The Golden Compass isn’t overly epic, but it’s still pretty decent
If you were to judge solely from the marketing of The Golden Compass, you would think that the film is an epic on par with Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. After all, the voice-over in the preview said, “From the studio that produced The Lord of the Rings, comes the next epic story of good versus evil,” and the trailer depicted a ring, tumbling along through space. It would be understandable if you entered the theatre expecting to, well, be blown away.
That’s the problem with Weitz’s adaptation of author Phillip Pullham’s first book from the His Dark Materials trilogy. Adult fans of the book expecting its integral anti-Catholic message to remain intact will be disappointed, and those new to the story, expecting something Tolkien-esque to play out, will find it lacking on that front. Kids will love it, but their parents might not let them see it out of fear that they would rush out and renounce God in the parking lot. Pullham had reputedly sought to craft a story that counters C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia and that series’s foundation of Christian allegory. Pullham is well-known to be critical of the Roman Catholic Church, and The Golden Compass is, at heart, a humanist version of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. However, it seems as if the producers and director wanted to avoid the backlash that the books have received by distancing the movie enough from the original message to defuse any controversy.
The film’s inability to measure up to expectations aside, things do start out promising for what is supposed to be the first of three films in the saga. The power of Pullham’s imagination is evident throughout. The film is set in a world that is suggested to exist in a universe parallel to our own and is very much like Earth. There are some major differences, though — one of the most unique components of The Golden Compass is the notion that the humans in its world each have a soul that exists externally from their body, in the form of an animal that they are able to converse with. Witches fly through the air, appearing and disappearing like wraiths, and massive “ice bears” clad in armour forged from the metal of meteors crash thunderously in battle. Visually, The Golden Compass has some breathtaking effects and imagery, and despite the film’s methodical pace, it offers enough fantastical elements that fans of the genre will appreciate it. They just won’t revere it.
