My wife recently got an email from a friend telling her about a new movie coming out, “The Golden Compass.” (Released as Northern Lights in the UK) This movie, in the traditions of the The Fellowship of the Ring and The Chronicles of Narnia, is the beginning of a spellbinding fantasy epic that is sure to take Hollywood by storm. The only difference is the source–far from the traditions of J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis–author Philip Pullman is an avowed atheist (who “loathed” Lewis’ Chronicles) who uses this story, told in three books, to show Christianity as an evil that must be destroyed. Here’s a description from a recent article:
Pullman’s His Dark Materials saga, which comprises Northern Lights, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass, tells the story of Lyra, a streetwise young girl who travels through multiple worlds populated by witches, armour-plated bears and sinister ecclesiastical assassins to defeat the oppressive forces of a senile God.
If that isn’t enough to convince you to keep impressionable children away from this movie and book series, let me introduce you to an integral part to his story: “daemons” (pronounced ‘demons’, duh) — these “spirits” follow the protagonists throughout the movie, and anyone without this daemon is considered ‘horribly disfigured’.
Pullman admitted himself, “My books are about killing God.”
I’ve got news for you buddy–you aren’t the first to try…and you’ll have the same success that they did. I’m not trying to scare you, the reader, with all of this, but instead to warn you away from this movie trilogy. It starts off as a fantasy world full of wonder, but by the third book, it ends with the death of God, or YAHWEH. Not so subtle. Either way, my God is stronger than this guy, and stronger than Hollywood. Better to spend your money on the next installment of Narnia, or another fantasy story that actually has some good themes to it, The Seeker. (see my next blog)
Sources for this blog:
http://www.snopes.com/politics/religion/compass.asp