I'll never learn

This is a serious problem: "[Director Chris Weitz] stops short of the book’s actual ending in order to close on a more upbeat note, but the final fade-out seems abrupt and unfair; it’s unresolved, and there isn’t even a decent cliffhanger to entice you into the (hypothetical) next chapter." --from this review of The Golden Compass.

I have already been warned that the reviews are largely unkind, but I was still excited to see it. Now I feel sick. The ending of the book is the whole point of the entire god damn story. This book, anyway, where the whole point of the god damn story happens in the last two pages or so. Jesus Christ.

You know, I watched HBO's sneak peek of the film a few days ago, and I do remember thinking the director seemed like a giant putz, but they had interview clips with Philip Pullman! I was lulled into a false sense of security, thinking that the author had been somehow involved in the film-making--and thus approved of what had happened. I should know better than that, especially after the colossal disappointment of the film version of The Cider House Rules. John Irving wrote the screenplay himself, and it stank to high heaven. Okay, it didn't stink that bad, and that book was so long, it would have been impossible to make a movie that kept everything I loved about it in it. Still. Author involvement does not mean the movie's going to be good.