The Golden Compass

Impressions before seeing it
I think The Golden Compass and Holes may be the only two instances where I can say I read the book before seeing the movie. I really enjoyed the book because it had some cool ideas and was a fun read, so I'd been wanting to see the movie for a while, but I tried not to keep my expectations too high because I knew it sort of bombed given that the two sequels didn't show up.

How was it?
It's not the movie's fault, but the unfortunate thing about reading a book before the movie is that it's disappointing if characters or events don't turn out the way you imagined them while reading. There were several instances of that, from Lee Scoresby being an old long-haired guy when I imagined him more like Brad Pitt clad in suspenders and a newsie cap to Mrs. Coulter's golden monkey looking like a miniature long-haired baboon when I thought of him as a golden version of the monkey seen in Friends or Ace Ventura. Also, while I enjoy the work of Ian McKellen and can't deny that he has a cool voice, he didn't seem right for the voice of Iorek Byrnison. I always thought of something bigger and deeper, like the voice of John Goodman or Wrex from Mass Effect.

But even aside from that I still had a few problems. The script made it obvious that the book was being abridged to fit into a two hour length, because it felt choppy and abrupt in parts. If I hadn't already read the book I might not have even known what was going on because of it. One of the other unfortunate things about adaptations (or at least this one, but others do it too) is having to resort to characters explaining things that were much better demonstrated in the book because it didn't have to be diluted by a character's voice. And what was the point of merging Tony Makarios's character into Billy Costa's, other than that it probably cut costs for not hiring another child actor? That seemed almost as pointless as changing all the character names when A Prayer for Owen Meany was adapted into Simon Birch. And finally, they reversed the order of two major events and cut out the book's ending to make the movie's ending happier. I don't agree with that either, because this movie was meant to be the first part of a trilogy. Why on earth does it need to end happily when you have two more chapters to work back up to that? An unhappy ending makes audiences want to come back so they can see the problems get fixed. From reading the movie's Wikipedia entry it sounds like the studios forced the director to make a lot of stupid decisions he didn't agree with, so I will blame them.

Recommendation
You might enjoy it more if you haven't read the book - or, as I said, it may confuse you due to the script's truncations - but in spite of my complaining I didn't hate it. It was certainly disappointing, but it was still enjoyable in parts, and some things did look as I imagined them (Lyra's clothing, Mrs. Coulter, Lord Asriel's laboratory), so that was satisfying at least. And two armored polar bears fighting to the death can never be a bad thing (although I dislike that they were constantly referred to as "ice bears" and never once as "armored bears" like in the book). While I am generally against remakes, I wouldn't mind seeing this one remade if they can put it in the hands of studio executives who aren't morons.