The Golden Compass

I saw the trailer for this movie about a year ago and it looked like an intriguing fantasy adventure, along the same lines as Lord of the Rings and the Chronicles of Narnia... but a little more civilized.

I like Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig, so I figured it would be a good movie to see this Christmas.

Then about six months later the emails starting rolling in. You know the ones that that I am talking about; "Boycott 'The Golden Compass'"

It's funny how emails like this tend to have different effects on the recipients of these messages. I did read the emails and it became the impetus for me to start to seriously look at the book, author, and plot and why this book/movie would become such a danger that people would actually start a campaign against it.

Reading the cliff notes version of the stories, I really didn't see any harm in the plot or in the way Philip Pullman masks his distaste for the Catholic Church (and maybe organized religion in general), but there are many other texts that treat these subjects the same way. The Bible even eludes to this in Revelations... but not to the same extent.

So, I saw the movie last night and quite enjoyed it. I'm aware that the director (Chris Weitz) softened the story and the references that were more prevalent in the book... but I thought that the movie did a good job with what it had.

One of the undertones that I felt radiated the most from the movie was the idea of one's free agency and how important it is to one's soul. I can agree completely with that. Free agency is the reason that we are here and is what allows us to become who we are. Without that, we are nothing more than soulless beings lumbering about with no direction other than what we are told to do.

In this movie, the Magisterium is out to do just that: separate the children from their daemons (their outer soul in the form of an animal companion).

I find it funny (and at the same time ironic) that there is a campaign that spends more time on asking for a boycott than for an education on the topic and an invitation to exercise your own free agency.

I'm not going to say much more about the movie other than I liked it... but I'm curious as to what was left out or softened.

There is one event that happens at the end of the book that doesn't happen in the first movie, but would open up the next movie and it will cause some to cringe spoiler below (highlight to see it), but they did the same thing with the LOTR series.

Lyra's friend Roger is killed by her uncle as a means of gaining Dust so that a portal can be opened to another world. They are in a remote location and since they are the only people around I can see the reason for the sacrifice, but it wouldn't be a good way to end the movie.

Min reserved the first book for me, and I'll start reading it when it comes in.

I know how the trilogy ends (or rather what the Evangelicals are so miffed about) and I'd like to see what leads up to this choice that the children make to do what they do.

Anyways, I doubt that the sequels will be made. The movie only grossed $26M this weekend and that is far from an automatic greenlight. But I did find out that overseas this movie made $60M overseas (so an $86M world-wide ain't bad).