Dear God – XTC
Opiate – Tool
Atheist Peace – Bad Religion
So the movie for The Golden Compass, the first book of Philip Pullman’s magnificent His Dark Materials trilogy is out, but you can count me as one guy who is not going to go see it.
It’s not that I’m inherently opposed to movie adaptations of beloved books. I thoroughly enjoyed Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings (a few complaints here and there notwithstanding), and I’ve seen all the Harry Potter movies more than once. It’s just that I’m opposed to adaptations which undermine the most basic themes of the original work.
The thing that sets His Dark Materials is not the characters or the plot. Pullman is a decent storyteller but no better than many similar folks. The reason why it’s so good is because it pulls no punches. It’s dark, occasionally scary, full of ambiguity, and quite depressing. And it seriously takes on the task of counteracting the mythos of Narnia. This is a series with an agenda, and it must be that way.
The movie, however, by all accounts scrubs out all of this. The authoritarian force in Lyra’s world is not The Church but rather some vaguely fascist authoritarian state of indeterminate purpose. Which surely makes it more acceptable to those critical of Pullman’s treatment of organized religion, but in doing so eviscerates the entire premise of the story.
It’s like making a movie version of Huck Finn and making Jim white. Or making a movie version of The Great Gatsby and setting it in Cleveland. Or making a movie version of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy but not including any jokes (oh, wait).
Even this could be accepted (maybe), if everything else was of sufficiently high quality to make it worth watching for its own sake. But, based on a few reviews, there’s seems very little chance of this. A choice quote from Slate, for example:
Christian activists who fear that this movie will spread the books’ anti-clerical, pro-sex message can relax in the knowledge that not a scrap of Pullman’s theology has made it through the Hollywood blandification machine. New Line should market the film to churches with the tag line: “Not only won’t you be offended by The Golden Compass, you’ll have no idea what’s going on!”
In short, go read the books. It’s more than worth the extra time to get the story for real.