I've been aware of the books since they've been published, tried reading through the first one but never quite finished it. Honestly, I never thought twice about the books. I remember the first film THE GOLDEN COMPASS but saw it once and thought nothing of it afterwards. So I gave the HBO show a try, since HBO does have a reputation of capturing the source material in a more accurate way.
Right away, it's easy to tell that this is a faithful adaptation, or the closest you'll get to it. I've seen the entire show. S1-3, and by far S1 is has the best execution.
S2 started out great, but fizzled out with lazy writer decisions that ultimately made powerful, key character useless. I'm not sure how accurate S2 is to the book, but characters like Lee and the Shamon guy were pretty much useless, and the witches were portrayed as incompetent which didn't make sense given their skills and abilities.
Mrs. Coulter and Golden Monkey were by far the only characters I truly enjoyed throughout the series. Lyra was annoying at times, but she reached an unbearable level of stupidness in S3 when she decided to venture to the Land of the Dead just to tell her dead friend Roger sorry. Like... WHAT!? Not only was this decision incredibly selfish on her part, but it made no sense. And of course, conveniently Roger and all the dead people are trapped in sort of WW2 Ghetto or something and of course, Lyra came in the nick of time to rescue these dead people from the afterlife.... Wow, that conveniently made her selfish decision to leave Pan behind less stupid than it actually was.
S3 is the biggest shock, where it feels like you accidently skipped ahead to like S5 of a show. S3 packs in a LOT of content that previous seasons didn't even come close to. At last, we see the denizens of other worlds coming together and its fantastic to see. Yet at the same time, I was a bit confused with the worldbuilding. As a nonbook reader, I was thrown off on how easily Lord Asriel (why is this dude called a "lord" again?) was able to construct an insanely advanced, interdimensional craft in just a few months, and is able to skip between the worlds solely based on your intention alone. So, he basically has the power of angles built into a machine, which again makes you wonder why he had to kill Roger to open a hole in the sky when all he had to do was build this ship in the first place, which can seemingly leave and enter worlds without windows...
But I digress. This show has a lot of weird moments like that, for instance, how Mrs. Coulter was able to not only tame but control the Specters after just one encounter with the beings. Okay... I could suspend my belief that Lyra could read the compass with some innate Dust ability, but for Asriel to MacGyver up a magic UFO in months and for Mrs. Coulter to perform supernatural feats out of thin air, I can't.
Overall, the SFX on this show are immaculate. I haven't seen such clean and polished effects in a while and the cinematography Is crisp and ultrasmooth. But the writing department got worse as the show went on. It's like what one reviewer said, that the show was sort of stuck with an identity crisis. Like it didn't know if it wanted to be a gritty, dark otherworld adventure or remain a kid's quest, fairytale.
This is a show with clear ups and downs, highs and lows, but overall, I'd rate it slightly above average.
Right away, it's easy to tell that this is a faithful adaptation, or the closest you'll get to it. I've seen the entire show. S1-3, and by far S1 is has the best execution.
S2 started out great, but fizzled out with lazy writer decisions that ultimately made powerful, key character useless. I'm not sure how accurate S2 is to the book, but characters like Lee and the Shamon guy were pretty much useless, and the witches were portrayed as incompetent which didn't make sense given their skills and abilities.
Mrs. Coulter and Golden Monkey were by far the only characters I truly enjoyed throughout the series. Lyra was annoying at times, but she reached an unbearable level of stupidness in S3 when she decided to venture to the Land of the Dead just to tell her dead friend Roger sorry. Like... WHAT!? Not only was this decision incredibly selfish on her part, but it made no sense. And of course, conveniently Roger and all the dead people are trapped in sort of WW2 Ghetto or something and of course, Lyra came in the nick of time to rescue these dead people from the afterlife.... Wow, that conveniently made her selfish decision to leave Pan behind less stupid than it actually was.
S3 is the biggest shock, where it feels like you accidently skipped ahead to like S5 of a show. S3 packs in a LOT of content that previous seasons didn't even come close to. At last, we see the denizens of other worlds coming together and its fantastic to see. Yet at the same time, I was a bit confused with the worldbuilding. As a nonbook reader, I was thrown off on how easily Lord Asriel (why is this dude called a "lord" again?) was able to construct an insanely advanced, interdimensional craft in just a few months, and is able to skip between the worlds solely based on your intention alone. So, he basically has the power of angles built into a machine, which again makes you wonder why he had to kill Roger to open a hole in the sky when all he had to do was build this ship in the first place, which can seemingly leave and enter worlds without windows...
But I digress. This show has a lot of weird moments like that, for instance, how Mrs. Coulter was able to not only tame but control the Specters after just one encounter with the beings. Okay... I could suspend my belief that Lyra could read the compass with some innate Dust ability, but for Asriel to MacGyver up a magic UFO in months and for Mrs. Coulter to perform supernatural feats out of thin air, I can't.
Overall, the SFX on this show are immaculate. I haven't seen such clean and polished effects in a while and the cinematography Is crisp and ultrasmooth. But the writing department got worse as the show went on. It's like what one reviewer said, that the show was sort of stuck with an identity crisis. Like it didn't know if it wanted to be a gritty, dark otherworld adventure or remain a kid's quest, fairytale.
This is a show with clear ups and downs, highs and lows, but overall, I'd rate it slightly above average.