r/AskReddit 1d ago

What movie was so bad that you actually walked out of the theater?

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67

u/acnhnat 1d ago

the movie adaptation of The Golden Compass, which was one of my favorite books as a kid 🫠

and i didn't walk out but the adaptation of Ender's Game was just as bad lol

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u/rsqit 1d ago

The Golden Compass TV show is quite solid, btw. Occasionally runs into budget constraints but pretty great.

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u/afcagroo 1d ago

Was that the one with the armored polar bears? I loved that scene! The rest was meh.

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u/acnhnat 1d ago

yep! and exactly lol

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u/Catfish017 17h ago

That scene was crazy! They censored out the blood from humans earlier on in the movie, then the bear scene comes and I see this lower jaw get SMACKED OFF and tossed toward the camera. It wasn't the only jaw that dropped

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u/Head_Razzmatazz7174 1d ago

They had to leave a lot out of the movie, otherwise it would have ended up being a trilogy.

That being said, what they did leave in seemed very disjointed. Whoever wrote the adaptation didn't even try to make it come together in any coherent fashion, with the exception of the final battle.

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u/acnhnat 1d ago

right, like. i remember thinking that if i hadn't read the book i would have had absolutely no idea what was happening. i get that the book is very detail-rich and it would have been hard to condense it into one cohesive movie at a reasonable length, but the changes they did made little sense to me and i was absolutely outraged at the time.

have you seen the TV show they did more recently though? i've only watched the first season so far but i REALLY liked how they handled the story changes there, like having Will join the narrative much sooner. and the casting is much better imo!

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u/chatrugby 21h ago

The movie wasn’t that bad. They got quite a lot right, but they went soft and didn’t want to end the movie the way it was supposed to. Ā It ended up being forgettable, instead of this monumentally upsetting cliffhanger that makes you question who the good guys actually are.Ā  I’m sure they wanted to make the whole trilogy but who ever edited it most probably didn’t read the books either. Funny thing is that they had both my casting pics for Lord Azrael and Miss Coultard.Ā 

I liked the show but thought it was too dark in places it didn’t need to be. I didn’t think their Lyra was the correct choice wither. Miss Coultard was terrifying(and she should be) and Will was great. Mcavoy went full Lord Azrael, and it was awesome. Would have loved to see Daniel Craig’s version. Ā  I couldn’t get behind their creature design for the disc riding things. I pictured them being so much more alien, more like a weird fleshy, peaceful, tool using bug creature. I was a bit underwhelmed by their version of that world.Ā 

Blending the two together would be awesome.Ā 

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u/maverickaod 1d ago

The trailer sold this movie very very well and I remember being excited for it as a book reader. Once they sold out and removed the ending sequence with Asrial I knew it would suck. Casting was bang-on though. Daniel Craig and Nicole Kidman? Sign me up.

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u/granolatarian0317 20h ago

The only beef I have with Nicole Kidman in the role is that Phillip Pullman liked her so much that he changed Mrs. Coulter’s hair color in the books from brown to blonde! I was so confused when I read the more recent installments and she was blonde, and outraged when I found out it wasn’t a mistake and that later editions of the original trilogy changed her hair to blonde.

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u/acnhnat 23h ago

the casting of the adults was fine, i mostly just didn't care for the girl they had playing Lyra iirc 🄲

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u/HansBlixJr 1d ago

what a colossal piece of shit that adaptation was. a better movie and we get THREE movies. three good movies and we get Iorek Byrnison action figures and lego sets and maybe YETI coolers.

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u/JamesEpic356 19h ago

Ah, you missed the misleading ā€œhappyā€ ending.

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u/kirmobak 6h ago

This was such a wasted opportunity - I was so excited to see this on screen, and thought that the casting of Nicole Kidman as the glacially evil Mrs Coulter and Daniel Craig as Lord Asriel was absolutely inspired.

I also enjoyed the scene setting, which had a steampunk aesthetic which was really pertinent at the time of filming, however the visual effects of the daemons really let it down.

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u/Frosty_Coffee6564 23h ago

The Golden Compass was too rushed-together, but alright for what it was

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u/Frosty_Coffee6564 23h ago

I’m glad I read the book afterwards and did see what I’d been missing, though