The Golden Compass (Movie)

Three things about the Golden Compass:

First off, the Golden Compass as a movie would benefit from one main thing: more exposition. Every scene and dialog between the characters would try and cram as many story and world elements as possible, and each scene would pass much too fast, without any time for the viewer to become established in this world. I never felt particularly engaged in the story, because it seemed like the movie didn't fully develop anything long enough for me to get settled in it. And to top that off, it seemed like the movie was introducing a new character in every scene.

Second, another thing to note here is the re-ordering of a main section of the plot. In the book, Lyra (Laura?) goes to the North, finds the ghost-kid, goes to the Aperture Science Center for Learning, then to the Bear Kingdom, and then to her fathers observatory for the grandifantasticaluous finale. In the movie, the sequence of events is switched up by sending her to the Bear Kingdom first, and then to the Science Center. The 'people who make this movie' must've did this for a reason, but I can't really see what it is, and I don't particularly see how it strengthens the story at all (or weakens it for that matter).

Thirdly and lastly, they chopped the ending of the book to smithereens by ending the movie at about page 170/200. Having read the book, I was expecting the movie to end at a certain time, and since the plot wasn't fully comprehensible about what the characters were trying to achieve, the ending just seemed to be slapped on out of nowhere. It was basically like the characters said, "We are going to solve the final problem set out upon by the beginning of the movie!" But instead of them spending the approximately needed twenty more minutes to do that, the movie ends. However, I can see why they didn't want to end a happy children's' tale with a little boy getting killed in order to open up a portal to another world. But then you have to start the second movie with that, so I guess it would just be postponing the inevitable.

Final Score: It's not as good as Enchanted.