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

[ichiban-victory.livejournal.com]

*cough* *hack* *cough* Oh man, I'm going to bite my tongue on this. It is a bit refreshing seeing someone not afraid to say what they think, though, about the nature of God and such. It is true that most people will not really know him, and there is a lot we don't know about how God came into being, either. (There are plenty of theories, I'm sure, but to even question God coming into existence seems to be blasphemy to a lot of people.)

How do you figure you'd need eight people? It only takes a male and a female of any species to reproduce. (Take rabbits, for instance.) There'd most likely be a bit of incest at the start, but within even just a generation (or three) you would start to have more diversity. Of course, speaking from a scientific angle (am I allowed to do that?), chances are Adam and Eve would need to contain all possible genetic variables to pass on, else their offspring's genetic differences would be too few. In any case, that's something we may never really know about for sure.

And man, you want to talk about pedophiles... 'My guy' is wanting to be baptized into the LDS church, so he's had some friends try to save him. One sent him the link to the feared 'Godmakers', (which is an old video supposed to reveal the truth about the LDS church) which had a scene telling and showing about God coming down to earth to have sex with Mary. That just disgusted me right there... (The whole video was pretty laughable. You would cry at the animation.) Old man with white hair knocking up a young girl...

Anyway, the whole religion thing can be pretty complicated. I think the true trouble lies (and hopefully this is what the book/movie focuses on) in people blindly following and obeying what their leaders tell them to do or believe without ever questioning or learning for themselves. That I can definitely agree with, as it is very true.

Anyway, back to fun... I was so happy to see all of the actors back in their roles! This will be an awesome series to watch later on if they're able to keep on all of the children actors before they get too old, especially 'Lucy'. That actress has a great quality about her.

[secondlina.livejournal.com]

Well personnally, I believe in god. I'm not sure If I believe some churches. The catholic church for one have so many bad things on their reccord that I'm really against being a part of them. I like the general message of love and peace, but i'm really against certain things like "gay people should burn in hell!" Honestly, you can't punish people for something they can't help. On the scientific level, it's a biological need, the same way we are attracted to the opposite sex.

But that's another subject all together.

Despite the fact that I do believe in god, I doubt any text in the world hold the truth. I'm sure there's some text in the bible that's pretty good, truth wise. But you have to keep in mind that the bible got edited several times during conventions, like the Genevian council. Some texts got edited out, and some new texts got added. The genesis is part of added texts. Some says it's actually based on greek myth. Hence why I question it's value. There's also, has you say, the whole genetic problems linked to the fact that we would only have one parent-couple. I think that if the genesis is true, then adam and eve are probably a metaphor. God most likely created several couples at first.

Why would god have created several couples? Well, to prevent genetic defects for one. But also, we are naturally social creatures. Humans like to travel in packs. So logically, if we got created, god would have made us a "pack". So I personnaly think that if the adam and eve tale is true, then adam and eve are probably the main couple (aka alpha male and female) and when they got casted out, the pack followed. It makes sense; because later in the bible you have humans popping out of nowere to talk to them. And of course, the bible was writting to show people who did not study years and years the story of the genesis. So then, it would be easier for them to grasp the story with only one couple rather then: "there was eve, and martha, and julie, and susannah, etc"

Don't get me wrong; I love the story of the genesis. Even for someone who would not believe in the bible, it's a wonderful story. And so many beautiful paintings came forth from this story. I just have trouble believing we only have one parent-couple, hence the alpha couple theory. It could work.

In any case, you don't really have to convince me about the value of the existence of god. But I do so ever try to find ways to link my belief to science, which is another element I love. After all, if god really was a creator, then he must have been the smartest scientist to ever come forth for creating and abiding to physics, chemistry, gravity, etc. And yeah, i'm very honest when it comes to my somewhat heretic theories. But this is mostly me amusing myself. I'll find out the truth when I die anyways. This is just theorizing.

[ichiban-victory.livejournal.com]

Do you know what? I seriously love you. This reminds me of the old days when I had a friend who was Agnostic, so oftentimes we would talk on the nature of God, etc. I prefer to have an intelligent conversation with someone about beliefs and such than to have people screaming blasphemy for such things like even considering God was not always the omnipotent being we know him to be. Is it so wrong to think that if we follow a certain life path (start off as the egg and sperm, which make a baby, that baby grows and progresses to a child, and eventually the child grows up to have children/a life of their own), that perhaps God did as well?

Man, I'd love to have those sort of talks again. It's fun to stretch the beliefs and dogma sometimes to see if any new insight can be gained. It certainly helps clear away stupid thinking since you're forced to see how the other person sees in order to progress the conversation.

Oh, and you're not a heretic as far as I see it. I find nothing wrong with trying to sort out theology and science at all. It's another favorite pastime of mine. (Then again, I belong to 'the cult', so maybe I'm just a heretic as well.) ^_-;

[secondlina.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I kinda miss being able to freely talk about beliefs and stuff. Most people I know are atheist and they don't even want to hear "heretic" theories. I guess you get both sides: extra religious that don't want to hear question marks next to god and then super atheist that just don't want to think that maybe there's a more powerful energy/being/system over our heads, even if he's not our creator. I prefer middle ground people. I guess that's kinda what I am.

I know in toronto I met this muslim girl. Talking to her was so much fun! I loved it ^^

[ichiban-victory.livejournal.com]

It probably comes down to how comfortable someone is with their stance on religion and such. Someone who is barely clinging to their religion must hate having anyone throw doubt in their path, because then they might fall. That, or they enjoy being close-minded and self-righteous. Hard to say. I'm used to people attacking me because they think that's how I'm going to be, but thank goodness it's not true... (I admit to sometimes sounding that way, but writing cannot always convey what I'm trying to say.)

..what is it with me and the rhyming as of late? XP

For a parallel to your story, once I got into a conversation with a Wiccan friend (she's since stopped believing in it) and was pointing out the similarities between her practices and practices within Christian faith. Oh man, did she get mad at me...

[secondlina.livejournal.com]

Oh, and all those bad videos about the LDS? I find them dreadful. As much as I hate religious people imposing their beliefs, I also hate atheists imposing their non-beliefs. Let people choose for themselves, and stop making shitty animations about it, you know? People are freakin' weird.

(I went to look at a few on youtube after you ranted about it one day. Honestly? It made me feel like my rights were being violated by a bunch of die-hard atheists. At least i'm respectful of other's beliefs when I make my theories.)

[ichiban-victory.livejournal.com]

Sadly, that was put together by a certain religious group that I won't mention in respect to people I know. I want to know where they got their information though. They seemed obsessed with 'Celestial Sex', but no matter how hard I try, I cannot find it in any LDS doctrine!

(Maybe they confused LDS with LSD? I'm bad, I know. You'd have to be on drugs to believe the things they said in that video!)

[secondlina.livejournal.com]

Even LSD can't create that crap.

Lucy in the sky with diamonds sounds a lot better then anti-religion videos.