Quote:
|
There's currently a lot of controversy about The Golden Compass movie (and the series of books on which it is based). I still plan on seeing it, maybe this weekend if I can fit it into my schedule. Like so many times before, I wonder if the boycotts, etc., are actually going to encourage more people to see it just to see what all the fuss is about.
|
I didn't end up seeing this movie over the holidays (just too busy lately), but I did read the books. I liked them well enough, although after I finished I felt like there was something I missed, something fundamental in the trilogy that didn't quite work. I still can't put my finger on exactly what it was. There were definitely some cool ideas in it though, like the concept of the different parallel universes, in particular Lyra's universe where every person has their own animal-shaped daemon.
I did think the story was fairly blatantly anti-organized religion. Not that I was bothered by that, but I could see why religious groups would be upset about it. My understanding of the movies though is that they did play down the religious overtones to the story, aware of the controversy it might cause.
On a related note, on a flight to Europe last week, I saw two recent fantasy films:
The Seeker: The Dark is Rising and
Stardust. The Seeker was pretty bad, nonsensical and generic - I watched it mostly for Christopher Eccleston. I quite liked Stardust though, a quirky fairytale with a great cast.