It was a good movie. Oh, it made me want to reject the church a bit. Bad movie, bad. No cookie.

[secondlina]

 

After work yesterday, I went to see The Golden Compass with Tanya, Anneka, class friends, and John, Tanya's boyfriend. After watching the movie, I didn't really have the warm fuzzy feeling I got from watching awesome movies. I was actually a little disapointed. I never read the His Dark Material series. Watching the movie, I didn't feel that confused. I could tell it was a great adaptation of the books, very close to the books, because it lacked...something. I feel this story probably makes a wicked book. I'm still debating how good of a movie it is. You know, some things speak to you better through a certain medium. I think the Golden Compass is probably one of them. The visuals were fantastic though, and i'm sure all those die-hard "the movie MUST be like the book!" fans will be happy.

As a personal oponion, I think that when you change the medium, you have to change the story at least a little. I try to see a movie adaptation as a different version of the story, and therefore I think I appreciate the different versions more. After the movie, we discussed good "revised" movie adaptations... Stardust, The last unicorn, The princess bride, Howl's moving castle, Wicked are all titles that came up. They are all great pieces of litterature and cinema (and theatre for Wicked). Also, some anime series also get "altered" from a manga, and nobody bickers over that. Full Metal alchemist and Slayers are good examples. We just take them as "versions" where you have to read and see everything to grasp the story.

All and all, watching the Golden Compass made me want to read the books. I'm not sure i'll rush into theatres to see the other movies though. I'll rent them for sure. But I don't think it's worth 15 $ to go see it. But I really want to read the books. The multi-dimentionnal aspect of the story really made me happy (all of you know how obsessive I get about stories that cross over like that.) I didn't really catch the anti-christian part of the movie. I definitly saw an anti-church. I don't think the writter was anti-religion. If anything, his books seem to try to explain religion. I read a few articles on the web and from what I can tell, he's trying to explain how angels and gods and daemons can exist. I doubt the author was anti-religion. Religions have beautiful messages of love and peace. But he was strongly against religious institutions that tortured, supressed, controlled... and I think we have to all admit that the church does have a history of that. It sucks, but it's true. The church really should just assume it's mistakes rather then try to defend them. Heck, doesn't the religion claim that we must forgive? But you gotta apologize first.

John pointed out the irony of having the second Narnia film preview before the Golden Compass. I agree. C.S. Lewis' strong christian and slightly totalirian values does clash with the feature film. *sigh* It's all about politics really. Nothing about beliefs. 

-Secondlina

Comments

[kitesareevil.livejournal.com]

I just wrote my final Milton paper on The Golden Compass. Pullman is a huge fan of "Paradise Lost" and actually based the "His Dark Materials" books on a semi-unusual way to read Paradise Lost, which made the books make a whole lot more sense to me.

You shouldn't have seen a lot of anti-Christianity themes, there aren't really any. What there are are a lot of anti-organized religion and following the crowd sheep mentality, as you said you saw. (Which uh, also goes back to Milton, funny enough.) Most people see that and aren't able to see the difference. The story, at the very end, does something that makes people cry that Pullman is anti-Christian, but I won't ruin it for you.

[secondlina.livejournal.com]

I get the whole link to "Paradise lost" which is a wonderful book. Yeah, it's really not the anti religion, but rather anti institution. Of course, I guess some people see it as the same. I don't get why the church panics; plenty of other movies render priests as baddies. Maybe it's because they are afraid children might see this movie and of COURSE children are THAT easy to sway into anything...

The church really needs to work 5 hours of daycare.

[kitesareevil.livejournal.com]

I think that has to be it. But I've seen kids be the ones who fight the hardest for their beliefs sometimes, they aren't easily swayed at all.

And what you're saying below with ichibanvictory about the first angel is pretty much right on. The only thing about the books is that, yeah, the first angel makes himself out to be the creator, but there's this underlying question about how he was created if he was first? He remembers his birth or being first, and there's some hinting that there is a greater power than the angels.