? :-(

By: Electric Elf

Electric Elf — Tue, 05 Feb 2002 16:45:57 -0800

Feh. I meant adaptation. Someone needs to remind me not to post at MeFi when I'm talking on the phone. I'm actually less worried about the movie itself (but wondering how the daemons are going to be depicted) and more worried about the marketing. The Potter marketing was just ridiculous. For some reason, I can't imagine seeing little Lyra dolls all over the place.

By: pxe2000

pxe2000 — Tue, 05 Feb 2002 17:33:28 -0800

well, if any studio had to get it, it might as well have been new line. they've released some interesting films in the past (the anniversary party, wise blood, hedwig & the angry inch, and lord of the rings), and their work on lotr alone gives me some confidence that they will try and do justice to this. look on the bright side: at least miramax didn't buy the rights to this for another potential oscar for daddy's little girl, gwynnie paltrow...

By: nstop

nstop — Tue, 05 Feb 2002 18:15:59 -0800

Oh wow, I absolutely love this series... am definitely torn about movie adaptation more due to tone than anything else. The books are definitely dark, anti-organized religion (I think I remember reading somewhere than Pullman thought of this trilogy as kind of an antidote to the transparently Christian Narnia series), and not really "uplifting" in the mass-market Hollywood sense. It'll be interesting to see who ends up directing it...

By: KirkJobSluder

KirkJobSluder — Wed, 06 Feb 2002 07:45:16 -0800

I'm afraid of course they're going to screw it up. We are talking about a series that is (in part) a literary satire of Paradise Lost and C. S. Lewis packed into a "young adult" trilogy. It is basically a series about philosophy, and after having seen pretty much all of the moral argument to gutted from from Count of Monte Cristo, I can't think of many directors that would have the guts to do it, and the studios with the guts to fund it, or moviegoers with the guts to actually watch a movie about theology.