Hah, I found a bad “review” of this through technorati. Apparently there is a lock down on reviews so...
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What if I broke my silence about the movie? Let’s suppose, for a moment, I told everyone that, controversy aside, the movie is a whopping letdown… a tangled mess of storytelling… with an off-puttingly shrill and obstinate little girl in the lead… and that it’s anticlimactic and unsatisfying. Let’s pretend that I found its climactic confrontation between polar bears to be a hollow re-enactment of the climactic scene from The Karate Kid, something so muc less satisfying than the stories of true heroism offered by Tolkien and Lewis. Let’s imagine I was underwhelmed by the concluding hubbub, a CGI battlefield spectacle so much like those we’ve seen in other recent films. Let’s just pretend that was my opinion, for kicks. Would I be in trouble for saying so?
“”””
http://lookingcloser.wordpress.com/2007/11/30/chattaway-new-line-marketing-golden-compass-to-catholics-plus-catholic-news-service-pretty-much-gives-it-a-thumbs-up/
Personally, I don’t care anymore. It would be different if it weren’t for the “professional christians” who get “outraged” over everything. Now I just laugh at popular culture and the idiots who get paid to denounce it.
I recall the hand-wringing over the Harry Potter novels and movies, and the dire predictions of a rising occult movement and epidemics of devil worship..
But, it didn't happen, and many people, adults and children alike, have enjoyed the books and movies for what they are. Entertainment.
Anyone that thinks this movie, or the book(s) are so terrible, try reading the real history of Christianity and the Catholic Church, and following that, the Protestant movement.
Read the historical facts about the Cathars, Gnostics, Inquisition, the Witch Hunts, etc..
Organized religion of all stripes have abused their power and done some really wicked things, people.
Much like government. And I don't see all of your defending government that much.
That's why the Puritans and Quakers came to America, due to religious persecution by the organized religions of Europe, both Catholic and Protestant.
If Christians or any other religious group are offended, maybe it's because they are seeing so many parallels between their own religion's past and Pullman's depiction of a tyrannical, oppressive, fictional religious order.
And that's organized religion's fault, not Pullman's.