Any good? Anyone read the book, or the trilogy?
With so many religions against it, it may be worth seeing.
I own the trilogy and its very good. Your imagination has a fun time picturing all of the settings and characters.
But I really don’t like the way the film looks. Most of the time it just looks nothing like I imagined.
Don’t get me wrong, it looks well made, good actors, etc. Just not my cup of tea.
So in my opinion the books are a lot better.
Oh yeah, and I never ever thought of it as attacking/criticizing religion in any way. I just saw it as a light fantasy with interesting religious plots.
I heard it was about man’s attempt to kill God.
The Armored Polar bears look kind of cool, but I wouldn’t spend money to see it.
I watched it, I thought it sucked.
SPOILER ALERT!
Ended way to abrupt for me, and I still dont know what was going on in the movie.
A lot happens in the book. They can only put so much in the movie. It must have gone ridiculously fast for anyone who hasn’t read the book.
So basically, read the books, then maybe see the movie.
Good books, definitely worth a read. Comes in a trilogy - the Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife and the Amber Spyglass.
The book Golden Compass is also called Northern Lights in some countries.
I didn’t see it as an attack upon religion either - more like a Gnostic viewpoint.
Has interesting ideas about parallel universes, wormholes, dark matter, etc.
The first book basically shows the maturation of a young girl protagonist. This happens as she goes on a long journey to many different locations in her world in order to first try to save a friend and then save her uncle.
The movie compresses this 400+ page book by jumping from main event to main event, eliminating the many pages of journey, self-discovery, and gradual revelation about the nature of the world/universe the story takes place in. The result, for the most part, is that you lose all sense of the causality of the events (particularly the motivations of the different groups for helping the protagonist), as the plot moves at a whirlwind pace.
You see some pretty pictures and some very impressive CG, but don’t really develop a connection with the characters because you are not able to grasp the way events are affecting the protagonist on a level beyond the superficial.
As well, in the first scene of the movie, you learn that there are many worlds parallel to the one you’re witnessing, yet, because the movie terminates before the ending of the book, absolutely nothing is done with this concept. There is a reference to another world seen in some clouds and a vague sense that Dust and the “Golden Compass” may have something to do with this multiverse, but you are ultimately completely uninformed as to its significance or nature.
In the book, information about this multiverse is gradually revealed, as the connection between various events, Dust, and the Golden Compass are developed. At its end of it, there is a pretty significant preliminary explanation that is completely left out of this first movie, which I think is ultimately one of the strong reasons the ending to the movie might leave a nonreader puzzled.
I read the books (which are quite good and really only “children’s books” at their most literal) before I saw the movie so this is only my sense of the movie when I try to divorce myself from what I know from the book.
As for the religious controversy, the books have a very interesting concept of god and the heavens, but it’s only controversial if you’re a religious fundamentalist or intolerant of other conceptions of higher power. The concept is in no way original, but it’s obscure enough from popular conceptions that it could, perhaps, be mistaken for being original or, at least, novel.
I’m interested, if for no other reason than it’s pissing people off.
I covered these ‘His Dark Materials’ books fairly extensively in another thread, but will repost here because it’s significant:
I think a couple of the main offensive things to the religious are that in the books, each person is guided by a “daemon” which is a part of them. The religious would think it is demonic.
Also, in the trilogy there is a knife called Aesahaettr, or the God Killer, which is the only knife capable of “killing God”. There is a faction of rebel angels (and men) out to kill the one sitting in the highest throne, who is an ancient angel called Metatron.
So the “God being killed” in the novel is an angel who has been sitting in the throne calling himself God - so Christians should be cheering to see an impostor outed from that position just like Lucifer was in the first rebellion.
The story involves parallel universes, travelling between them, and so forth, by cutting a hole in the fabric of reality with this knife.
I did not find the stories offensive; they are just fantasy and meant to be taken as such. I still can’t bring myself to pronounce ‘daemon’ as demon though, because of my own religious upbringing - I still say “daimon”.
Pretty much anything offends the religious anyway. Harry Potter offends the religious. Lord of the Rings offends them. Rock and Roll offends them…nudity offends them…anything from another religion or even another sect within the same religion offends them…
The author is a self-confessed atheist, but I do not find the theme to be anti-Christian.
They’re not really all about killing God - that is an event in the plot, but it’s more about an adventure between a boy and a girl.
For religious sake in the story, I take it that the god to be killed was an impostor and that the real God prevails in the background unseen - that’s my personal reading of it. It’s a principle of Gnostic Christianity that the God of the Garden of Eden, the Old Testament god, was an impostor - a Demiurge; a violent, bloodthirsty tribal war god; and that the God Jesus is talking about in the New Testament is the true God, of love.
As for the theme of the rejection of organized religion and the abuse of power in a fictionalized Catholic Church, we have seen plenty of atrocious things done in the name of God by organized religion, and the abuse of power by the Catholic Church have been real historical events - i.e. just look at the Inquisition and so forth for example. There’s no need to find that theme offensive because it’s just making people face the truth of what HAS been going on.
Regarding daemons/daimons:
Personally, I think daemon should be pronounced the way it is spelled, and also adding to that, the fact that the word “demon” has long-standing negative connotations, regardless of religious stance.
The idea of each person having their personal daemon came from Socrates, who said that he had one that guided him. “The favor of the gods,” said Socrates, “has given me a marvelous gift, which has never left me since my childhood. It is a voice which, when it makes itself heard, deters me from what I am about to do and never urges me on.” He spoke familiarly of this daimon, joked about it and obeyed blindly the indications it gave.
Plato thinks that a kind of spirit, which is separate from us, receives man at his birth, and follows him in life and after death. He calls it “the daimon which has received us as its portionment.” The ancient idea of the daimon seems, therefore, to be analogous to the guardian angel of Christians.
There is also an idea that possibly the daimon is nothing but the higher part of man’s spirit, that which is separated from the human element.
So it is different to “demon”, as a demon is an external, evil supernatural being malevolent to man, while a daimon is an internal guiding principle that is part of man himself.
So therefore the pronunciations may confuse people.
Anyway, I have heard that the movie is largely going to be censored, with most of the considered offensive religious ideas removed. Kind of like His Dark Materials, the Lite version.
[quote]JohnnyBlaze wrote:
Regarding daemons/daimons:
Personally, I think daemon should be pronounced the way it is spelled, and also adding to that, the fact that the word “demon” has long-standing negative connotations, regardless of religious stance.
The idea of each person having their personal daemon came from Socrates, who said that he had one that guided him. “The favor of the gods,” said Socrates, “has given me a marvelous gift, which has never left me since my childhood. It is a voice which, when it makes itself heard, deters me from what I am about to do and never urges me on.” He spoke familiarly of this daimon, joked about it and obeyed blindly the indications it gave.
Plato thinks that a kind of spirit, which is separate from us, receives man at his birth, and follows him in life and after death. He calls it “the daimon which has received us as its portionment.” The ancient idea of the daimon seems, therefore, to be analogous to the guardian angel of Christians.
There is also an idea that possibly the daimon is nothing but the higher part of man’s spirit, that which is separated from the human element.
So it is different to “demon”, as a demon is an external, evil supernatural being malevolent to man, while a daimon is an internal guiding principle that is part of man himself.
So therefore the pronunciations may confuse people.
Anyway, I have heard that the movie is largely going to be censored, with most of the considered offensive religious ideas removed. Kind of like His Dark Materials, the Lite version.[/quote]
I think I’ll quickly read the book this weekend and see the movie while its still in theatres — sounds very thought provoking.
Thanks for the insights!