Pondering Adaptations.

Thanks to Richard’s recommendation I have just finished reading Philip Pullman’s exquisite trilogy His Dark Materials. I am skeptical though about the upcoming film of the first book The Golden Compass due out in December. There are too many possible ways the movie can go wrong. At the very least, it has quite a tightrope to walk: how do you make a movie that will appeal to mainstream theistic America when a major theme of the trilogy is condemnation of organized religion. The answer seems to be to water down the philosophy and throw in lots of CGI.

Several years ago there was a stage adaptation of the trilogy performed at the National Theatre in London in two different runs. I will never get the chance to compare the versions but I suspect that I would find the theatrical version much more satisfying than the upcoming film. Theatre leaves a lot more to the imagination, after all.