Duncan and Will are at Cannes for BridgeToTheStars.net this week. Today has been a hectic day – a photo shoot and press conference for Duncan, whilst Will had the privilage of personally questioning the cast in a roundtables event. We’ll have much, much more on this later. For now, we’re going to present you with a transcript we slaved over long into the night this evening, only to be presented with the full trailer upon going online. You can now view most of the footage yourself, but not all of it is in the trailer and a transcript it useful anyway, so enjoy.

We’ve also posted a review of the footage and noted some significant elements – which also apply to the trailer.

Review

New Line have been showing footage at Cannes of their most important film this year – The Golden Compass. The footage was around 10 minutes in length and featured brand new scenes, plus updates from the footage shown at the January set visit. Now we’ve been to see the reel twice, we’ve typed up a full and accurate transcript of the footage for you to enjoy. You can head straight there to read it, but here are our thoughts on the footage as a whole.

The footage essentially runs through the storyline of the film chronologically, all the way to its conclusion. Previewed in one of Cannes’ many cinemas, the footage is almost overwhelming. The most bombastic scenes from the book have been chosen for the trailer and come to full life here on the big screen – Iorek bursting out the Trollesund priest’s house and slamming his forefeet onto the floor with a resounding boom, du-du-du – this film is clearly going to be a visceral experience at the cinema.

Dakota Blue Richards takes centre stage in the footage. The public has heard only one line from her so far – in the leaked teaser trailer – but here she has much more to do, interacting with Mrs Coulter, Iorek and others. The good news is that her acting seems to be quite good – it’s hard to judge on such little evidence, particular with no time for much physical emoting, but she delivers her lines capable. We don’t have a young Anakin from Star Wars Episode 1 on our hands. Dakota has some vintage Lyra moments to savour – declaring “no-one can make me a lady” and spitting off a Jordan college roof. This is echoed towards the end of the film, where Lyra spits at the ground in front of the line of Tartar soldiers preventing the children escaping Bolvangar. It’s a nice way to wrap the film neatly around.

With the CGI now almost fully in place, design decisions made by the film’s various artists become clearer. Lyra’s London is really nothing like the Victorian-esque city suggested in the book; Mrs Coulter and Lyra’s ride in to the city on the Sky Ferry (a zeppelin) introduces us to the cityscape in dramatic fashion and, whilst some may still not like the more futuristic imagination of Lyra’s world, the aesthetic is nothing if not striking.

The Magisterium’s tower is the epitome of this design. The tower itself is huge, lording it over London and visible from anywhere in the city. In one scene, we see Mrs Coulter and Fra Pavel walking and talking in a long avenue filled with glass and trees, with the tower looming in the distance behind them. It’s fantastical and obviously meant to emphasis the sheer power of the Magisterium. As to who exactly the Magisterium are – Church, fascists or just plain dogmatists – we’ll have more tomorrow in our interviews with Chris Weitz and Daniel Craig especially. There was a scene shown in the footage which seemed to be a film addition: Fra Pavel and a man dubbed as “Magisterium Emissary” – the leader of the Magisterium in Brytain – talk at the top of the tower, almost in the clouds. The Emissary’s actor is named in our guide-books as Derek Jacobi and it’s unclear whether he’s actually playing a character from the book or not – he seems a Father McPhail type figure if that is the case.

A proper sighting of Lee Scoresby’s balloon also elicited relief. The toy prototype resembles a sci-fi monstrosity and promotional images of the balloon – for example, on the movie tie-in books – had it the same. However, on screen, the balloon is a much more sedate affair. It is a large canopy, held up by a balloon on either side – the balloons however are not shiny and silver, but more realistic and drab, with electric bolts flickering around their bottom as they power the craft along. It’s not a traditional balloon by any means, but again, it’s visually striking – and not as ridiculous as first feared.

Absent for so long from promotional images, we at least see daemons in the flesh. Scenes which were previewed earlier with characters talking to thin air have been brought to life, and daemons scrury and scamper all over the place. There are some humourous moments with the daemons – as seen in the transcript – and they seem to have been handled well thus far in fitting them into existing shots. One vexing question has also been answered about daemons – just how they’ll be shown to talk on film. The answer: lip-synching. It can be corny and the jury is still out, but the little shown seemed bearable, with the mouths not making the full movements, just enough to indicate talking. Iorek is done much the same, as all the armoured bears will be.

One omission was noted – the witches do not seem to fly upon their cloudpines at all. Their lovely floating motion of flying is seen some more, but for all we looked, we could not see any cloudpines in evidence and their legs did not seem to be positioned such to wrap around one. It’s possible they will be added in digitally later, but with so much of the CGI done, it’s odd that they haven’t been already, if they are going to be.

The footage ends with a real cruncher. After the logo has faded, we seen Iorek Byrnison burst upward and rip Ragnar’s (Iofur’s) jaw clean off. The clip cuts too quickly to see the bloody aftermath (if any) but it gives a small taste of how powerful the epic bear flight – the real action climax of the film – is shaping up to be. Much more can be written about even this brief reel of footage, but the feelings we’re left with after watching it are definitely ones of optimism. New Line seem to have a clear direction in mind for the film and the cohesive vision is sure to generate an enjoyable film at the very least.

Transcript

As before, the dark shape of the New Line logo revolved onto the screen, heralded by the epic score.

The footage finishes on The Golden Compass logo; the ‘o’ is formed from a spinning alethiometer as last seen in the leaked teaser trailer.