The world is too big and too small.
As an individual, a small drop may not touch the boundaries of the world in his entire life.
But for human beings as a whole, since the first half of the 20th century, there has been no corner of the earth that has not been reached by human footsteps. Even the pure and holy North Pole, as Lovecraft's heart, has long been planted with human flags.
Therefore, with fantasy literature, our hearts need more sustenance and yearning for the unknown and exploration.
Harry Potter crossed platforms nine and three-quarters from an ordinary train station to the mysterious and interesting Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
The four children of the Pevensie family passed through the closet at home and entered the magnificent and magnificent magical kingdom of Narnia .
In Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings" Middle-earth, Hobbits coexist with elves and wizards; in George Martin's Westeros, a song of ice and fire is being staged, where battles are fought on the battlefield and family power struggles .
And there is such a book that can be as famous as the above fantasy literature, and it also shocked the entire world of fantasy novels fans as soon as it was born. However, what it has always lacked is a film and television adaptation that can be equivalent to the original.
This is British writer Philip Pullman's "Dark Matter Trilogy" ("The Golden Compass", "Magic Knife" and "Amber Spyglass").
Pullman's reputation is not small, he was once hailed as "the best Anglo-Saxon fantasy novelist since Tolkien, the author of "The Lord of the Rings" .
And his trilogy has won the Carnegie Children's Literature Award, the Guardian Children's Fiction Award, and the Whitbread Literary Award.
In a reader poll conducted by the BBC in 2003, "Dark Matter Trilogy" ranked third on the readers' favorite list, behind "The Lord of the Rings" and "Pride and Prejudice".
In 2019, after 12 years (there was a movie version in 2007), HBO in the United States and BBC in the United Kingdom finally put this fantasy novel on the screen again, and it is expected that the story will be told in three seasons. A few days ago, the first season of the series was launched at the BesTV Top Theater.
The second season of the series will arrive in the second half of this year, and before that, we just come to revisit the first season.
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Like the Harry Potter series, Dark Materials is often considered the pinnacle of children's fantasy literature .
However, Pullman is not too happy about this. Why do we write so many dark stories and in-depth discussions with all our life and are classified as children's literature.
There is no way, who made you have a childlike soul setting!
In the world of "Dark Matters", no matter how complicated the follow-up story is, you must first accept the concept that the human soul here will appear as an entity in the form of an animal , and they are called "Elves" (Dæmon).
The relationship between humans and "genies" is symbiotic and absolutely sacred.
How to say? They are almost a part of you. Will talk to you, have its own name and personality, and can't leave you too far away from you, distance can be painful for both parties.
In childhood, "elves" can be transformed at will, until adulthood, they will not be fixed as an animal entity.
More importantly, when you die, the "genie" also dies. When the "elf" dies, so does its human.
The protagonist of this play is the 12-year-old girl Laila, and her "elf" Pan Pingping is a chubby little ferret. Only the first episode showed many forms such as changing into a kitten and changing into a bird.
"The story begins in another world, a world that is both like and dissimilar to yours".
At the beginning of the episode, through the subtitles, the world view of the play is briefly introduced.
The world has been dominated by powerful church authorities for centuries. And their power did not reach the northern wilderness (the North Pole), where a prophecy circulated among the witches: this prophecy was about a child with a great destiny.
The baby was taken to Oxford during the Flood era at the beginning of the episode. 12 years later, the little girl grows up, and the smart and wild Leila appears.
Laila is obviously a "wild child", and as soon as she appears, she and her friend Roger run on the roof of Oxford with her "elf". Walk through kitchens, across statues, jump from one hall of knowledge to another, skip classes, tease teachers, lie in darkroom coffins and scare classmates.
It can be said that there is no "evil" to do, but it is also like a new bamboo, growing up with the momentum of free flying.
Little girl Lyra is played by Daphne Keene , the clone of Wolverine in [Wolverine 3] , and James McAvoy "One Beauty" plays her uncle, Lord Asriel .
While Laila runs around the campus of an English castle, the uncle played by "Yi Mei" is obsessed with researching a new substance called "Dust" in the Arctic.
"Dust" is a particle that affects only adults, not children. Through "dust", you can see things that are invisible to the naked eye, such as the "Sky City" that Asriel discovered in the North Pole.
However, when he made his point about "dust", he was immediately dismissed as "heresy" by church rulers. The church claims that the world consists only of the spiritual world of this world and heaven and hell, in order to control people's minds, and they do not allow other theories of "multiple worlds" to appear.
And the line of Laila Oxford, and the line of Uncle's North Pole, will be connected by the continuous disappearance of children around them.
When Laila's most important friend Roger disappeared overnight, Laila finally embarked on a journey to the North Pole to find the truth and save her friend.
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The world of Dark Materials is a multicolored kaleidoscope.
There are "elves", magic and witches here, there are "armored bears" who regard armor as the king of life, gypsies who keep sailing to find their children, and there is the instrument of truth (golden compass) that can guide everything.
There are both the majestic control of the medieval papacy and the large urban buildings of the post-industrial revolution era. There are typical British architecture and aesthetics, as well as steam-age zeppelins flying above.
Mottled, bright and bizarre, it is the perfect blend of modern style and steampunk retro style.
The Carnegie Children's Literature Award, as the "Oscar" in the world of children's literature, gave the evaluation of "Dark Matter": "This book redefines children's literature and changes people's perspective and thinking when reading children's books."
Because the little 12-year-old girl Laila is obviously a big "adventurer" in this world.
She seems to be naturally born for adventure. She is witty, brave and wise. With the innocent questioning and thinking of "Why do elves disappear after death, but humans leave only a skeleton?" airship.
Along the way, she discovers how to use the truth instrument; Zhidou kidnaps the children's "gluttonous" leader Mrs. Coulter; she recruits "Armored Bear" and his pilot friends, and finally follows the gypsies to the northern station to rescue the children. , destroy the site.
Above the clouds in the sky, there are flying hot air balloons that shuttle in the sea of clouds; among the sea currents on the ground, there are gypsies sailing ships.
The little girl Laila frowned and said to Mrs. Coulter, who always let her read, "Can you make me into the image that although I have read some books, I am mainly wandering outside and taking adventures everywhere."
Romance is dead. From the image of the little heroine to the whole world, this play is undoubtedly an all-round tribute to the adventurous spirit of the Western Age of Navigation and the Age of Airships.
Reminiscent of too many romantic legends of that era.
For the first time, French balloon pilot Boulangchard used a balloon with propellable wings as propeller and bird-like tail as rudder to fly across the English Channel; British navigator James Cook made three expeditions to the Pacific Ocean and went around the world again. New Zealand and Newfoundland were discovered during the voyage.
The famous "Earl Led Zeppelin" ushered in a new era of transatlantic travel and made the first circumnavigation of the world.
In the film [Hot Air Balloon Pilot] adapted from the meteorologist James Glaeser's hot air balloon journey , the adventurer has just passed by death, and after waking up, he begins his tireless climatic quest.
For the rest of their lives, they happily recited Spencer's "The Fate of the Butterfly":
"What other happiness comes to all living beings, it is comparable to the unrestrained enjoyment of pleasure, it is comparable to being the master of nature's magic, it is comparable to pouring rainwater from the top of the sky to the earth, it is comparable to feeding on flowers and wild grasses that are naturally splendid. , comparable to seeing everything that is pleasing to the eye.”
And the world of "Dark Matter" is such a fantastic and adventurous realm full of boundless enthusiasm and imagination.
Follow the little girl Laila, with childlike innocence and fearlessness, breaking through the secular framework and fighting the aging church rule, who can not be moved?
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The city in the sky is almost the type with the most miracles and wonders in the history of human fantasy.
From the lost civilization Laputa of Hayao Miyazaki [City in the Sky] , to the floating island in the steampunk world of [Predator City]. We really like to fantasize about the mysterious sky city suspended above our heads.
In "Dark Matter", there is also a "city in the sky".
Progressive scientists discovered the particle of "dust" in the North Pole, and only through the "dust" did they see the "city in the sky" that was invisible to the naked eye. When it was shown on the screen, the old church people were shocked!
Church kidnapping children and doing experiments on Arctic sites are also related to "dust".
"Dust" opens an invisible "window", allowing people to enter another world from here. This also leads to another important setting of the play-parallel world.
Pullman wrote Dark Matters patiently. The most important parallel world setting of the entire novel did not appear until the end of the first part, and the male protagonist did not appear until the second part. It can be said that it took three complete novels to construct the entire world view.
Compared to fantasy series such as "The Lord of the Rings" and "Harry Potter", "Dark Matter" is too slow!
But fortunately, the adaptation of the series did not do this, it established the world view in advance!
For example, several different worlds in the opening sequence are laid out, crossed, and folded on the screen, which shows a hint of "parallel worlds". Another example is the appearance of the little male protagonist Will from another world, which was also brought forward to the first season.
Pullman said that the creation of "Dark Materials" was deeply inspired by the epic "Paradise Lost".
In Paradise Lost, Eve and Adam in the Garden of Eden were lured by Satan's serpent and ate the forbidden fruit. They were expelled from the Garden of Eden, but they also gained knowledge.
The struggle between God and Satan is also a struggle between darkness and light.
The girl Laila and the boy Will from different worlds have to travel between parallel worlds, fighting to the death against church rule, evil spirits, and even God. The two are almost the "Eve" and "Adam" in the prophecy.
The theory of prophecy and election, the debate between freedom and despotism, the anti-religious worship that breaks through the dark, the advocacy of the industrial revolution and the spirit of adventure, and even the theory of dark matter and parallel worlds in physics...
The connotation of "Dark Matter" goes far beyond the scope of children's literature, but on the other hand, it is so full of childlike whimsy and brilliant fun.
Open the Blockbuster Top Theater, subscribe to "Dark Matter", and you can travel through different worlds and experience exotic adventures with Laila!
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