Here’s one rather trivial detail I didn’t have time or space for in my review of The Golden Compass, which if I’m not mistaken was already pushing the word-count limit as it is.
There is a scene where Lord Asriel, played by Daniel Craig, stops on a ridge way up in the Arctic looking down at the city where the talking polar bears live, and he says to his daemon: “Svalbard. Kingdom of ice bears. We shall have to watch ourselves.”
This reminds me of the scene in Star Wars (1977) where Obi-Wan Kenobi stops on a cliff looking down at a city and says to Luke Skywalker: “Mos Eisley spaceport. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious.”
Or, in an even wordier vein, it reminds me of the scene in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002) where Gandalf stops on a field somewhere in view of a city on a hill and says to Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli: “Edoras and the Golden Hall of Meduseld. There dwells Theoden, King of Rohan, whose mind is overthrown. Saruman’s hold over King Theoden is now very strong. . . . Be careful what you say. Do not look for welcome here.”
Are there any other examples of this pattern? (Approaching a city. Stopping when you’re still distant from it. Pronouncing to your travelling partners [1] the name of the city, as though it were a complete sentence unto itself, [2] who lives in that city, and [3] the need to be careful around that city. Carrying on.)
With any luck, there’ll be enough of these clips from enough films for someone to do a proper mash-up video one of these days.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In