Звёздная пыль: Романтическое фэнтези

Romantic fantasy film by Matthew Vaughn

Stardust is a 2007 romantic fantasy adventure film directed by Matthew Vaughn and co written by Vaughn and Jane Goldman. Based on Neil Gaiman's 1999 novel of the same name, it features an ensemble cast led by Claire Danes, Charlie Cox, Sienna Miller, Ricky Gervais, Jason Flemyng, Rupert Everett, Peter O'Toole, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Robert De Niro, with narration by Ian McKellen. The film follows Tristan, a young man from the fictional town of Wall in England. Wall is a town on the border of the magical fantasy kingdom of Stormhold. Tristan enters the magical world to collect a fallen star to give to his beloved Victoria, in return for her hand in marriage. He collects the star who, to his surprise, is a woman named Yvaine. Witches and the Princes of Stormhold are also hunting for Yvaine. Meanwhile, Tristan tries to get her back to Wall with him before Victoria's birthday, the deadline of her offer. The film was released to positive reviews and grossed $137 million on a $70–88.5 million budget. Mark Burns as the New Bishop

The illustrated fantasy story Stardust was created by Neil Gaiman, with art by Charles Vess. It was first published by DC Comics in 1997 as a prestige format four issue comic mini series. Encouraged by publisher Avon, Gaiman decided to adapt Stardust, and in 1999, it was republished as a conventional novel in hardback without illustrations. Gaiman has compared the story to a fantasy version of the 1934 romantic comedy film It Happened One Night. Gaiman described the process as "an unsatisfactory development period", and he recovered the rights after they expired. For years, Gaiman refused offers to develop the film. Having seen the disappointing results of the hands off approach taken by Alan Moore, Gaiman preferred to retain control and influence the development of the film. Eventually, discussions about a film version of Stardust took place between Gaiman, director Terry Gilliam, and producer Matthew Vaughn. Gilliam dropped out following his involvement with The Brothers Grimm and not wanting to do another fairy tale. Vaughn left to produce Layer Cake but then became the director for the first time for that project. After Vaughn withdrew from helming the film X Men: The Last Stand, talks resumed and in January 2005, Vaughn acquired the option to develop Stardust. In October 2005, the director entered final negotiations with Paramount Pictures to write, direct, and produce Stardust with a budget estimated at $70–88.5 million. Vaughn said half the financing for the film was British.

The adapted screenplay was written by Vaughn and screenwriter Jane Goldman, who had been recommended by Gaiman. One of the difficulties with adapting the novel was its earnest and dark nature: an adult fairy tale in which sex and violence are presented unflinchingly. With Gaiman's blessing given to the screenwriters, the movie version has a greater element of whimsy and humour. Gaiman did not want people to go to the theatre to see a film that attempted, but failed, to be completely loyal to the book. After creating the audiobook version of the novel, Gaiman realised that there were 10½ hours of material in the book. This led him to acknowledge that the film would have to compress the novel, leaving out portions of the work. Budgetary concerns also factored into the adaptation, even with the level of 2006 technology. Vaughn acknowledges the changes from the book were substantial. The character of Captain Shakespeare was expanded extensively from the novel, where Captain Alberic is only briefly mentioned, and the last half hour of the film is almost entirely different from the book. Vaughn and Goldman decided that the witches needed names, as in the book they were collectively the Lilim. They chose names from classical sources that coincidentally included names found in Gaiman's The Books of Magic (Empusa) and Neverwhere (Lamia). On the film's differences from the novel, Gaiman commented, "I sort of feel like my grounding in comics was actually very useful because in my head, that's just the Earth Two version of Stardust. It's a parallel Earth version of Stardust, which has Robert De Niro and stuff. And I get people who come to the book from having loved the movie who are really disappointed at some of the stuff that isn't there that Matthew brought." Responding to a fan's statement about preferring the film's climax compared to the book, Gaiman clarified that he in fact had suggested the different ending that the film ended up using and liked it better for the film but liked the book ending better for the book.

In March 2006, the studio cast Robert De Niro, Michelle Pfeiffer, Claire Danes, Charlie Cox, and Sienna Miller. Production began in the United Kingdom and Iceland in April 2006, with the majority of filming taking place in the UK. Vaughn picked Danes, Cox, and Pfeiffer for their roles. He intended Captain Shakespeare to be played by either De Niro or Jack Nicholson. Stephen Fry was pitched as a possible Shakespeare, but Vaughn eventually picked De Niro. Vaughn insisted on an unknown actor for the part of Tristan. Cox had worked alongside Miller before, and played a small supporting as her brother in the 2005 film Casanova. The role of Quintus was originally given to comedian Noel Fielding, but due to health issues he had to drop out and was replaced by another comedian Adam Buxton.

The production started filming in mid April 2006, with principal photography taking place at Pinewood Studios in London. Location filming started in Wester Ross, in the Scottish Highlands followed immediately by filming on the Isle of Skye. The scene where Prince Septimus consults the soothsayer was shot in Iceland. The film makers had wanted to use more locations in Iceland but were unable to get the horses they needed. In mid 2006, there was some filming at Stowe School in Buckinghamshire and in the village of Castle Combe, Wiltshire. Some of the scenes requiring wide open spaces for riding and coach scenes were filmed at Bicester Airfield in Oxfordshire. Another film location was on Elm Hill in Norwich. The area, with a mixture of Tudor and medieval buildings dating as far back as the 11th century, was transformed into the streets of Stormhold. The Briton's Arms tea house became the Slaughtered Prince public house. The owners were so enthralled with the new look, including a spectacular mural and new thatching, that they appealed to the local council and English Heritage to keep it, but their request was refused. Filming also took place in Wales, at the Brecon Beacons National Park. The design of the witches' lair was inspired by the Hall of Mirrors in the Palace of Versailles in France, but with black instead of white and silver instead of gold.]] The film required 830 visual effects (VFX) shots which were supervised by Peter Chiang and produced by Tim Field. Double Negative supervised 350 shots, and other work was shared out among six other companies including LipSync Post, Cinesite, The Senate, Baseblack, Machine and Rushes. Mattes & Miniatures provided miniatures. The pirate skyship set was shot against a 360 degree greenscreen and required fully CG backgrounds and digital extending the size and the bow of the ship. Some distance shots of ship were entirely CG. Yvaine required a star glow effect for more than eighty shots. Two of the witches required a signature magical effect, Lamia had a green fire effect created using a combination of particle animation and joint driven soft body ribbons, and Sal had a black smoke effect, created by turning animated geometry into a target driven fluid simulation. The age transformation of Lamia was achieved using composite of multiple motion control plates, including a pass in the full prosthetic makeup, the transformed youthful Lamia, and a pass where the hair was pulled through a dummy head, played in reverse to give the appearance of hair growing, composited and blended with a procedural glow effect. Twenty feet of The Wall was built on location as a practical effect and extended into the distance using digital painting. VFX were completed by February 2007.

The film score was composed by Ilan Eshkeri, who previously worked with Vaughn on Layer Cake. Eshkeri was given the script before production began and wrote the first pieces of music inspired by the illustrations of Charles Vess from the graphic novel. Eshkeri was also on set during some of the filming. The score was released by Decca Records on 11 September 2007. Eshkeri won the award for Best New Composer of 2007 from the International Film Music Critics Association, and the score was also nominated in the category Best Original Fantasy Score. After watching an early cut, British pop band Take That wrote and recorded a song for the film titled "Rule the World", featuring Gary Barlow on lead vocals. The song features in the end credits to the film and was released as a single on 22 October 2007 in the United Kingdom and peaked at number two on the UK Singles Chart. Dimmu Borgir's song "Eradication Instincts Defined" is featured in both the UK and US trailers. Prelude 2 in C Minor from the first book of the "Well Tempered Clavier" by Johann Sebastian Bach was adapted for use in the first part of the scene at Lamia's Inn. A March release had been planned but when Paramount saw its commercial potential it was pushed back to a later date. The film was later released on 10 August 2007 in the United States. It opened in 2,540 theatres, earning US$9,169,779, an average of $3,610 per theatre, putting it in 4th place, with Rush Hour 3 taking 1st. The film also opened the same day in Russia and the rest of the Commonwealth of Independent States, earning $8,118,263 as of 14 October 2007. In the UK and Ireland, the film was released on 19 October 2007, it came in second at the box office in its opening weekend and spent 8 weeks in the box office top ten. Stardust was blocked from release in China due to additional restrictions on foreign films on top of the existing quota system limiting non Chinese films. Stardust earned a total of $137,022,245 worldwide. On Metacritic the film has a score of 66 out of 100 based on reviews from 33 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade "A−" on scale of A to F.

Roger Ebert called it a "fun" movie and gave it a rating of 2.5 out of 4. He criticised the pacing as cluttered and unfocused, and concluded "It's a film you enjoy in pieces, but the jigsaw never gets solved." The New Yorkers Bruce Diones called it "more surprising and effective than the usual kiddie matinée madness." John Anderson of Variety wrote: "Sprinkled with tongue in cheek humor, fairly adult jokes and some well known faces acting very silly, this adventure story should have particular appeal to fans of The Princess Bride, but in any event will never be mistaken for a strictly for kids movie." Anderson praised Pfeiffer for her comedic timing and called De Niro's performance "as engrossing as a car crash". He says the romance is the least interesting part of the film, but the sweep of the story and the humor keep the film together. Stephen Holden of The New York Times wrote: "Michelle Pfeiffer is Lamia, as deliciously evil a witch as the movies have ever invented" and suggested she should be the center of the film. Holden said that Danes was miscast, and described De Niro's performance as "either a piece of inspired madcap fun or an excruciating embarrassment." Kurt Loder of MTV News was critical of De Niro's performance saying "This could be the most pointlessly grotesque performance of De Niro's career; it's flabbergastingly unfunny." Michael Dwyer of The Irish Times described the film as "diverting in its whimsical way, but burdened with nonsequiturs, and it ought to have been subjected to more rigorous pruning in the editing suite". Dwyer criticised the cameos of Gervais and De Niro as unsubtle, jarring, and self indulgent, and said Danes was miscast. He praised Pfeiffer, saying she gave the film "the kiss of life". Dan Jolin of Empire called it "Patchy but great fun, peppering plenty of black humour into a sweet if silly fairy tale romance." Glenn Kenny of Premiere called it "an eye poppingly elaborate fantasy that's shot through with action movie adrenaline and attitude." Time Out London compared the film to Time Bandits or The Princess Bride "but it lacks the former's originality and the latter's heart". Tim Robey of The Telegraph wrote: "There's a shameless romantic streak here, quite welcome in a boy targeted genre that usually insists battles are cool and love is for wimps." Philip French of The Observer said the film "fails on every level" and referring to a scene with Robert De Niro said it "plumbs new depths of camp embarrassment". Deborah Ross of The Spectator called the film "a grindingly familiar huge pile of nothing which may please six year olds and fantasy nerds, but that's about it".

The film was released on both Region 1 DVD and HD DVD on 18 December 2007. The HD DVD and DVD special features include a documentary entitled Good Omens: The Making of Stardust; deleted scenes from the film; the film's blooper reel; and the film's theatrical trailer. The film and special features on the HD DVD version are presented in 2.35:1 widescreen high definition 1080p and feature a Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 audio soundtrack. The film was released on Region A Blu ray Disc (Canada and US) on 7 September 2010.

Vaughn had ideas for Stardust 2 that would involve London in the 1960s, but the first film was not financially successful enough to justify a sequel. On the 10th Anniversary of the film's release Vanity Fair interviewed Charlie Cox, who is frequently recognized by fans for the role early in his career. Cox is unsure why the film is so popular, but notes that Vaughn wanted to make a film with broad appeal, and Goldman did a great job cutting out extraneous detail, and focusing on the heart of the story. Vanity Fair notes that the film gets replayed frequently in syndication and describes it as "endlessly likable", with a great cast, special effects that aren't too dated, and "the best adaptation of Gaiman's work, capturing his unique blend of darkness and whimsy perfectly." Vaughn was critical of the marketing of the film, saying it had been promoted as if it were Lord of the Rings when it had been much more influenced by The Princess Bride. He noted that although the film didn't do well in cinemas it became an "evergreen title" on DVD.