I am on the last book in the series now. Can’t believe I just found this series! So good!
Trailer looks nice, great cast. I will be there watching it on open day!
I don’t think The Subtle Knife needs much toning down; it’s The Amber Spyglass that’s more blatant. It would be a bit of a shame, though.
That’s funny - I was thinking she’s the perfect age. Just on the cusp of adolescence.
I wonder why the music for the trailer was the stuff from Narnia. It seems counterproductive, seeing as the film will have to fight an uphill battle to convince Christians to watch it/not get pissy about it. (I know I didn’t finish The Subtle Knife because of its very specifically anti-Christian content*, and that was back when I was in the target demographic.)
*As I recall, Pullman writes a few bits and pieces in direct response to Lewis’s analogies. It’s really not anti-religious – it’s anti-Christian.
Trailers often steal music from established movies. The second half of the trailer was set to Children of Dune. As I understand it, they’re toning down the anti-Christian content for the movie; hopefully they’ll do it well, leading to an improvement in the series. Although, given how the entire plot of The Amber Spyglass is a fight against EvilGod™, how they’ll fix that is difficult to imagine - maybe they’llmake the Metatron into a representative of evil angels, with Asriel and the other pro-Dusters fighting on the side of Teh Authority
Back when HDM was being hyped as the new Harry Potter, I dipped in to it and was comletely dissuaded by the anti-Christian message. Note because it was anti-Christian; because it was so poorly written and blatant.
About toning down the content of the book I read some time ago that a lot of the religous aspects were going to be cut out. I cant find the exact cite but the Wikipedia site briefly references the problems that existed - looks like they overcame it though.
I don’t really see how that would improve things even from your perspective, since having Lord Asriel on your side doesn’t exactly make you admirable.
So do you have any feelings about the trailer or the film?
Looks pretty faithful to the book from that short clip…recognizing the key scenes is a good sign.
FTR, I always pictured Mrs. Coulter and Lord Asriel as Catherine Zeta-Jones and Michael Douglas. Too bad I couldn’t get my personal fantasy casting in the movie…
Trailer looks pretty good. I’ll definitely see this one. However, I can’t imagine how they would make the third book into a movie. They’ll have to take the plot from the first books and write an entirely new ending.
Oh, and for what it’s worth, I’m an atheist with a pretty strong distaste for Christianity (though not for most Christians), and I thought the religious message in The Amber Spyglass was terribly hamhanded, plus the book was really disappointing from a pure storytelling point of view.
Compared with the trailers for Harry Potter and Narnia, it’s a mess. You’ve no idea who’s who.
A) It’s (obviously) an unfinished “test” trailer, so it’s not surprising that it’s pretty rough. That said…
B) It seemed pretty obvious to me who was playing Lyra, Mrs. Coulter, Lord Asriel, and Serafina Pekkala, and it wasn’t exactly difficult to identify Pantalaimon and Iorek Byrnison. 
I suspect it has to do with differing levels of familiarity with the source material.
He’s certainly not completely “good,” and is particularly menacing in the first boopk, but by the end of the series he is seen as the champion of human consciousness and reason, and is therefore “good.”
Am I the only one who thought the entire anti-Christian theme in the trilogy was incoherent? In the trilogy, we have these hypocritical priests and an ineffectual “Authority” and Metatron.
But surely the real reason in real life that priests are hypocritical isn’t that they are following an evil god, but that they are human beings who try to hide their selfishness as “serving God”. There is no such thing as “God”, and therefore selfish humans who pretend to serve God are really serving themeselves, and this should come as no suprise. And even if one believes in God, but is still disgusted by the selfish priests, then it is clear that whatever God really thinks, it isn’t what those selfish priests claim he thinks.
In other words, the trilogy imagines that there really is a real God, and the selfish hypocritical priests really do serve God, and therefore God must be evil. But does Pullman really imagine that the nasty little priests that he dislikes so much really are really serving God? How could anyone believe that?
Of course, the books could be taken as an illustration–if God really were like what the nasty priests say he is, then he would be evil, and we’d have to fight him in the name of human freedom. Except what’s the point of that? We know why bad religion exists, it exists not because humans are lied to by an evil god, it’s because fallible humans create god in their own image. That’s what an effective anti-Christian polemic would point out, and that’s why I just couldn’t understand the point of the books.
I think Pullman’s main point (not that he expressed it very well) was that imposing structure and hierarchy on spirituality (i.e., creating a religion) is inevitably corrupting. Dust is the ‘real’ benevolent God, and spirituality that revolves around studying Dust is portrayed positively. The churches created by the Authority are evil because they obscure the truth about Dust and instead focus on following and worshipping the Authority.
I agree with this. I read the whole trilogy very recently, and the third book, while it had some interesting ideas, had kind of a weak ending. Especially in the chapter…
Authority’s End. Where “the Authority” is being transported out of the Clouded Mountain in the middle of the battle by a small contingent of angels – a plot device which makes no rational sense other than to bring about the Authority’s End. If the Metatron really wanted the Authority, in his crystal case or whatever, protected – then ship him out before the Clouded Mountain ever got close enough to Asriel’s fortress to do battle. But, the whole bit with Will and Lyra letting him out, he dissipates, now he’s gone. Bleh. A little bit too Deus ex Machina there. Or perhaps… Not-really-Deus ex machina.
The Golden Compass had lots of cool stuff, and I’d have to say that the Subtle Knife was the most interesting one to me. Especially the concept of the knife itself. I just wish the whole trilogy had a better ending.
I’m looking forward to this movie too. I do hope they won’t tone down the religious issues too much. I’m afraid they probably will though.
Some of you guys must have completely skipped over the parts where the Authority is portrayed as being basically imprisoned by his angels by the time of the events in Amber Spyglass. The interpretation of who and what the Authority is depends on your point of view since we’re told contradictory stories about him. While he does show the system the Authority created as destructive and possibly even evil, Pullman puts in a few scenes where he encourages you to empathize with a deity who has degenerated into a senile husk. By this time, the Authority is kept around for what are basically political and power-preserving purposes by the other angels, who have evidently no real love or loyalty toward him. In fighting the Regent, Metatron — who has become a usurper — and eventually letting him die, the kids are actually setting him free. The Authority actually smiles at them when they open his enclosure.
The priests in Lyra’s world are portrayed as more concerned with control of the population and protecting their interpretation of orthodoxy through the persecution of heretics than anything else. They are willing to do monstrous things in the service of their beliefs, in defiance of any contrary facts, and their new aim is the destruction of the soul in the guise of “saving” people from the heresy of Dust. Their aims are not exactly in line with the other religious factions, and their aims don’t seem to be the same as what Metatron or the Authority would expressly endorse. He is basically saying that people in Lyra’s world have created a religion that has next to no relation to the god they purport to worship.
Dust is basically an analogue to animism or some forms of paganism, seeing the spirit and connection between all living things and trying to live in accordance with life-giving and life-preserving ideals. All of the more codified and restrictive religious organizations are portrayed as being anti-dust, meaning anti-spiritual and anti-life in Pullman’s mythology. Because of this positive portrayal of Dust-related issues, I would say that he’s not clearly anti-religious in these stories, though he is quite clearly against organized religion, particularly Judeo-Christian religious organizations.
While I also thought he got too preachy toward the end, he didn’t make things too one-dimensional. You are encouraged to see that things are not always what they seem to be on the surface, and to think that there is probably more than one side to any of the stories presented. In much the same way, Lord Asriel and Mrs. Coulter are shown as having both ruthless and loving sides.
Steampunk! Bears! Witches! Eva Green!
I’m soooo there!
New poster:
Brian