felix-bergman

After the slew of forgettable low rating Marvel movies and Disney+ series since Endgame, and particularly after the roller coaster of mixed quality that was the Ms. Marvel show, I didn't have too high hopes going in to this one, but was pleasantly surprised. It could have done away with some forced cameos and some repeated scenes that does basically the same thing over and over, and instead focused a bit more on character growth and dialogue, but over all it worked well. The three leads of Monica Rambeuo, Captain Marvel and Ms. Marvel worked well together, it didn't feel like they were rubbing it in the audience face that it was a female lead cast, it was just a super hero movie that happened to have female leads. At 105 minutes it's on the shorter end for a Marvel movie, but it means it is more dense and rarely gets stale and it doesn't overstay it's welcome, though the comic reliefs in the form of Kamala's family and Goose the cat/flerken could have been given slightly less screen time in my opinion. One of the biggest problems is that to fully be on track going in you have to have watched not only Captain Marvel and Endgame, but also WandaVision and Ms. Marvel. It's getting very hard to keep up and make sure you are caught up and remember enough before going in to each new marvel movie, but if you aren't you could be left clueless as to what is going on. Over all not on par with Marvels best, but a step in the right direction compared to the latest bunch on movies, a sentiment I heard echoed from several of the 50 or so people that had made it to the cinema for opening night.

Not surprisingly the series makes wanted to amp up this fight to take more center stage than it did in the book, where it mostly plays out in the periphery while Will and Lyra look for their daemons. But it never got interesting. A bunch of red and blue dots colliding in mid air. The pansarbjörnar who does show up in the book was apparently too expensive to animate, the specters has a very short lived cameo role with no real satisfactory explanation as to how Marisa could just obliterate them all, when in the book this is when both Lyra and Will can see them for the first time.

They tried to add some backstory to King Ogunwe in the series, but I'm not invested at all in what happens to him or his people. Despite his lack of development in the book he was a much more interesting character there in my opinion.

In the book it was a big point that Metatron had once been human and still longed for human flesh, particularly women, which is Marisas whole plan going there, seducing him and tricking him into leaving the clouded mountain and go to Asriel. The show looked like it could have gone there, but ended up just being boring talk and some punches to the face instead. And I'm sorry, I know it's stated in the books that Marisa seems to be getting unusually far from hear daemon for not being severed, but this is getting ridiculous what we see in this episode.

And Will and Lyra looks like they are out on a Sunday Stroll rather than trying to find their daemons in the middle of a full scale war. What made this scene so tense in the book despite most of the battle being in the background is the urgency of finding the daemons before the bad guys do, eventually leading to them grabbing each others daemons by mistake. But here they act like there is no urgency at all and it's basically already over by the time they find them, so it just feels forced that they are sending them to yet another world.

And unless I missed something (I DID fall asleep but I think I rewound everything I slept through) they never explained the chariot with the authority. In the book, Metatron is the regent, but the actual Authority, the incredibly old angel who was claimed to be The God in many religions throughout all universes, was still around, to frail to do anything, but still needed to be kept alive by Metatron. So as the battle starts The Authority is transported away from the battle in a sort of casket, but his guard is attacked by cliff ghasts and Will and Lyra find him and think he looks so old and sad they let him out, at which he dies. We see this death in the series, but unless I missed something, someone who hasn't read the book will have absolutely 0 idea what that was all about. They just find a random glowing cube on the battlefield after the battle is all done and decide to cut it open and for like two seconds we see some old dude laying there before disappearing and we have no idea what just happened.

As a massive fan of the books I haven't been the biggest fan of the series. Even when they do follow the books, it just feels as if the actors and creators didn't have any love or understanding for the source material. The visuals are bland and boring compared to what flares up in my mind when I read the books, but then again I guess I can't really fault them for having a different mental image, but it sure made it that much harder for me to enjoy the show. Season 3 started OK, but quickly fell rather flat. Entire plots from the book is skipped or rushed over so quickly that we can never really grasp them, and at the same time they add new stuff not in the book that dosen't really add anything to the story and mostly just fleshes out bits that were already side bits in the book. As a result we land in the last episode and feel the story is all done.

Now, Love it or Hate it, the book has a rather long cool down at the end after they escape the Land of the Dead and Asriel and Marisa defeats Metatron, but at least for me personally it still has meaning. Having spent a lot more time with both Mary and the Mulefa as well Father Gomez on the hunt, as well as having a better grasp on the importance of such things as daemons, as well as having a completely different relationship with Serafina Pekkala, who is basically two totally different characters in the book and series, means the ending feels more meaningful than what we get here. And even spending a whole hour trying to stretch this ending where half the threes they were going to tie together are cut, they still fail to explain a lot of things. The mention in passing that daemons can't live for long periods of time outside the world they were born in. I've seen several reviews here claim it's stupid how they are being kept apart because deamons clearly can travel to other worlds and it's just the dictatorship of angels and witches. The angles and the witches are NOT the new regime, and in the books we have examples of how living outside your world weakens you. In the series Will's father seems pretty fit and healthy until he dies, but in the books he is pretty much in shambles, about ready to keel over by himself when he dies, after "just" 10 years in another world, having been a fit and strong explorer in the prime of life when he passed over. Also, in the book, the windows don't automatically close when the knife is destroyed, and there is nothing about only the barer being able to close them. Will have to teach the angels how to close them, so that they can make it their task to travel the multiverse and close all of the windows manually. And the witches can't travel between worlds just whenever they fell like it, only the angels can do that.

Despite the many flaws of explanation and pacing, I did think this episode managed to pull itself up slightly compared to the rest of the season. They messed up the first kiss scene in my opinion, as well as the lovers touching each other daemons scene, but then did an at least OK job from there on out, both with the love and the sad goodbyes, though I was thoroughly pissed that they didn't include the scenes in the end when Lyra meets the Jordan headmaster again and really proves in just a few short words (You have to promise to believe me) how much she has grown, and the very last scene in the botanic garden at night, when Lyra says they have to build it where they are.

Bild what?

The Republic of Heaven.

Went into this movie almost blind, the only thing I knew was it was a murder mystery and it had predominantly good reviews. I really liked the beginning where they cut back and forth from the different hearings, and over all the cinematography and set design was pretty good, but other than that I though it was utterly boring. We're given the answer to the mystery almost immediately, and not until it's only 10 min left of this movie does anything happen that brings any kind of doubt to the version we were told initially. So it never feels like a whodunnit, but rather "how to get away with it" and it dosen't even have any motives. I was totally uninterested in every single character, most of which didn't seem to have any motif for being accused of murder, and even less so when we've already been told how it happened. The twist at the end didn't do anything to make me think higher of this movie. It was so boring that I kept falling asleep. Given the time I had to rewind this 130 min movie took me over 3 hours to get through and several times I was on the verge to turning it of partway through which I almost never do. The 5/10 is only because the set design and the somewhat intriguing start. Based just on the story I'd give this 3/10.

Morbius was by no means any masterpiece. It was pretty forgettable over all, especially the action sequences, which isn't a good sign for an action movie, and throughout things just happened with no to very little build up and the few characters we had got very little in terms of development or explaining their relationships, and then it just kinda ended without me being ready for it.

That said I was never really bored in the theatre. It was an interesting enough premise, I understood the motivations and it kept a pretty straight line throughout. None of these actors are gonna win any Oscars for their work on this movie, but unlike some others I had no problem with any performance. Over all an OK night at the theatre and I would rather re-watch this than anything Disney/Marvel had put out post Far from home, except No Way Home, and even that isn't super good IMO, it's just special to watch because of all the returning actors. Try to pitch that movie but have every returning character from the other universes be played by different people you'd end up with something properly stupid.

For the first time ever watching a Pixar movie I felt like there was a clear market audience and I wasn't part of it. Everything else put out by Pixar has either been good or not so good, or Cars 2, and if there has been a target audience then I've clearly been part of that audience and never reflected over it. This time I kept thinking that this will probably speak a lot to some people, and I can see why, but I can't relate. The main point of the movie is of course the relationship between a child and a mother, but as someone who's parents were never very strict or controlling and which whom I've never had any major quarrels, I find it like standing outside and looking in through a foggy window trying to connect to that aspect of the movie. I have also never been a teenage girl or part of a loud screaming fan-base that just has to get tickets to X event, so that part also fell flat for me, and even though I was a teenager in the 2010's and my teenage years are probably closer to this movies depiction than say my parents in the 80's, the sort of language and mannerisms show in this movie was never something I or my closest friends adapted into our lives.

I still give this movie 6/10, which is not bad, because I can see that there is some appeal there is you are the right person for it. Also I applaud Pixar for going a bit further than usual with the hormonal teenager stuff. I haven't fact checked it, but I feel like this is the first time we've heard the word "sexy" used in a Pixar movie. Also there is talk of periods and pads and in one scene you can hear the song Bootylicious playing with audible lyrics. I though we were further off from seeing that in one of Disney/Pixars animated movies.

Vanilla Sky is about as literal as remakes commes. At least 97% of scenes are directly taken from the original Abre Los Ojos/Open your eyes, with very little cahnge. Even a lot of dialogue are almost word for word translated and transfered. I liked Abre Los Ojos a lot, and therefore I also like this movie. Had I watched this one before the original I might have rated it higher, and I know it's not quite fair to this one to rate it based on another movie, but as it is such a close copy, that is were I stand now. Vanilla Sky does win points for better describing the main characters company problems, but loses points over all for not feeling quite as emotional as the original. I wouldn't advise against seeing Vanilla Sky, but I'd first direct you towards the original. If you've already wtched Vanilla Sky and liked it, definatly look up the original, if you've watched abre los ojos already but not Vanilla Sky, I'd say you neednt bother too much about this movie.

This movie is for sure one of the best when it comes to acting and it's not surprising it several of it's actors was nominated for Oscars for their performances. However the "story" is too far detatched from my own life for this to hit home. I've never been married (and as such never divorced either), I don't have any kids and most of my imidiate family are still in their first marriages, including my paretns and grandparents. Still I know several firends who's parents are divorced, as well as some of my firends and some coussins, so I'm not virgin to the subject. Still, while I'm sure they all had their problems that they had to deal with (hence the divorce), I don''t know anyone who dragged lawyers into it or had to fight battles over custody of the kids or alomony and the like. Outwardly it all seems pretty smooth. It's either "Ok, we'll keep living close to eachother and as long as we are both clean and decent parents we split 50/50 whenever possible, and we each pay for the time the kid spends with us, not more, not less", or it's "We won't live close to eachother anymore, so let's decide one palce were the kids go to school and the other can see them on alternate weekends and longer periods over school breaks, in which case we'll work something out for how much the kids clothes and school material and toys etc. costs and split it". Maybe it's a cultural thing, since I live in Sweden, or maybe american movies/tv-shows just like to focus on the worst aspects of humanity and extream bad cases of divorce, or maybe everyone who I know who has been through one was just lucky exceptions, but this whole paying 100's of 1000's of dollars to bring in lawyers to sit in a room shouting at each other, not giving room for any acctual conversation to happen seems so surreal and unneccessary that I just can't find this movie very appealing. The court room scenes was also my least favorite parts of Kramer vs. Kramer, but at least that movie was maily about a father and son bonding, which still made it an overall positive experience.

I think I can see the apeal of this movie for some people, which is why I rate it 6 stars rather than 5, but I personally felt to detatched from the subject matter. I've not been a part of most of the "teenage" stuff that happens, and I've never had such a rocky relationship with my parent, or an identity-crisis, nor do I really know anyone who has, at least openly so that I could see it or were confided in, so I couldn't relate to anything that happened on screen. it didn't help that, as a Swede, the american School/College system is complete and utter gibberish to me.

By far the best episode of the series, saying something about the series rather than this particular episode. I actually feel giving it 7 stars is generous, but the adaptation critic in me thought that the mostly good adaptation of this episode made up for some of its other flaws. That leaves this series with: 1 pretty good episode (this one) 2 episodes I though was kinda good when I was still hoping that this series was gonna be good, might not rate them as highly if I would rewatch Them with all the facts of future episodes in mind (ep 2 and 3) 1 episode that was a disappointment for me, but decent enough to keep me watching (ep 1) 2 episodes that were pretty bad, mostly cause of bad acting, rushed scenes, choppy editing and poor setups making what happened in them not as impactful as they could have been (ep 6 and 7) 2 god awful episodes that I which would burn in a nuclear explosion until all remnants of it were wiped from the face of the earth (ep 4 and 5).

The ending still convinced me to give a possible second season a go. I am worried, cause The Subtle Knife is my favorite book in the series, but I recently re-read it, and I realized that it's not too dependent on the first book. Most of the screw ups from this season can be ignored or easily re-written if they just want to, I just hope they bring on another writer than Jack Throne.

On the other hand the series as a whole convinced me to cancel my pre-order for the steelbook of this show, and like I said in my review for episode 5, I would not pay to keep watching this series, if my TV provider stops providing HBO Nordic, I'm not that eager to watch a second season.

EDIT: I saw another rewiev bring up a very valid point about this series. During the whole series I have been somewhere between mildly annoyed and furious about them showing Boreal crossing between the worlds, not completely inacurate, at least not at some points, but ruining this reveal in what is book 2. But, having read the books 10+ times, I've always reviewed already knowing that the traveling between worlds was a thing. But if you are reading the first book for the first time with no prior knowledge, this is very much the surprise ending. We know Asriel is studying the other worlds, but we don't even know if it is possible to travel between them, because we are not intorduced to the windows until book 2. So, while I originally held the stance that "It's bad for the pacing/editing, and I don't really like it, but sure it isn't hurting anyone", I've now come to realize that, yes, this decision is hurting EVERYONE who is experiencing this seires as thier very first encounter with this material, though those poor people aren't done any favors by the rest of the series either.

Seriously, a lot of shots in this whole series has been so darkly shot that it's hard to tell what is going on.

Other than that, yeah, the "fight" in this was awful. Despite this part of the story getting a full hour to itself, everything felt rushed and sped up. We hardly see the fight and the "armored bears" don't wear their armor. In the books their armor is what makes them armored bears, it's their souls, and it's described in detail how Iroek, who made his himself to fit him perfectly, is much more fitting and functional than Iofur's, who had his made extra fancy with unnatural decorations that he was insipred to by Mrs. Coulter. In the movie it was a good way to tell them apart. Also, I don't know what age rating this has recieved in GB or US, but in Sweden, the 2007 movie (where we did get a much better battle with the true ending, even if it lacked blood) was rated 11, which ment 7 year olds were allowed in the theatres if someone over 18 accompanied them. On HBO Nordic this series currently rates as 15, the highest possible age rating something can recieve in Sweden.

Also, I wasn't a fan of cutting to Will all the time. I guess setting his character up earlier than in the books is fine, though I wish they'd waited, at least a little longer. But I still don't see why Boreal cares so much. And while the character introduction/setup could have taken place at any time during Lyra's timeline, what we see happening in this episode does not take place during any part of what we read Lyra do. This part of Will's story all happens over one day, he drops his mom of in the early morning (at his old pianoteacher in the book), goes to Oxford, finds the window and meets Lyra during the night of that same day, by which point Lyra claims to have wonderd around for several days or even longer than a week since the end of the first book, which we haven't reached yet, so there is really no warrant for interupting the interesting part of the story to show this part of Will's story right now.

Voiceacting was good, and while McAvoy isn't who I imagined as Asriel he does do a great job, all other performances feels meh. Not any Emmy-winnig achievements.

And lastly, how does the magisterium know so quickly that Iofur has been killed? It's not like phones exist at all in Lyra's world, and even if they have an aletheometer, they would first have to think to ask that question, which, why would they, then they would have to give it top priority or it would be put aside for several months while Fra Pavel did all the other questions in queue, then it would still take days or weeks before they had the answer. In the book it's specifically stated by the aletheometer that Mrs. Coulter haven't heard about Iofur yet and that she goes to Svalbard thinking she can still manipulate him to work for her some more.

For this episode I actually don't have a lot of negative feelings about the changes made from the book. There weren't a ton of them and nothing was to serious (that hadn't been violated before), still I cannot really like this episode. Does people actually think this is good? 10 and 9 stars? I thought this episode was utterly boring to watch. Of course the design direction of a movie or a TV show will very rarely be exactly what any one reader imagined, so I won't say anything was really wrong, but Bolvangar did look very different from what I expected it too. The design they went with just felt a bit boring to me. Not threatening, but not really "Horrible place that still looks inviting" vibe either, just bleak and boring. Beside that it just feels like this episode has very little heart and emotion. It centers totally around daemons, yet most people aren't seen having daemons anyway, and daemons are still so poorly explained in the show that, if I would have only seen the show, I wouldn't know why to care about any of this. In the book we get small portions of information about the daemon/human connection throughout the whole story, making this part of the books that much more horrible. In the books we learn that there is a special bond between them, that it hurts your very soul if they travel more than a few yards away from them, that the daemons disappear when we die, that there is a taboo agains humans touching other peoples daemons, which is seen as such a heinous crime that even in large battles people avoid touching other's daemons. We also learn how unnatural a person without a daemon is. That witches can send their daemons far away isn't super common knowledge, at least not for the brattish, where not a lot witches live, and when Farder Coram talks about first meeting Serafina he says he was horrified to see that she had no daemon (cause he was far away), and it said that he might as well has said "She had no head" based on the reaction the other men has upon this information.

In the show daemons are rarely present, not even Pantalimon seems to be there 100% of the time, and they have not been explained much further than "a talking personal pet" except for a few lines of writing in the very first episode. I can't think of any instance explaining to me why I should care about all this severing, which is probably why they keep all the kids at Bolvangar in the show, cause if you don't have the zombie kids to show up and show how cruel the scientists were by keeping them locked up, no-one would understand what the big deal was. And no-one seems to have told the actors either about any of this, seeing how little emotion they show. In the book it was the most heart wrenching moment when Lyra finds the daemon cages and Kaisa (Serafina Pekkalas daemon) shows up and does some magic to open the cages and they all try to touch her cause they miss their own kids so much, but they can't cause of the taboo, and Kaisa helping them all escape to go looking for the kids (which are not held at Bolvangar in the book, they were all just released into the wild to make do as best they could), but even if they find the kids again, they will never be whole. And in the book there is a line that really cements how horrible Mrs Coulter is, when one of the doctors say that she was super exited about watching the old severing process, where the people was literally pulled apart from their daemon. And it was while spying on this conversation that Lyra was captured, and they decide not to tell Mrs. Coulter about it cause they don't want it to seem like they have security problems, but she shows up anyway and just in the last second to pull Lyra from the cage, much more emotional than she being invited to a scheduled severing and just pushing the stop button when she sees Lyra.

Was there a scene in the show where Lyra takes the spy fly? I just know that it wasn't like in the books where she has Iroek make her a tin to keep the tin in (which happens to come out about the same size and shape as the aletheometer) and one decoy tin to put in Farder Corams packs he won't realize it's missing. I was thinking as this scene came along "How are they going to sole this now, she don't have the spy fly", but then she did, but maybe I just forgot an earlier scene from an earlier episode.

But I have to ask, what was the point of having Ma Costa teaching Lyra to make sparks with the four in episode 3 or whatever it was? In the books Lyra decides she might as well start a real fire as she's escaping, and she passes the kitchens, turn on all the gas flames and then smashes a bag of flour on the edge of the counter, cause she's heard from somewhere that flour will explode if treated thusly close to an open flame. I was so sure that having Lyra learn this on screen from Ma Costa was setup for this, as that is the only time in the books she does that, but then they when with exploding the machine instead. Total letdown.

The fightscene could have been better, and I'm not the biggest fan about them having a break after the fight, then deciding to go to Svalbard, then Lee still bringing up the question of an extended contract and more money. If you didn't want to do it without a contract, why did you take off before discussing it. The money bit is a concern of his in the books, but he is more warranted to wonder about it there, as they drift off during the battle, with no time for thought about it. Also in the book there was this whole tactical scheme about filling Lee's balloon with the gas from Mrs. Coulters zeppelin, so that she wouldn't be able to follow them right away. Not gonna fault the show for excluding that, but I am sad to see it gone.

I was super hopefull for this series of my all time favorite book series, hoping that it would be made justice this time around. I understand some cuts and changes has to be made, but the books are soo good that very few adjustments apart from what would be hard to convey visually would have to be made. The first episode did not impress much, though I kept hopefull. The next two definatly amped it up a bit, making me for a brief moment actually believe that this could be good. Then the god awful fourth episode came around, changing key features of charcters and plot points from the book. Now this episode airs and while it has more scenes that can be recognized from the books, it totallly lacs that wich made the book so special around this part, it lacks heart, acting talent and a lot of tiny details are missing or changed for the worse. Like Billy in this episode, this series has becomes detatched from any soul it might have had, and maybe we should, like Ma Costa, accept that and let the seires pass away. I will give the last 3 episodes a chance, because I get HBO for free from my TV provider, I would not PAY for another month of HBO to watch this series end.

Speaking of Billy as well, why is it Billy and not Tony Makarios? I gave it a pass in the Movie, cause that is a faster paced medium, but seeing how much time this series think it has to include a bunch of out of place bad BS, there is really no reason not to have him. Sure the scene with Ma and Billy is emotional, but I love how in the book not everything that happens has to happen to someone who has an pre-established connection to the main character. It gives what Lyra does much more power. Ofcourse she would help Billy and the Gyptians wouldn't shy away from him, but a kid they don't know it's not as certain they would.

And that bird (no I'm not using the name of Serafina's daemon, cause that's not him) just tells us that Will and Lyra will eventually meet and become allies. Why? Show, don't tell, even if it takes a couple more episodes, as it did in the books.

This episode combined with the last one has convinced me that the first one was a dud and that I can hope for better in the future. Everything that concerns Lyra stays true enough to the book, and I quite like a few of the changes they made, like how Ma Costa tells Lyra about her mother. I also like Ma Costa teaching Lyra her "gyptian tricks". Not in the book, but a nice foreshadowing for those who have read the book. However I think they would have benefitted from showing Lyra having connections to the gyptians from earlier. Also I feel that they could have done a better job of the gyptian meeting, which felt very rushed, and the spy fly incident, which was laughebly short and forced. I think the paceing of Lyra's story gets harmed by showing Boreal all the time. I still don't see where that is going, and they are just trowing all the spoilers out there from the second book. What made me love the second book so much was the intital mystery of all the new characters, that you bit by bit untangled untill you had the whole puzzle, but the characters only had half the pieces, trying to find eachother without knowing that the other person had the rest of the pieces. At this rate they might as well just skip the second book all together, or cram it all into one episode, and then move on to the thrid book. Previous annoyances with questionable casting, particualrly concerning James Cosmo as Farder Coram, and Daemons being absent or way to far away still stands from earlier episodes.

The second episode of His Dark Materials is better than the first one, it feels like the series is slowly getting more in line with the book, but there are still tons of details that anoy me.

I'll start with mentioning that I liked the relationship of Lyra and Mrs Coulter in this episode, that for sure felt like it was straight from the books, even if breaking in to the study was lifted from the movie. Also Mrs. Coulter writing letters for the taken children and then throwing them in the fire was a scene I'd hoped to see in the first episode as she kidnaps Tony Makarios (who seems to have been written out of this series). Better late than never I suppose.

A few things I've noticed so far in both episodes that I'm indifferent to, but that I've noticed is changed from the books. First is the mention of armoured bears (Pansarbjörnar). I can't remember if Lyra has any notion of the bears in the book before she meets Iorek, but she for sure dosn't know them by the norse name, as someone (can't remember who) who was in the retiring room with Asriel mentioned them and their king Iofur Raknison who wanted nothing as much as a daemon, which Lyra at the time don't understand as she don't know what Pansarbjörnar is, but it eventually becomes clear to her. The reason I thought of it for this episode is because Lyra sees the skull of a bear and immediatly assumes it's from an armored bear. Thats when I realized that Iofur wasn't mentioned in the first episode and for a second I thought they moved the scene to now, and that Mrs. Coulter would tell her, but that didn't happen either. I can't see when she'll find this out from here on, which means she'll eventually meet Iofur without this knowledge, but that situation was the same in the movie, so I'm sure it'll be fine.

The second thing is Roger being an orphan. It's to my knowledge never stated that Roger's parents was alive in the book, but it was never stated that he was an orphan either, and Mrs. Lonsdale (who aslo was written out of the series), tells Lyra that she is second cousin to Rogers father, and that they are part of the Parslov family, who are employed by Jordan college, so it's not like he has no close framily to look after him. In this series it seems like Lyra almost only had Roger as a friend and they only connected because they were both orphans who lived in the same place, but in the book she had all sorts of friends (and frienemies) all over Oxford.

The third thing is Mrs. Coulter telling Lyra who her father is. I like that the Gyptians tell her in the books and give her the full story, but I don't mind Mrs. Coulter telling her either. I am however a bit annoyned that she wouldn't tell her about her mother as truths were being spilled anyway, and I'm annoyed with how Lyra can't call Asriel father in this episode. In the book she does get a bit annoyed with him, but more than anything she is proud and happy to be his daughter and immediatly takes to this new identity of having a famous father.

Another thing that is slightly higher on my annoyance list, but that I guess dosn't matter at the end of the day, is John Faa's Daemon, who in the book is a Crow. Lyra even remarks on how like the Headmasters Raven she is, but, unless England has very different crows from Sweden, I'd say that what he has in this series is a Magpie.

Speaking of daemons we are moving in to the "really annoys me" territory, and that is how far away daemons are constantly moving from their humans. They even bring it up in this episode how daemons can't be too far away and how Mrs. Coulter is unnaturaly far from her monkey. In the book it's mentioned that deamons can't go further than a few yards, and in the second book, Lee Scoresby is seriously impressed with Gruman's daemon traveling 40 feet from him, claiming he has never seen such a great distance except with witches (who can sent their daemons several miles away). But in this episode daemons are all over the place, or not visable at all, which probably means they are far off, seeing how many people have cats and dogs or birds that can't exactly be stuffed in an insde pocket. I guess budget reasons are behind not everyone having a visable daemon at all times, but if you can't commit to this huge distingushing feature of this fantasy world, then maybe you shouldn't have made the series in the first place. Also I acknowlegde that the series might not have been very clear on what daemons are. I see many comments along the lines of "I don't understand the animals", "what's with the pets", "the animals don't do anything, they don't affect the story", and "the animals are just ripped from Harry Potter". First of all, Northern Lights was released before Harry Potter, and I really don't see what you mean by that comment. I'ts not like everyone in Harry Potter carries a sentient talking owl with them 24/7. To everyone who just don't understand the daemons or think that they don't do anything: they're not supposed to do anything. A daemon is a part of a humans soul, it's basically what we would call the little voice inside our heads, but externalized. People in Lyras world don't really have that voice and they don't really talk to themselves inside their heads, they talk to their daemons instead and get responses as we would from our subconsious. So complaining that the daemons don't do anything is like saying that the voice inside your head don't do anything.

The thing that annoy me the most about this episode is how Lyra time and time again brings up Roger. I know she want to find him, but in the book she was so enchanted by Mrs. Coulter and her lifestyle and her knowledge of things that interested Lyra, and the promise of going to the north (which was also written out, whcih was a bit of a miss, since they spent a decent amount of time in the first episode setting up Lyra's desire to go north), that Lyra totaly forgets that she was supposed to look for Roger, untill she escapes that is. The fact that she keeps bringing up Roger all the time shows that she isn't totlay captivated by Mrs. Coulter the same way she was in the books.

Last, but certainly not least, is Boreal traveling between the worlds. I don't wanna pass judgment on this untill I've seen where it's going, but I do think that showing this will ruin both what was the first discovery of such a window that we read in the book, and it definatly ruins the surprise of finding Boreal in the other (our) world (if including him this much this early hadn't already done that). Also I'm not sure I like that they set our world in modern times, I'd much rather they'd kept it the 90's as Pullman envisioned it as he was writing it in the 90's, but ultimately I don't know how much of a difference it'll make. The strangest thing about Boreals arc here is his search for Gruman. I can not for the life of me figure out why he wants to find him or how he knows about Gruman studying other worlds or why he would so instantly think that he might be in the other world. Like I said, I'll wait and see where it goes before I say yay or nay. But speaking of Gruman, something that really should have been in my indifferent section, but I'll put it here, and that is that Gruman is in this episode mentioned to have been a scholar of Jordan collage, but in the book he was affiliated mostly with the Acadamy in Berlin, and had no connections to Jordan other than that some of the scholar there knew him or had heard of him through shared fields of study.

I've loved Pullamn's novels since I was 10 and first read them. I regularly re-read them, or listen to the amazing audiobook narrated by Pullman himself and a full radio cast. I had just finnished one of these listens as prep for this series, and I was so hyped, but with every trailer released I got a little less hype, as they seemed to be straying to far from the source material I love so much. One episode is not enough to tell how the entire series will be, but so far I'm torne. It looks just OK and casting is a bit so and so, but the main framework for the story is there, but when looking at the details I'm getting more and more worried. I'm gonna list a few things I liked and didn't like about this episode from the point of view of an adaptation critic.

Things I liked about this episode I liked that they showed us the crypt where old headmasters and important schollars where buried, always a facinating scene for me in the books. They could have done more with it, but it was nice to see somethig of it atleast.

I liked the scene where Asriel carries Lyra to her room and tucks her in for bed. After all he does care for her, even if he takes care not to show it too much when he's around people.

I liked getting to see a bit of the gyptians from another point of view than Lyra's, showing them as a people with a strong sense of community and with ancient rituals. But I have other problems with the gyptians as they appear in this episode, see below.

Like I said, the main framework of the story is there, which is nice. Only a few characters were missing and only a few arrived to early. It's enough to keep me hoping that only the first episode was a dud due to exposition dumping and that the changes from the book can still be turned around and the rest of the series be amazing.

Thing I didn't like: The casting. This series contains a few actors I really like, James McAvoy, James Cosmo, Dafne Keen, Lin Manuel Miranda (to appear later) but I can't help but feel that everyone has been mis-cast. Dafne Keen at 14 seems to old to be Lyra, especially if they don't hurry up and finnish the entire series, or she'll be 16-17 playing a 12-13 year old before the end of Amber Spyglass, The guy who plays Tony Costa at 17 is much younger than I imagined him, don't think his age is mentined in the book, but I always saw him as being lower 20's, or if he is 17, then a by circumstance much "older" 17 year old. I haven't found an age for the guy who plays Billy Costa, but he seems way to young. James Cosmo as Farder Coram also seems like a missstep. I don't know if he was padded to look fat, of if he has actually let himself go since GoT, but he is way to tall and powerfull to play the frail old man bent over a stick described in the book, while the guy who plays John Faa seems to small and old (despite the actor not being that old, and despite the fact thet John Faa isn't supposed to be very young). I'd say switching their roles would have been more character appropriate. And Lord Boreal, not only is is a huge miss-step to introduce him this early, he is also way to young. He is only briefly seen in the first book, only to return with much higher importance in the second book, as a mystery character calling himself Charles Latrum. Not going into too much detail he manages to trick Lyra because she dosen't recognize him, having only briefly met him, and as he uses another name, the reader don't know who he is either, but showing him trhis prominantly this early in the show (which probably means he will be prominant in future episodes as well), such a deception will not be possible in the show. And about his age he is consistantly described as an older greying fella, but the guy playing him seems to be at the prime of his life.

Second thing I didn't like was them, like the 2007 movie, excluding Tony Makarios, insted giving the deamon Ratter to Billy Costa. This probably means they are going in the same direction as the movie concerning that, which means Billy will not be saved at the end of the day.

I did not like that John Faa and Farder Corman shows up this early, already demanding blood, it was a big moment for me in the book when they had they meeting and their vote.

I did not like that Lyra was confinded to the inside (or the rooftops) of Jordan for the entire episode. In the book she was all over Oxford, playing with all sorts of kids, which I feel would have been a better way of introducing the gyptians, just like the book, and give them a connection to Lyra.

I did not like the amount of time Pantalimon spent as a marten in this episode. First time was during the scene when they talk about what he might settle as, which was a nice foreshaddowing moment for anyone who has read all three books, but I can't remember him ever explicitly taking that form in any book until he settles. If they were low on budget making more shapes for him, it would have been better to keep him as the iconic white hermin.

I did not like how Mrs Coulter talk with Lyra about the Goblers, seemed out of charcter.

Minor nitpick, but I thought the book did a better job of starting the story with Lyra naturally finding herslef in the common room due to her curiosity, rather than her desire to meet her "uncle" making her sneek trhough a window. In the book it was a great way of introducing the main character and a main character trait, as well as making the whole chain of events seem cooincidental.

There are more small nit-picky parts that I'm not gonna mention here, and a few bigger things as well that I don't have time to get into, or don't want to get into untill I see how they are resolved in later episodes. Over all it is definatly enough too keep me worried about the rest of this series, and despite loving the books with an unhealty passion, I want them done justice, not just be made into a Movie or TV show, and if this is the way they are going with the rest of the show as well, I wouldn't even be angry if they didn't get renewed for more seasons.

This is no question the worst of the Transformers Movies. This already 2,5 hrs movie took me almost 4 hrs to watch as I kept falling alseep due to boredom and had to rewind to keep up. As I'm writing this it is literaly 5 minutes after watching the movie and I could not for a milion quid tell you what it was acctually about. There was some kind of villiain wanting to destroy the world, but I could not tell you her name, motive or how (or even if) they defeated her at the end. There is some BS about King Arthur and how apparently Merlins staff had something to do with the destruction of the Earth, but other than that I could not tell you how any of that was important to the story. I think Megatron was in this movie, but honestly that is all based on the cast list on IMDB. Mark Walberg is back, and his characters name is the same and he references Age of Extinction a couple of times, but other than that there is very litte to suggest he is acctually the same person as last time. There is some kid who looked as if she was important, but then????? And there was some kind of sword (Excallibur?) that Mark used all of one time in the entire moive, and not even in any kind of battle. And Bumblebee got his voice back and had all of three sentences to say. That is literaly all I remember about this movie after just having seen it.

After hearing lots of good things about this show I finally sat down to watch it, but this first episode was not to promising and though I will give all of season 1 a go, it didn't really leave me wanting more. As a guy who has lived his entire life in Sweden I have to ask if the creators read up even a little on the geography of the place they're trying to represent, but I can look past that, it's all for show, right, but one thing I can't look past is the awful acting most of these actors pull of. Physically it's ok, good actually even from the younger actors some times, but the speech hurts my ears. Only two or three actors seem to be able to handle this skill, whenever the rest of the cast opens their mouths I want to strangle them. I doubted that any of them even spoke English as a first language and it blew my mind to find out that most of them are actually from English speaking countries. I constantly asked myself if the director actually thought this was good voicing as he filmed it, or if he just didn't have enough money to pay the actors for further reshoots. I hope this gets better, since the story actually seems worth it, but my God, if I have to sit through 6,5 hrs of this acting just to get through season one I don't see myself ever progressing to season 2.

I honestly don't see why people are so upset whit this movie. Yes, there is talking dinosaurs, but how are you supposed to understand them otherwise. Mute dinosaurs walking around wouldn't be interesting at all and remember, this is a kid's movie. And yes, the animation might not be as good as in Jurassic Park, but this is a fully animated movie, JP used a mix of animatronics and CGI inside an otherwise live action movie, and in a interview I saw, Spielberg (or if it was a special effects guy, I don't remember) said that they would use the animatronics when ever possible and only cover up rigs and refine movement with the computer 'cause the CGI models looked like crap in comparison the robots. And yes, the story has been used before, but so has the story in most films we're watching today, only in varying degree and in different mixes and it's not like Disney is known for their originality story wise. As good as everyone of their Classics are based or inspired by other works.

Personally I love this movie. The CGI is still good, and at times more realistic than many rushed animations we see today, the characters are fun to follow, unlike Land before Time were they were unbearable and made me hate the movie (even as a kid the first one was never my favorite) despite a similar story to Dinosaurs', which I by the way like, and the moral of it is a really good one.

In some cases it is unfair to compare a movie to the book from which it was adopted, but when you split a movie into two parts to get as much of the story onto the screen, I see no excuse for a bad adaptation. After waiting years for this finale and after reading all the books, I was sure nothing could be bad about this, until I started watching that is. The first half hour - hour or so is not only quite accurate, but also really good, but as the Battle of Hogwats begins everything go downhill. It is all just a blur of people running around screaming and shouting inaudible curses at each other until all the character you should care about, but can't in this mess, are dead and not even after the battle has ended do we get to see what happened to all the people we worried about and that at least I felt sorry for while reading the book.