The Golden Compass - Snoresville

Well, it turns out that the much-ballyhooed Golden Compass is a crashing bore. I finally got around to seeing it last night. There were three other people in the theater. Several things struck me.

1. Yes, the movie's production quality was better than the Narnia film, and at points on par with Peter Jackson's LOTR, but movie's appeal suffered from not having a larger fan base that already knew the story from the books. Consequently, the uninitiated have to be instructed in the vagueries of Pullman's imaginary world, and as a result the momentum is glacial. 2. The movie's muting of the anti-Christian, anti-God "a-theology" of the Pullman novels turns his epic story of rebellion against the churchly magesterium and ultimately against the very existence of God into an insipid, juvenile and (frankly) irrational anti-authoritarianism. Lyra's boldest expression of this theme is in her "profound" declaration: "I don't like to be told what to do." Well, there you have it. That really set us all straight. So are you ready to sign up for this new worldview? No, actually not, because you already heard it in Walmart three hundred times before Christmas this year!

3. And, hey, even if you keep in the anti-God schtick, atheism just doesn't have the faintest idea how to be moral and rational at the same time. One minute Lyra's saying she doesn't want to be told what to do, and the next her uncle/father (the personification of rebellion against the irrational, heresy-hunting, truth-loathing/fearing, power-hungry Magesterium) is telling her not to ask about "dust." Well, which is it? Does she have to listen to anyone in authority (good or bad), or not?

4. Pullman's attempt to set love of truth and love of God in opposition is as old as the hills. Consequently, his fictional apologetic for atheism doesn't come off as fresh as does Lewis's for theism and Christianity in Narnia.

5. The movie "bad guy" characters are so hackneyed that Pullman's mythology will, I think, have very little existential tug on true disciples. Real Christians won't recognize themselves or anything they stand for in the sniveling, conniving Magesterium, nor will they find Pullman's alternative compelling in any way. I guess I'm going to have to read the books now to see if he manages to do better on this count in print.