The BBC and HBO revealed a new trailer for the second season of His Dark Materials. Dafne Keen is back as Lyra Belacqua, with Ruth Wilson as the vile Mrs. Coulter and Lin-Manuel Miranda as the friend to polar bears everywhere, Lee Scoresby. The Great War is brewing as Lyra and Will (Amir Wilson) begin to explore their new worlds. With season one roughly following the events of the novel The Golden Compass aka Northern Lights, the characters are now aligned to reveal the secrets of The Subtle Knife. Mrs. Coulter has a new wardrobe and style, everything is getting a bit bleaker, and we at last get to see more of those steampunk dirigibles in action.
Tag Archive: Dafne Keen
Review by C.J. Bunce
For me the challenge and threshold for success for HBO’s series His Dark Materials was huge. The first adaptation of Philip Pullman’s wildly successful series of novels was the 2007 big-screen film The Golden Compass, which rated #1 on my all-time favorite fantasy movie list here at borg back in 2012. Late last year HBO took on its own adaptation, and the first season arrived, but fell in the shadow of more popular, and more marketed series last year like The Mandalorian. So on the one hand we have a big-budget movie with an all-star cast–so how does the TV series fare by comparison? At last His Dark Materials just arrived on Blu-Ray and DVD and the studio sent us a copy for review (you can order it here at Amazon), so check out my review below, along with a preview of Season 2.
Last year at San Diego Comic-Con we got our first look at season one of His Dark Materials, BBC and HBO’s adaptation of Philip Pullman’s popular fantasy novels, so it’s no surprise the second season trailer premiered at this year’s Comic-Con@Home. Logan star Dafne Keen returns as Lyra to lead a cast including Ruth Wilson, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Ariyon Bakare, Andrew Scott, Amir Wilson, and newcomers to the series this season, Terence Stamp, Jade Anouka, and Simone Kirby.
The BBC and HBO brought a new trailer to San Diego Comic-Con Thursday for the new series His Dark Materials. Logan star Dafne Keen is back in a leading role as Lyra Belacqua, with Ruth Wilson as the vile Mrs. Coulter, James McAvoy as the grand Lord Asriel, and Lin-Manuel Miranda as the friend to polar bears everywhere, Lee Scoresby.
If it all looks familiar it’s because the first part of the series traces the steps of the Philip Pullman novel Northern Lights aka The Golden Compass, already translated into the movie The Golden Compass, a big-budget, special effects filled spectacle in 2007 starring Dakota Blue Richards, Nicole Kidman, Daniel Craig, Eva Green, Sam Elliott, and Christopher Lee, and an equally impressive voice cast. The film was as big as fantasy movies get, with a budget to support an all-star cast, so it will be a challenge to create an episodic version as spellbinding and audience-grabbing on a TV studio budget.
Yet for television fantasy it looks great so far–Dafne Keen showed in Logan she can create one of the greatest superheroine performances of all time even at her young age, and for fans of the original film and the novels the trailer may just get them to finally check out an HBO subscription. Last week novelist Philip Pullman commented on Twitter: “Today I wore a jacket I hadn’t worn for two years. In the pocket I found my green leather pen case containing the pen that wrote His Dark Materials… I knew it would come back to me.” Coincidence? We doubt it.
Complete with a new alethiometer, check out this great trailer for the BBC-produced HBO series, His Dark Materials:
Dafne Keen tops the list of best child actors in movies, and her performance as X-23 along with co-stars Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart made Logan–and specifically the black and white version released as Logan Noir–my pick for the #1 best superhero movie of all time. So it’s a big deal that Keen has been tapped in the lead role of Lyra Belacqua, the young protagonist of a new adaptation of Philip Pullman′s His Dark Materials–a Carnegie Medal-winning trilogy of novels and a favorite among a generation of readers, selling 18 million copies and translated into 40 languages. It’s doubly exciting for a fan like me, as the story and character of Lyra was adapted to the big screen once already, in 2007, as the Oscar-winning The Golden Compass, my pick back in 2012 here at borg at the top position of my ten favorite fantasy films of all time (check out that and our staff writers’ lists from back then here if you missed it). Keen is the perfecting casting decision for one of fantasy’s best-developed, and most fascinating supernatural worlds.
Coming from the BBC and to be released via HBO in the States, His Dark Materials will feature eight episodes the first season. Take a look at the first trailers below. Along with Keen as Lyra (who was played by Dakota Blue Richards in the film), the series stars X-Men and Glass’s James McAvoy as Lord Asrael (played by Daniel Craig in the film), Lin-Manuel Miranda as Lee Scoresby (Sam Elliott in the film), John Wick and Jessica Jones’ Clarke Peters as Dr. Carne (Jack Shepherd in the film), The Strain and The Borgias’ Ruta Gedmintas as Serafina (Eva Green in the film), Shetland and Outlaw King’s James Cosmo as Farder Coram (Tom Courtenay in the film) and Luther, The Prisoner, and Jane Eyre’s Ruth Wilson as Mrs. Coulter (Nicole Kidman in the film). No voice cast has been announced for the several animal characters. The series is directed by Oscar-winning director Tom Hooper. Production for season one wrapped in late 2018 and a second season has already been green-lighted.
It’s a good time to catch up on the novels, beginning with Northern Lights (released as The Golden Compass in the U.S.), The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass, along with two sequels, Lyra’s Oxford, and Once Upon a Time in the North, and a book set in the same universe, The Book of Dust.
Here are the first trailers for His Dark Materials:
When we created last year’s preview of 2017 movies we were pretty sure we were going to have some great movies this year, but we were surprised by what ended up being the best. All year we tried to keep up with what Hollywood had to offer and honed in on the genre content we thought was worth examining. We went back and looked at it all and pulled together our picks for our borg.com annual Best Movies of 2017.
As always, we’re after the best genre content of 2017–with our top categories from the Best in Movies. There are thousands of other places that cover plain vanilla dramas and the rest, but here we’re looking for movies we want to watch. What do all of this year’s selections have in common? In addition to those elements that define each genre, each has a good story. Special effects without a good story is not good entertainment, and we saw plenty of films this year that missed that crucial element.
Come back later this week for our TV and print media picks, and our annual borg.com Hall of Fame inductees. Wait no further, here are our picks for 2017:
Best Sci-Fi Fix, Best Sci-fi Movie, Best Costume Design – Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. The Valerian and Laureline comic books turned 50 and brought a big-screen adaptation to theaters. Director Luc Besson handled the material as a labor of love, and that could be marveled at in every scene, and each nook and cranny of the gigantic visual spectacle he created. More new wonders, more futuristic ideas that had never been seen on film before, bold otherworldly costumes, and incredible special effects made this film a masterpiece science fiction fans will stumble upon in the future and wonder how it was so overlooked by audiences this summer. Epic space battles, aliens, and loads of sci-fi technology, while all the other science fiction of the year kept to their familiar territories. A gripping story about a team just doing their job, but that job is saving an entire race of a doomed planet. Besson was going for something like Avatar, but he far surpassed it. Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets was everything a sci-fi fan could want.
Best Fantasy Fix, Best Fantasy Movie, Best Comedy Movie – Thor: Ragnarok. As much as Thor: Ragnarok was a natural progression for Chris Hemsworth’s Thor and Mark Ruffalo’s Hulk, it was amazing how much the film busted genres, becoming more of a Flash Gordon space fantasy like the Guardians of the Galaxy movies than the rest of the Avengers series. Just like watching classic Flash Gordon and Conan movies, we saw superheroes on a legendary hero’s journey rise and encounter obstacles and make sacrifices, across a landscape of fabulous worlds and colorful characters, and scenes that looked like they were ripped out of your favorite Jack Kirby comic pages. Another film about family, it incorporated that always fun plot device of having good guy and bad guy join forces, as Tom Hiddleston’s Loki redeemed himself with his brother and their people, if only temporarily. We met one of the fiercest warriors in Tessa Thompson’s Valkyrie and they all faced off against a trio of well-developed villains. A great superhero story, too, this was the ultimate fantasy fix.
Best Superhero Fix, Best Superhero Movie, Best Easter Eggs – The LEGO Batman Movie. Even as a spoof of superhero movies and the DC Universe, The LEGO Batman Movie created a genuine story full of heart that any fan of comic books could love. Will Arnett became our second favorite Batman actor this year behind Michael Keaton, and his Batman reminded us why we can’t wait for the DC Universe to get fun and exciting again. Hilarious, laugh-out-loud funny with a smart script, full of derring-do and super-powered heroics, and better than this year’s and the last decade of live-action DC at the movies, the animated The LEGO Batman Movie proved more good DC movies are out there just waiting to be made. Honorable mention: Spider-man: Homecoming.
Best Retro Fix – Classic Genre Films Return to Theaters. With all the new releases in 2017 we were lucky enough to witness the 90th anniversary of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, while Disney’s The Jungle Book, The Dirty Dozen, and the original Casino Royale turned 50. Along with Star Wars, Close Encounters of the Third Kind turned 40. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Blade Runner, Tron, and The Dark Crystal turned 35. Predator, The Princess Bride, and Robocop turned 30. Many of these made it back into theaters this year, giving us the best Retro Fix we could hope for all year long. But E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (we even interviewed the best Star Trek director of them all here this year), Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Princess Bride, and Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, on the big screen over only a few weeks? We can only hope for more in 2018!
Check out the rest of the year’s Best Film and the rest of our picks for the year’s best movies, after the cut…
Beware the light.
Review by C.J. Bunce
On first viewing of Logan, this year’s most critically acclaimed superhero film, a viewer may love it or leave it. It’s not your typical Marvel Comics adaptation, full of f-bombs and the bloodiest of action and violence. Yet it’s also a finely crafted final chapter to the successful X-Men film saga and a tribute to Hugh Jackman’s unprecedented nine-film run as Logan. Last week 20th Century Fox showed a limited screening arranged by the director of Logan in black and white, called Logan: Noir. The version is also included on the Blu-ray release available everywhere tomorrow. If you haven’t seen Logan, skip the theatrical version and go straight to Logan: Noir and if you have seen Logan prepare for a completely different experience with this special edition of the film.
Logan: Noir would be more aptly titled Logan: Black and White, as this is not so much classic noir than a modern Western tale shown in black and white. Thankfully writer/director James Mangold (Cop Land, 3:10 to Yuma, The Wolverine) carefully and elegantly filmed Logan with an eye for the stark contrasts that black and white film once regularly captured so well. Parts of the film will reach into your chest and hold you breathless, revealing the full potential of a comic book based film–and more specifically a superhero film.
Its bleak, cold landscapes are evocative of a John Ford (Stagecoach, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, The Grapes of Wrath) Western. Its slow, calculated scenic pans are something Stanley Kubrick (Lolita, Dr. Strangelove) could only have hoped to have achieved in his early work. Inasmuch as Hugh Jackman is a classic, Western, antihero archetype in his so-far-gone, washed-up, tired and grizzled Logan–former Wolverine of the X-Men–he appears far lonelier and resigned to a dismal, unrelenting future in black and white. The cold contrasts in this Logan somehow create a vision more true to the Old Man Logan of the comic book source material.
In 2029, real X-Men read Marvel’s X-Men comic books.
Old Man Logan is one of those great comic book ideas that surprisingly took such a long time to come around. It would be like seeing Arnold Schwarzenegger come back in Conan the Conqueror to play an elder King Conan, a film that always seems in the works but never quite in a moving-forward state. In the X-Men movies it means Hugh Jackman in the big-screen release Logan, supposedly his last of nine films portraying the steely clawed X-Man, providing a rare chance for an actor to complete a character study 17 years in the making. We’re NOT looking forward to anyone else being cast in this role down the road. The first trailer (previewed earlier here) gave us a moody, grim look at Logan backed by Johnny Cash. The final trailer released this week gives more hope for the future, with a little Jim Croce thrown in.
The final trailer reveals more than what we thought the studio would reveal in advance of the film: 2017’s leading contender for kick-ass superheroine… the little girl comic book readers know as cyborg X-23 (Laura, played by Dafne Keen) taking off her kid gloves and opening up her X-Men powers on some bad guys. Hugh Jackman is the wise guardian we all need, and his own 90-year-old guardian and mentor Professor Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) is along for the ride, bringing that additional, personal dimension to the story. The other universe of Marvel films outside the “Marvel Cinematic Universe” has been well-established to bounce around in parallel worlds and has resulted in the most satisfying movies in the superhero genre, particularly with the spectacular X-Men: Days of Future Past. This film takes us about five years after that film’s epilogue.
This new trailer features a comic book on-screen for the first time in the X-Men universe, and comic book creators are featured in a new and unique way. Comic book artist Joe Quesada drew the pages with ink work done by Dan Panosian (see above). Comic book creator Gabriel Hardman created the storyboards for the film.
Check out this final trailer, first the U.S. version followed by the international version: