Others say...

"The book was very good - the movie was disappointing"
I read the first two books with great enthusiasm, and slowed a bit with the third as it petered out and became preachy.

But I was excited about Golden Compass because it was a well written book and I was interested to see how it was ported to the big screen.

Sadly, it was dumbed-down so much that most of the plot of the book - which was unraveled skillfully in the book - is revealed in the first 5 minutes of the movie through exposition.

You are flat out told that people in this world wear their souls on the outside of their body in the form of familiar animals. In the book you figure it out on your own and feel clever about it when you do so.

This is the case for half the plot of the book. It is just told to you in synopsis form by a narrator and all of the joy of DISCOVERING things is taken from you.

I don't know who the director is, but I intend to find out and avoid his future movies. Hopefully they hire him to finish out the series (doubtful, since this one was dismal at the box office) so he won't ruin any other movies for a while.

In short, if you liked the book - and Golden Compass was a good book, even if you are an intolerant right wing person this book shouldn't have offended you, they don't start really offending the Catholics until book three in my opinion - then you will be disappointed by the movie. It was just poorly done.

A final note, yes - the special effects and cinematography were good, but any idiot with some money can hire good computer graphic companies and do that these days. It was the story that was ruined by this shoddy directing.

"Good entertainment"
I thought this was a very good movie. Don't know what all the religious uproar was about. Remember this is a Fantasy Movie. Hope the bad press doesn't stop them from making the other parts to the story.

"This movie was awesome"
I love the books and this movie was great, and the ending was good even though they sort of left it out.

"Why a Wonderful Movie failed at the Box Office."
Disclaimer--Having seen this movie eleven times in theatres and three times since I bought the DVD, I must confess up front that this is by far my all-time favorite movie out of the many hundreds I have seen over the years. [I'm 68 at this writing.] So the fact that I love it so much will undoubtedly influence this review, and, if you're looking for objectivity above all, this review is probably not a good place to start.

That said, I'm nevertheless going to try to be as relatively-objective as is possible given that background, and in order to do so I'm going to have to write a very long review. I apologize in advance, but urge you to bear with me, because if you care at all about the state of the cinema or about the rights of children, or both, I have some things to say to you.

First, a quick plot summary, for those who have read neither the books nor the other reviews on this site.

Lyra Belacqua, a young girl on the verge of adolecscence, in a somewhat altered London set in an alternate and fairly parallel universe, becomes the central figure in a convoluted story of adults who manipulate and/or try to control children, and of the children who are their victims. Two of her best friends are kidnapped by the 'child-cutters,' as some opponents describe them, and it becomes Lyra's mission to rescue them. In this quest she is aided by, first, a group of Gyptians [sea-faring gypsies], second, an Aeronaut from Texas [who flies a hydrogen-filled blimp of sorts], and, third, an Armored Bear [imagine an over-large ferocious but friendly Polar Bear in medieval Knight's Armor, and you're a third of the way there].

One peculiarity of this parallel universe is that every human being in it has associated with him or her an animal spirit, a daemon [mis-pronounced as 'demon' in the movie], who is an integral part of her or his personality and individuality. If either the daemon or the human dies, the other immediately dies as well. But, as it turns out, they CAN be permanently separated from each other, by a horrible device called an Intercision Machine. [Hence the term 'child-cutters.'] This makes both aspects of the personality involved much easier to control, and, of course, inevitably, the adults who do the dirty work explain that they are doing it 'for your own good.' Yep. We've heard that before.

Lyra has been rather indifferently 'raised' by a group of scholars at Oxford's 'Jordan College,' and has in fact been pretty much a street orphan of sorts who has learned to survive by wile, by subterfuge, and by outright lying. This background equips her perfectly for her role as saviour of her fellow kids, as she battles not only the child-cutters but other people who seem superficially to be on her side. She literally never knows quite who to trust, and in one case trusts someone whom she never should have [though we won't find that out till they make the sequel, if they ever do, as the original ending of the movie which reveals this fact was cut just before release].

Needless to say, this being a kid's movie after all, Lyra in a sense achieves a part of her goal, although in doing so she sets things up for even more horrific confrontations to come. The story is far from over at the end of the movie, although the absolute gut-wrenching cliffhanger at the end of the book is avoided.

So much for plot.

In judging this production, I do have a few negative things to say, so will get them out of the way first:

1. The book is much, much better. The movie's story line is vastly oversimplified and a lot of delicious detail is left out, plus which the sequence of events is altered in a major way, which may offend you greatly if you're any kind of purist.

2. The movie did not have the guts to call The Magisterium by its name in the books: The Church. On the other hand, since in the symbology used by author Pullman in the books, The Church in Lyra's parallel universe is NOT the same as The Church in ours, it's probably just as well that the movie made this alteration. [The religious right fanatics who protested this movie had obviously never read the books, or they would have realized they were protesting entirely the wrong thing: The Church being condemned in the books is what we call Science in our universe!]

3. Several clues in the first book which hinted at the real nature of what daemons are [they are NOT souls, for pity sake] are omitted from the movie, so that the true nature of the animal spirits remains a total mystery to most viewers, and even for that matter to some readers of the books, evidently, judging by all the misinformation floating around out there. In this connection, I should point out that just as our heroine, Lyra, tells lies in order to convey deeper truths, so do some other characters, and so does the author of the book. He knows good and well that daemons are not souls, but he pretends at times to say that they are to keep from getting thrown out of society in general. Likewise, I'm sure that the director knows the truth as well, but also doesn't want to flush his career down the toilet by admitting it.

Now for the positives, and there are a ton:

1. As several other reviewers have pointed out, the computer generated characters and other special effects are state of the art. Iorek alone, the Armored Bear, is worth several times the price of admission. He is just as 'real' as any of the human characters in the movie. The Oscar was well deserved.

2. The acting is superb throughout, particularly the fantastic Dakota Blue Richards as Lyra. [It's an absolute crime against humanity that by the time they get around to making the sequels, she will be too old to play the role.]

3. The musical score by Alexandre Desplat is wonderful and helps carry the movie, often alerting the viewer subtly to the true nature of the characters.

4. The much-maligned quick-cut editing is actually one of the movie's strong points, especially when you see it more than once.

5. Chris Weitz' script and direction are spot-on.

6. The art design, set decoration, and costumes are all worthy of the comparisons being made to Lord of the Rings.

7. The simplification of the plot, compared to the book, and the omission of a lot of narrative detail, was necessary to keep the movie from being more than three hours long. True, I would have loved the three hour version even more than this one, but the movie is aimed primarily at kids, after all, and what modern kid will sit still through even a three-minute movie, let alone a three hour one.

8. This movie is 'good for you,' and good for your kids. Your ten, eleven, and twelve year olds should watch it over and over. The ones who have not been seduced by video game culture will appreciate it, and even those who have may find themselves being redeemed. The general run of Hollywood cinema for kids is worse than pablum. This one has real mental nutrition in it, and the kids who see it will 'get it,' even when the adults don't.

Which concludes my review of the movie and of the DVD. But I have a few more words to say, partly because this story in both book and movie form is so controversial and also because the underlying theme--the rights of children--is so critical to the health of our society. Or to put it another way, the underlying theme of the rights of children explains WHY the story is so controversial, and that requires some comment.

The bad guys in this movie--by which I mean both the overtly bad ones and the ones who seem superficially to be 'good guys' but aren't--are the epitome of what's wrong with the way we treat children in our society. [By 'our' society, I am referring to the U.S. mostly.] And that is why the movie was a box-office failure in the U.S. and was a wild success in the rest of the world. It had nothing to do with the advertising or the way it was promoted. It has everything to do with the way most parents and other adult authority figures in our culture relate to kids:

As the comic strip character Pogo once said, "We have met the enemy, and he is us." WE are the child-cutters. WE are the ones who deny children the right to explore their own feelings, especially their own feelings relating to their growing sense of sexuality. WE are the ones who tolerate child-rearing based on 'authority' rather than on nurturance. WE are the ones who say, "Because I said so," when asked 'Why' by the little ones. The bad guys in this story are US. Of COURSE such a movie, with such a message, is going to fail at the box office. People are not entirely stupid. They are not going to pay to expose their kids to propaganda aimed at getting them to rebel against The Magisterium. Because the Magisterium is not The Church. It's you and me. Except I've resigned from it. And if you have any sense, you will too. And you'll be on the side henceforth of those who believe that children very often know what's best for themselves, and believe it, and do it, provided the rest of us just please stop getting in the way, with our Intercision Machines cutting away the kids' spirits from them.


"Its ok"
This was an enchanting story with great CGI. Acting was well done as well. Just took a bit of time to develop and when it got interesting it ended... I'd compare this to Chronicles of Narnia and Stardust