Cory and I finally went and saw The Golden Compass yesterday. It was the last day of break so we figured we should do something fun. I read all the books in the trilogy a while back, and really enjoyed all of them. It wasn't until the movie was about ready to come out that a friend forwarded an email that said we should boycott the movie because of the anti-God themes. Like I said, I read all the books. I never noticed any anti-God themes. I really want to read them all over again just to look for them.
Cory has read all of the books recently, and he was looking for those anti-God themes. He said he didn't find them either. It seems there's more of an anti-organized religion theme, and that I can live with. I don't think any religion has a right to stand between men and God, tell them what to do, and claim to be the only way to God. So, if there were anti-religious themes, I probably didn't get too worked up about them because they were pretty much what I thought anyway.
Mostly I think I just got caught up in the fantasy of the whole thing and enjoyed the story. I love the whole parallel world and daemon thing. And the adventure. Since it's been a while since I read the book, I couldn't be sure how the movie followed the book, but Cory said it did rather well. It stopped a little prematurely, but it was actually a decent way to end a movie, and it will let the next movie jump right into the action - so we'll see how they do with that. The sets and the special effects were wonderful, and the young actress who plays Lyra was really good.
So, overall, we had a good time. Cory even bought us popcorn. Afterwards we stopped and bought some clearance candy canes at Target. You know, we have to stock up for the year!
