However, this England is more like a parallel universe where the world is run by the organization known as the Magisterium. The Magisterium is clearly a stab at organized religion, which probably where the whole controversy started from. Anyway I digress; in this parallel universe every individual has a daemon. A daemon is essentially an animal that is a physical manifestation of your soul. And if your daemon gets hurt, you get hurt, and if you daemon perish you will too. Lyra daemon is named Pantalaimon who is not only her daemon, but her best friend. He's a shape shifter who can transform into any form, from a mouse to a leopard. But his primary form is that of a weasel.

Lyra's uncle is Lord Asriel, a professor at the Oxford University and his daemon is a snow leopard. Asriel at the university discovers the existence of Dust, which from what I understand is an allegory for God. His colleagues dismiss his theory as heresy and his theories are quickly disregarded. But they still agree to give him funding for the expedition to the north. Meanwhile, Lyra is approached by Marisa Coulter who tries befriend Lyra by taking her to the north as her assistant. But Lyra quickly realizes her attentions are less than noble. Coulter is after the golden compass that can help answer inquiries about anything you want. Lyra escapes Coulter and befriends Iorek Byrnison, a talking ice bear that helps her on her quest to find her uncle Asriel, who has been kidnapped by Marisa Coulter. The film is very entertaining, thrilling and often times funny, and it reminded a little bit of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. And I didn't see anything inherently anti-religious about the film.

Roger Ebert who gave the film a four star review, states that: “Attentive as I was, I was unable to find anything anti-religious in the movie, which works above all as an adventure.” Ebert also states: “Let me just say that I think, The Golden Compass is a wonderfully good looking movie, with exciting passages and a captivating heroine in Lyra. That the controversy surrounding it obscures its function as a splendid entertainment.”

 

Of course, when I first heard about the film adaptation I was both excited and apprehensive. How could such a powerful and complex trilogy be adapted for a mass market cinema audience, and how could it sidestep the controversy of its anti religious themes? The answer: it didn't.

As a generic fantasy adventure, “The Golden Compass” is mildly diverting. Well cast, pretty to look at with interesting designs for costumes and artifacts and gorgeous sweeping shots of Norwegian landscapes, it ought to be a very good film, but it falls flat through mediocre, even boring, direction, a pedestrian script, wasting its stellar cast with a sparse selection of dull lines, and thanks to a trite musical score, the film starts to feel like a poor facsimile of Disney. For those unfamiliar with the plot, it must have been daunting, as the story flits uncertainly around, moving desperately fast, but for those familiar with it a growing sense of anger was palpable in the cinema!

Elements of plot are changed inexplicably, the ending is cut infuriatingly short, crucial and excellently evoked set pieces are mangled beyond belief. The CGI creatures look, for the most part, vaguely acceptable, the daemons (souls of humans in the form of animals which walk by their human side) are effective enough, but are made unnecessarily cute, Lyra's daemon Pantalaimon, a cautious voice of reason in the books, becomes little more than comic relief, whilst the armored bears simply look ridiculous, particularly in making the lead bears look like the actors voicing them (a polar bear version of Sir Ian McKellen, good grief!) and the fight between them is depressingly bloodless.

The overall impression is that New Line Cinema have become complacent following the success of “the Lord of the Rings” and have decided that “The Golden Compass” should mimic it, thus we must have the mysterious explanatory prologue, the grand orchestral score, the scene with the collapsing bridge, the sweeping shots of landscape, Christopher Lee on the bad side and Ian McKellen on the good side. A deep disappointment. I dread to think what will happen to the next two installments of the trilogy, especially with this film's instance to “play down” the religious aspect of the piece; the ideological heart of the story.