A few minutes in (after the text), I'm thinking "What in the Harry Potter Narnia is going on here?". It's an unfamiliar yet familiar mixture of medieval and modern themes, seemingly from a 1960s perspective of what the future may be like. Interesting, I'll keep watching...
I'm at the intro sequence now, and I still have no idea what is going on, who anyone is, or why anything is important. All I got is that
None of this is connecting with me in an interesting way yet, but I'll keep watching...
The intro sequence + animations reminds me a lot of Game of Thrones (objects transforming around), Benjamin Button (old-style watch), Stargate SG-1 (old-style watch reminds me of a DHD), Inception (upside-down stairs and city), and Interstellar (the multiple layers of cityscapes and horizons sandwiching together reminds me of the Tesseract). Music is pretty generic to me. I'll keep watching...
At the end now, I'm thinking of Narnia the whole time with the talking animals and 1960s/2000s anachronism of technologies. I'm interested enough in this "dust" and the city revealed in the aurora borealis to watch another episode to see what the "evil Ministry of Magic" will do, and what they know
Well, I haven't read the books so this one was quite confusing for me.
It had a nice wrap as a book coming to life BUT if you're not familiar with the source material a lot of things sounded a bit silly. For example never in my life I've witnessed such drama and awe for "dust". Last time dust was that significant was when aliens invaded Mel Gibson's and Joaquin Phoenix's farm house.
Couple of thoughts that came to my mind during the watch:
• Amid the slideshow presentation, when Lord Asriel showed them the "Ah Ha! A city, in the sky!" first thing came to me was "no way, Ant-Man quantum city is here too?"
• How many more actors from Marvel comics medias and the X-Men franchies taking part in this show.
• Is this better from Dark Phoenix?
• Please let Huge Jackman have a cameo at the finalé.
• Every person in this show has a CGI animal companion, but Jon freakin' Snow (who, by my understanding so far, might be the king of this north too) couldn't have Ghost as a regular good boi? The heck HBO.
• As a college student, I have never took that much pride of being in college.
• My spirit animal most suited for this world: the European Dust Mite, of course
Review by N'Delamiko BeyBlockedParent2019-11-05T10:53:58Z— updated 2019-11-06T11:06:04Z
So "His Dark Materials" is quite amazing.
It's not just the visuals, and aesthetic which are amazing, it's that as a staunch and stolid lover of the books, it is utterly glorious to see the story come to life and so faithfully.
The monstrosity that was the film version of this story, which although beautiful, was horribly truncated while being overpacked and veered so wildly from the source material in some crucial ways, I was glad they never made the remaining parts of the story as it would have been excruciating. Even with Daniel Craig and Nicole Kidman, it was just not the story I had hoped to see.
For me, it was that the actress who played Lyra, was far too pretty, far too pretty even in her 'scrappy' running around Jordan College as a hoyden of chaos and ruin.
In all the major ways that the film failed, this single first episode of the HBO series succeeds and with the most thrilling reaction in me as a fan.
I know the story. I've read the trilogy at least once a year since 2004.
But this still makes me want to sink deep into this visual retelling. And oh, oh my, the visuals... Lyra's world is exceptionally realised, and we still are yet to see much beyond Jordan College.
I love the added scene of Lord Asriel delivering baby Lyra and Pantalaimon to the Master of Jordan College, during the Great Flood. This was a beautifully added detail, that in the books was only retold to Lyra in a second-hand fashion by Ma Costa. Here we're given a snippet of this, at the beginning, where we're well into the first story before we get anything real about the amazing Lyra Belacqua aka Lyra Silvertongue.
This episode, whets the appetite of even the most ardent and devoted fan of His Dark Materials (like myself). I and eagerly awaiting the second episode, and thoroughly enjoyed watching it with my thirteen year old son last night.
I must say that James MacAvoy is looking RATHER distinguished! Plus he manages to convey the ferocity and intensity of Lord Asriel in a way I never got from Daniel Craig who was merely cold.
This and Carnival Row, both exceeded my expectations! Do watch!