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So much average

Sadly Over-hyped

An Exercise In Nonsense

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

This is a good fantasy movie, amazing universe with excellent acting, especially the main character Lyra Belacqua played by Dakota Blue Richard.I don't know why this movie received such a low rating. My guess is that they compared it with the original book, or maybe simply disagree with the book premises.

This is the adaptation of "Northern Lights", the first of a collection of fantasy books named "His Dark Materials" by Philip Pullman, a writer famous for having atheistic, anti-Christian and anti-religious thoughts that are very evident in the book. Chris Weitz (director/screenwriter) made a huge effort to moderate that, already anticipating criticism from religious audiences, but the truth it is very difficult to make a good and moderate movie from a book that is bad, extremist and that seems to have been written as a kind of "childish doctrinal propaganda", to educate children towards secularism and atheism... so I don't think it's surprising that boycotts and criticisms have happened anyway.The story takes place in a world where people's souls live outside their bodies, accompanying them in the form of animals called "Daemons". The similarity between this word and the term "devil", of clear anti-Christian connotation, shouldn't be coincidental. In this world there is an authority called "Magisterium", of dictatorial and totalitarian contours, which seeks to hide the existence of other worlds, other realities and truths that aren't convenient. The choice of a word in Latin for the name of this political-religious entity is an attack on the Roman Catholic Church, which is often accused of obscurantism and of not accepting some scientific and philosophical innovations. From this base, totally distorted by the personal opinions of the author of the book, a complex script is born, which the film isn't able to explain to the public. The film assumes (wrongly) that public knows the original books but, since this didn't happen to me, I felt enormous difficulty in understanding it, even having to do some research to understand everything.With regard to the cast, there are several stars here but not all had characters to match them. Daniel Craig, for example, only has some protagonism in the beginning of the film. Then he disappears, making only a few episodic appearances. However, his character is one of the most important and is still mentioned in the dialogues even if it does not matter to the actor, who had little work here. Ian McKellan is excellent at giving voice to the polar bear Iorek Byrnison and Nicole Kidman is elegant and pleasantly malicious, but also had no room to develop a great villain. Eva Green makes a small cameo, in that it only appears punctually, in another witch role. Dakota Blue Richards, a small child actress, is the big star. She does a good job, shows some ability but, of course, this will not be her "magnum opus" if she continues her career. The film has great visual effects, good CGI work and good sound effects that make everything reasonably digestible, but cannot erase the serious script errors and subliminally biased tale of the story. The soundtrack is totally forgettable, which is detrimental to a good fantasy film.Finally, there is only one more problem of this film, evident in its open end: there should have been a sequel to close the story, but the critics of the religious public, who even tried to boycott the film, and the very few box office results condemned at birth any follow-up initiative. Some people still talk about that, but the truth is that it's been ten years since the movie debuted, so I think it's more likely that this sequel will not happen any more. Perhaps this is a good thing, given the bias of the original material.

This is a movie based on a book in a series known as "His Dark Materials" by Philip Pullman. The book has garnered some controversy because Pullman explicitly made the book out to be anti-religious. From what I know, the anti-religious stuff was downplayed in this film version. I guess you could compare him to Douglas Adams and his Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy books, another anti-religious writer. Of course, his movie was certainly better than this. I could get a couple anti-religious vibes in this. It did talk about skepticism and heretics, but only briefly.The movie's main fault is that it came across as pretty silly to me. What happened is that these people are trying to stop these other people from discovering magic dust that proves the existence of other worlds. Yeah, it's a really goofy sounding premise. It takes place in this world where everyone has a shapeshifting creature or "daemon". Maybe if I read the books, I could comprehend it better. The movie often suffers from really bad CGI. Everything looks pretty fake. I still thought the actors were quite good. There really was an all star cast here with Christopher Lee and Sam Elliot. I wish they were in the movie more! Oh wait, Christopher Lee was in every movie back then. Besides, "Lord Of The Rings" was pro-religious. Maybe fans of the book were disappointed that it wasn't more anti-religious? I just thought it was a movie that wasn't that well acted with kind of a silly story. It seems like everyone is against religion nowadays. Hey, a lot of people hate my reviews regardless of my beliefs, which I don't really discuss anyway. I really did like this movie's pacing as literally half of it was them at the North Pole, which the first half set up. It's hard to go wrong with armor clad polar bears too. **1/2

Golden Compass were they ever going to make a part 2 the end was a major setup for what had to be a 2nd in the works what the h happened, Religious Fanaticism prevented yet another movie which seemed to be quite a good movie to fade away if those fanatics could they would be burning books, I have 1 statement for those fanatics, if you want to burn books and block movies from being made then throw that politicized piece of crap called the Holy Bible on the fire first, since that is a total perversion of Christs message, HA HA growing up my mother had it in her head I was possessed due to her catholic upbringing and the fact I was smarter than everyone I had met then and still to this day 35 years later I am now 51, I have yet to meet anyone worthy of having an intelligent conversation with, Ha Ha people seem to believe that aliens visit earth its not to see people for their intelligence it is just a courtesy visit to the hairless apes that think they are something special, but if you have an IQ over 120 then it would be hard to disagree with me here this is the Planet of the MORONS, I decided that when I was 6 when my mother decided I had to be possessed since at 6 the school district wanted to make me a High School Senior, and her holy roller ass wouldn't have it, anyway at 16 she had the preacher from our church come by to cast out my Demons, Ha Ha after I talked with him for around 20 min he left but he looked at my mother before leaving and told her he has a greater understanding of the bible than anyone, and all I told him was what I said above that the Bible is part of the creators message, rearranged and perverted to meet the needs of the time it was all gathered together and Canonized also called made into a book, but 7/8 or the written stories that were a major part of Christianity throughout its first millennium were banned from ever becoming part of the bible again, so when the Church stops perverting the word of the Creator will once again join a church but face it they never will and those Blank blanks will never cease and desist with the perversion of the word of God, if they did they couldn't justify to themselves that conning the elderly into leaving the church everything they have ever gotten and conning everyone out of a 10% tithe which is a perversion of a whole different caliber, I tithe of my spirit as Christ and all his true followers did and I never ask or even want anything in return the most I desire it that those who listen may at some time in the future choose to tithe of their spirit.