Josephine Rosenthal

The HBO series did not stay as true to the books as the original movie. The book is a child’s tale that has an anti Catholic Church connotation. The show tries to emphasize this part of the book over the magical elements and I believe it makes the show feel flat. Like taking the animals out of George Orwell’s Animal farm. The scenes that were added that were not from the books were very repetitive with a similar dialogue and didn't add anything except a time filler to the show. The parts that should have been extended were not and instead created scenes that had bad dialogue. The lines given to the actors are at times poorly written and make it hard to get into the characters. Lee Scoresby, my favorite character from the book, was made into an entirely different person in the show and someone who is hard to listen to because his lines are so bad. The thing I find the most frustrating about the show was the fact that the deamons were turned into nothing more than animal sidekicks who were eliminated from the scenes as often as possible. Instead of showing Pantalaimon as a separate entity to Lyra he is just (almost always) a ferret who barely talks and hides in her jacket. I wish someone spoke up about spending the money to show them as not just a pet but the living embodiment of personality.