I don’t know what the movie critics’ problem is. I thought The Golden Compass was awesome. The acting was great, the scenery was gorgeous, the daemons were well done in CGI, the set-up for the next film worked, and what was changed from novel to film was reasonable. There is some violence, the worst of which is one polar knocking off the lower jaw of another polar bear, but no blood is shown. Whenever a person was killed, his or her daemon evaporated in a glittery cloud. The scariest part was watching Lyra almost being cut away from her daemon by means of a claustrophobic black machine. The saddest scene was seeing the result of intercision (cutting a child from its daemon) – the child is something like a drugged-out ghost with no sense of anything.
I can see why people are upset about the anti-religious tone, and some of the negative audience reviews about this are eye-opening. However, the author has a right to express his opinion as well (I think some of the angry audience members forget this), which I think he’s done beautifully in these three books. And there’s no denying that under the label of “religion,” people have done some horrible things to other people, supposedly to "help" them and “save” them.
Kate Bush’s song at the end is beautiful. I hope that’s released on a CD at some point.
I next want to see Sweeney Todd and possibly Atonement (more for James McAvoy than Keira Knightley, and because the book was good).
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