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The Golden Compass movie, the deleted ending :.


   Back in 2007, The Golden Compass adapted for the silver screen Philip Pullman's novel Northern Lights. The movie was scripted and directed by Chris Weitz, featured Dakota Blue Richards as Lyra, Daniel Craig as Lord Asriel, Nicole Kidman as Marisa Coulter, Sam Elliott as Lee Scoresby and Eva Green as Serafina Pekkala.
   From the very first script to the filming, the plan for the film was to adapt the whole content of Philip Pullman's book, and even the earliest trailers of the movie included sneak peaks from the final polar sequence in which Asriel opens the aurora and walks into the sky.

However, a few weeks prior to the release, it was decided to remove the whole Asrielian final sequence to keep it safe for the opening of an hypothetical second movie. This very late moved imposed to alter the chronology of the movie with urgent numerical modifications of numerous scenes for continuity reasons, and also and more basically stole us the last third of the book; as the failure of the movie at the (US) box-office scraped any hoped for its sequels.

   Thus, with this page, we aim at:
  • remind that the whole story of Northern Lights has been entirely filmed,
  • remind that the movie we saw is NOT the movie that the director Chris Weitz had in mind and that it would be unfair to blame him for editing decisions coming from the producers,
  • share the differents bits of removed sequences freely and legally available on other supports,
  • try to explain, based on existing and verified sources, why the movie met this unfortunate path...


The reasons behind the late recut :.


A last-minute change


Two months prior to the movie realse, in the first days of October 2007, rumours start to spread regarding the altering of The Golden Compass. Fans start obviously to worry and contact the studio. Quickly, Chris Weitz himself makes a very open response which is sent to three of the leading fan community websites, HisDarkMaterials.org, BridgeToTheStars.net and Cittàgazze to confirm that he decided along with Philip Pullman and studio to remove the last three chapters of the book from the movie to use them as a grand opening for the second movie. A statement from the director which is followed a few days later by a new one from Philip Pullman: both endorse the decision and try to minimize its consequences.

No one tells it at that point, but it means that Weitz has in fact just lost the final cut to New Line. The studio had in fact already interfered with Weitz's choices, notably to impose the casting of Christopher Lee as a Magisterium man (he finally appears only for one single scene) and of Ian McKellen as Iorek instead of initial choice Nonso Anozie. But we will have to wait for two years to get the direct confirmation from Weitz thzt the movie we saw is not his: "The last film that I made was recut by the studio, and my experience with it ended being quite a terrible one he reportedly stated while adding to another media that during the production he "felt that by being faithful to the book (he) was working at odds with the studio". Weitz regularly repeated it since then, and it appears this movie is still aching: "I wasn’t able to fulfill Philip Pullman’s particular theological vision. And that kills me".

The word "theological" could be the most important to explain this recut by producers. The trilogy was always surrounded by a sort of controversy, being banned in some US schools due to its content regarding God and the Church. In that context, a US league named the Catholic League started over the summer of 2007 a boycott against the movie, warning that the objective of Pullman's books is "to bash Christianity and promote atheism" to kids, no matter if the movie is watered down compared to the book as it serves as "a bait" to that one. It appeared the campaign went to a bigger scale on the American soil. With the distribution rights sold by New Line outside of the USA in order to produce part of the movie, though, New Line faced anger on the US market, the only one which could cover all its expanses by bringing money back in its vaults. The studio faced an anger that could hinder the hopes of a domestic success. Most of the direct blows against the Church arrives in the final chapters of the book, when Asriel speaks about Dust, good, evil and sin with her daughter. By exiting that part, it made the movie much more all-audience-friendly, and removing the death of Roger also made the movie suddenly much lighter; a big bear fight and kids escaping some sort of orphanage are much more Christmas-time compatible than a murdered kid...

If we cannot absolutely guarantee that the concerns related to the religious aspects were the main reason for the recut, they caused no matter what some changes in the movie. One of these is quite explicit: trailers released over the summer of 2007 showed that the logo of the Magisterium included the motto 'A Church above all others' which surprisingly had disappeared in the theatrical release and which causes a meaningful blank in the audio commented version of the movie on the DVD: Weitz blankly mentions "there was something written here" but doesn't detail that any further. It seems obvious enough to us...





Having producers taking over the final cut is unfortunatelly not uncommon: movies such as Metropolis, Blade Runner, Brazil or Once Upon a time in America were also in their time the victims of such a practice, although the power and fame of their filmmakers allowed to subsequently obtain a director's cut closer to their vision for a much more interesting result. In the Golden Compass case, the hope of such a director's cut never came true until now. If it was quickly cristal clear that the missing ending would never come as the opener of another movie, various report also hinted that a director's cut would or could cost up to 17 millions dollars, which probably explains why New Line (which had been sold to Warner due to the bankrupt caused by the movie) never allowed Weitz to produce his own cut. "What it would take would be something like a massive explosion in the British film industry – I mean, in a good way – that created great amount of money and then maybe you could make a remakesaid Weitz in 2011.

   The removed sequences :.

   A significant amount of scenes were removed from the theatrical cut due to the late changes which occured during production. Here come a non-exhaustive list of the scenes which were shot but didn't make it:
  • Lyra at Asriel's lab
    The third part of Northern Lights is not included into the movie. However, the whole sequence exists. Lyra was supposed to joint Lord Asriel at his lab in the far North and have him going mad at her sight before calming down with Roger coming into view. Then father and daughter had a discussion with him about Dust, good and evil, alethiometer and daemons: the sequences was fully edited and finalized, and appeared in some support of the videogame.



  • The finale
    The finale is the most obvious missing bit. After reaching her father, Lyra discovers that her then-uncle-now-daddy took Roger with him for opening the sku. She starts pursuing him with the help of Iorek while being attacked by the Magisterium's zeppelin. She however couldn't save Roger and saw Asriel open the sky and failing to convince Marisa Coulter to accompany him into the worlld beyond the aurora ("a great sentimental moment -- a throwback to the moment Rhett Butler and Scarlett O'Hara say goodbye in Gone With The Wind" according to Weitz). Lyra was then supposed to cross the Aurora to reach Cittàgazze at the very end of the movie. Some brief stunning shots of this sequences involving Craig and Kidman appeared from the earliest trailers of the movie in 2007.
    Some bits of the sequence were still in the process of post-production when the editorial changes occured and were never completed, which explains the statements regarding the multi-million cost an extended version of movie would involve.



  • Lee and Serafina
    The final of the movie initially included an original talk scene between Lee and Serafina related to fate and Lyra with the Texan man also openly flirting with the witch queen.


   The original script :.

   The following document is the first draft version of Chris Weitz's script for the movie. Despite it was significantly modified before going into production (such a script would have led to a more-than-three-hour-long movie), it provides a new insight of what the initial intent of the director was - and it was brilliant.
   That document was shared online back in 2011 by the webmaster of the now gone HisDarkMaterials.org website, which was back at the time one of the leading online sraffies communities.

Chris Weitz' First Draft of The Golden Compass on Scribd



   The pre-production :.

In 2010, Cittàgazze explored the chaotic moves which accompanied the pre-production of the movie. Here you can find recent translations of articles we published in 2010 to cover the temporary involvement of the scriptwriter Tom Stoppard and of the director Anand Tucker on this project...
  • When Tom Stoppard was scriptwriter
    A the beginning of the movie project, the first scriptwriter to be hired was Tom Stoppard, a respected and renowned author who a already won at Academy Awards. Why was he finally fired and what did his script look like? This is what Cittàgazze tried to understand, based on press releases, press articles and various past statements from the involved people...

  • When Anand Tucker was to direct The Golden Compass
    During pre-production, Chris Weitz withdrew as director, leaving an empty chair for a few months before Anad Tucker was appointed for the job. However, Mr. Tucker also left the project a few months later, only to see Chris Weitz back in place. Cittàgazze tried to understand the root causes for this double-change and to clarify the consequences this had on the movie...
   Other removed material :.

Some earlier sequences of the movie also disappeared, although not directly related to the late editorial changes. Here comes a list of those visible in trailers, videogames or promotionnal books...
  • The arrest of the Master
    Early trailers showed shots of armed guards in action in Oxford, presumably from a sequence in which Fra Pavel came into Jordan to arrest the Master.



  • Lyra, Coram and Serafina
    Lyra met Serafina on the Noorderlicht's deck, the Gyptian boat. Serafina explained how she fell in love with Farder Coram years before, until Coram emerges from the boat, without noticing her. The sequence is significantly reduced in the movie but more material was shot.


   Useful links :.

Sources and copyrights
This page is under construction. Content to be added later.
Created : 07/2020
Last update: 15/08/2020

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