In this post Laini Taylor says that she hates the screenplay of The Golden Compass.
"And, everything felt so rushed and smashed together. There was no space around the important moments. Just this barreling forward, trying to get it done."
I agree completely with that statement.
I think she's right about what's wrong, but wrong about why it's wrong. To me, all those issues are an editing issue (and I seriously doubt the writer/director or the editor had any meaningful say in them whatsoever). For some reason it seems it was decided that a big-budget fantasy epic needed to fall under a particular running time. Dunno why.
In any case it seems that a re-edit would solve the "gobbler" problem she mentions (which is a big plot-driving problem). A re-edit should also make a bigger deal out of the Golden Compass itself (which is interesting because apparently the aleothomiter -- however it's spelled -- was not the "golden compass" until after the book was published) and make Lyra's reading of it a more important plot point. I ain't seen the shooting script, but I understand Weiss' script was better than Stoppard's, so I dunno how much footage is actually out there (technically you'd want to see the script super's notes to see what was shot.) And I have to stop using parentheticals for the rest of the week ('cause I just used up my quota.)
Oh, I see why she's wrong. It turns out Laini Taylor has a horrible, twisted, sick, prejudice against robots. That explains everything right there. Some of the best writers were robots. My robot friends tell me that Hemingway was an early M-Class robot. I believe whatever the robot overlords tell me.
Did I say "overlords"? I meant "protectors."
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