Word: pullmans
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...Director-screenwriter Chris Weitz's film version of the first book in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy is meant to be a blockbuster for all major moviegoing demographics, from six to 16. Wreathed in lavish CGI effects, The Golden Compass traces the quest of the 12-year-old Lyra (Dakota Blue Richards) to find a missing friend and, eventually, to save her world. On the way to her destiny she's imprisoned by a glamorous vamp (Nicole Kidman), befriended by a talking polar bear (the talking is done by Ian McKellen) and accompanied by her own Jiminy Cricket...
...This creature and his fellows are the consciences, the very souls, of the humans they're attached to. Yet they're called "daemons"; and that's the first hint of Pullman's agenda. As the trilogy progresses the author reveals a battle between a dictatorial deity and the rebel angels determined to defeat Him. God is the villain of the piece, Satan the hero. And Lyra's on the side of the devils. As Pullman said to the Sydney Morning Post, "My books are about killing...
...Line Cinema, flush from the surprise megahit status of the first Lord of the Rings film, bought the rights to the Pullman saga - and promptly started fretting about the God problem. Retain the books' central conflict, and stoke the wrath of America's Christian Right. Delete it, and risk alienating Pullman's fan base, which is not so large here as in Britain. (The books had already been slightly redacted in their U.S. editions, which cut passages about Lyra's budding sexuality...
...Golden Compass, is similarly scared of its antireligious content. The company that boldly greenlighted Peter Jackson's $300 million Hobbit ambitions before a frame of the first movie was shot, and made billions from riding that risk, hasn't said yes to films two and three of the Pullman books - although the first movie ends with a chatty preview of the plot in the sequels, should they ever be made. For now, viewers will have to take that on faith...
Though Mr. Donohue warns parents that Pullman is attempting to recruit children into the thralls of heretical atheism, I think he’s giving the author too much credit. Are children really so gullible that they’ll chuck their faith like last year’s bangles after reading a book...