I will start by saying i truly enjoyed this film and it's a great pity the sequel was abandoned. This film did reasonable box office business worldwide but could be considered a flop in North America where religious groups picketed some cinema's due to the fact they think the original novel from which the film is based is anti-christian. You can actually see some scenes in the trailer which would have been used in the sequel.

This is a big budget film chock full of CGI effects which also had a good script unlike something like G.I. Joe which i don't want to ever watch again.

The acting from everyone was excellent and especially the young Dakota Blue Richards who had the difficult task of a leading role and i predict she will be a future Oscar winner if she survives the child star stage of her career. The voice acting was also memorable and Daniel Craig shows he has a career outside of James Bond.

You can clearly see in the comparison shots that some of the backgrounds are different in the final film and brightness/contrast/colours are also different. The actual CGI effects look finished though and you can see there is more detail in some frames in the trailer. I will start by providing normal screencaps from the actual film.

Blu Ray Screencaps of The Golden Compass. Click again for the full HD image.

Below is the screenshot comparison between the film and trailer.

You will notice the composition of some shots in the movie is different to the trailer and this is because the film was shot Super 35 which allows for the different framing. I would not normally use trailers as a comparison but in this instance i do believe it suitable for showing the differences in many shots between the film and trailer. There is the argument that the softer look of this film is intentional to go with the fantasy world created for this film and i must admit i originally thought this and still think that's possible. The other argument is that the trailer is sharpened but it doesn't look sharpened to me. A third argument is that the lighting and colour changes make the movie version appear to be less sharp and this could be true of some scenes such as frame 1, 3,4,6,8 and 15.

The above optical illusion is possible as i have tinkered with Photoshop and did get similar results so i wouldn't rule this out. If you have Photoshop try a few tests yourself. In frame 5 the movie clearly shows a button which the trailer frame barely shows but the trailer shows more freckles and detail, it may be that the scene was lightened to hide the freckles. This comparison took a long time to prepare.

The first image of each frame is from the movie and the second image is from the trailer. Frame 2 does not match the same frame from the movie so bear that in mind when viewing it. I list it mainly to show the background changes. Frame 10 is likely a single frame out between the trailer and movie but it serves to show the armour on the bear in the movie but missing from the trailer. Check out frame 11 and note on the trailer Dakota Blue Richards face is nowhere to be seen but is visible on the movie frame. Frames 9 and 12 show a fantastic amount of detail in the trailer but the actual movie loses the detail probably due to selective DNR.

I wonder if DNR was applied to some shots but that the lighting changes are responsible for the majority of the difference people perceive with this film. I am not totally convinced that the look of most of this film is not intentional given it's fantasy world setting but i also don't rule out DNR by New Line.

Remember that once you open an image you may need to click again for the full HD frame.