The Golden Compass not so magnetic after all

By Peter Chattaway and ChristianWeek | January 1, 2008

Before it came out in theatres December 7, I used to tell people that I hoped the film version of The Golden Compass would be great—and I hoped it would flop.

The original book—the first part of a trilogy known collectively as His Dark Materials—is a fantastically creative and engaging bit of fiction. It takes place in a parallel universe populated by witches and talking polar bears, a world where every human has a "daemon," or an external, animal-shaped embodiment of the person's soul. It also features some of the most suspenseful scenes I have ever read in a novel.

Unfortunately, the villains of the story are members of an all-powerful church known as the "Magisterium." And the two books that follow—The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass—turn increasingly preachy as they reveal that the entire trilogy is ultimately about the death of the Judeo-Christian God, the eradication of the afterlife and the establishment of a "Republic of Heaven" that has no need of a King.

So when New Line Cinema announced its intention to make a movie based on the first book in the trilogy, with sequels to follow if the first movie was a hit, I was immediately caught between conflicting impulses. I wanted to see the world of that first book realized on the big screen. But I also didn't want to see theatres dominated by a franchise that makes the God of the Bible out to be a villain.

So, I wanted the first film to be great, but I wanted it to be so unpopular that there wouldn't be any follow-ups. And, well, I got maybe one of my two wishes.

The Golden Compass is a grand spectacle, full of dazzling effects and the like, but it zips through the novel's plot points at such a fast clip that you never have time to immerse yourself in the story's world, or in the various cultures that 13-year-old Lyra Belacqua (played by Dakota Blue Richards) encounters as she goes on a quest to rescue some friends who have been abducted by a shadowy branch of the Magisterium.

The film is somewhat clumsy and never quite as engaging as it could have been. And while the filmmakers say they have toned down the book's anti-Christian elements, the script is still peppered with words like "oblation" and "heresy," and in one scene an armoured bear shatters a wall covered with Byzantine icons—a potent symbol of how the film's heroes fight against church oppression.

So the film isn't great, by any stretch. But it does, at least, seem to be flopping.

Entertainment news wires are abuzz with the news that The Golden Compass grossed only $25.8 million in its first weekend. For a fantasy film that cost as much as $250 million to produce and promote, that is an alarmingly low figure. It puts the film well behind the Narnia, Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings films, each of which earned at least $65 million by the end of its first Sunday.

So unless the film is phenomenally popular overseas, it doesn't look like there will be any sequels. And that's good, since writer-director Chris Weitz has been quite up-front about his intention to make the subsequent films increasingly "iconoclastic," just as Philip Pullman's original novels turn increasingly anti-theistic.

Pay attention

But we shouldn't let the failure of this film become a mere opportunity to gloat. The books are still out there, very popular and receiving a lot more publicity because of this film. Children who are exposed to this story will still need help in learning how to discern what is true and what is false in Pullman's books.

And there is truth to be found in Pullman's stories if you know where to look. While I wouldn't recommend the trilogy for anyone below a certain maturity level, spiritual and otherwise, the series does raise some great questions about the nature of human existence, the nature of authority and our relationship to the world.

So rather than boycott the film—or the books—I'd suggest that anyone who wants to engage with them should check out books like Tony Watkins' Dark Matter (IVP) and Kurt Bruner and Jim Ware's Shedding Light on His Dark Materials (Tyndale). Both of these provide excellent examples of how to appreciate problematic art, even as one disagrees with it.