From the Producers of Narnia...

The Golden Compass

I like fantasy, I like the whole idea about thinking about an alternative universe where people are different, yet somewhat the same. After watching the beautiful Chronicles of Narnia, I thought The Golden Compass would be just as great, and it was indeed beautiful. The settings of the alternate universe was magically created and visually spectacular.

The thing I most like is the idea of Daemons and the passageway to other parallel universes. I wonder what would my daemon be like had I been a character in The Golden Compass...

(erm, please take the short test and tell me if this daemon is me, thanks~)

I also liked the ice bears a lot. Throughout the show I was wondering if I could get my own polar bear or not, but I think a real polar bear would crush me instead of letting me ride on his back. haha~

Bridge to Terabithia

Another film from the producers of Narnia which I rented over the weekend. When I saw the trailer of Terabithia some six months ago, I thought it was another fantasy film just like Narnia. Especially after The Golden Compass came out, I all the more thought that Terabithia was indeed a fantasy film, and boy, is there not other trailer more misleading than this.

Bridge to Terabithia turned out instead to be more of a drama than a fantasy. All along, I was waiting for the leads to cross the bridge to Terabithia and fight the trolls and monsters and reign king and queen just like how it was like in Narnia, but the show just dragged on. Even after they crossed the creek with the "enchanted" rope, there were still no sign of monsters. Then the troll came out, but it was like there, but not there. Then it hit me, all the trolls and monsters were just a figment of their imagination. The whole Terabithia thingie was just their imagination.

Then I was hoping that their imagination could be more vivid, but the plot turned to the serious issue. About life being poor, about bullies in school, about family problems, about teacher problems, about being taunted, and about handling of tragedy. It was more like a family crisis kind of thing, like a story teaching parents about parenting, those very dense and serioud issues.

The CG parts of the trolls and monsters in Terabithia which I saw in the trailer was just that, every scene with monsters was edited into the trailer, and the trailer took none of the scenes from the serious parts, and the serious parts was like 95% of the whole film. I felt pretty cheated. Still, it would have been a great film had I knew the plot outline before I watched the film, rather than having the sinking feeling of being cheated.

Yup, by the way, both titles are adaptations from books, just that one is a fantasy novel, the other is a coming of age kind of novel.