ALERT ALERT ALERT

[cleolinda]

Full Golden Compass trailer now online. (Hey! There's Christopher Lee!) As for voices you hear in the trailer, Kristin Scott Thomas will voice Stelmaria; Kathy Bates is doing Hester, as I'd already suspected (ETA: Huh. The clip I posted the other day isn't actually in the trailer); and as for the new Iorek voice that I, for one, was not all that happy about: " 'It was a studio decision…You can understand why you would cast Ian McKellen for anything,' Weitz told us. 'But letting go of Nonso was one of the most painful experiences on this movie for me. I need to say about Nonso that he is one of the most promising and soulful young actors I have encountered in England and I’ve worked here for quite a bit now and he’s actually in the next Mike Leigh…But it was, uh, that was kind of a dark day for me. I kinda wanna go out of my way to point out how much I love Nonso’s work. And that’s that.' " It just kills me because Kathy Bates is right for Hester, and I can totally see (hear?) Kristin Scott Thomas doing Stelmaria, but... McKellen is just wrong for Iorek. I love him, but... the voice they had in the earlier trailers was just so perfect.

Comments

[eofs.livejournal.com]

Of course, I also hear that New Line has a lot of money riding on this, and that they're to the point where a hit could save the studio.

Aaaand there's the bit that worries me. Because desperate decisions do not tend to equal good decisions. Hopefully the changes between the two trailers will not have been reflected in the actual film and it is simply to make it seem more accessible from the outside. Which I suppose makes sense if you're looking to capture an audience who decide to go solely on the trailer rather than because everybody is saying "have you seen Golden Compass yet?" and the papers are throwing plaudits left right and centre (see FotR). Unless of course said audience is me and is put off by the trailer.

Panserbjørne is an infinitely better name. "Armoured bears" does sneak into the trailer somewhere. I suppose since panzer has been taken into English to mean "tank" rather than "armour" I can see why they didn't just call them panzer bears or something. But I maintain that ice bear is not a pleasing solution. And once again feels disturbingly like oversimplification. It's one thing for the audience to refer to "some balcony at the big white city" but quite another for the characters to.