A movie coming out this coming December called The Golden Compass is being promoted and marketed to children, especially those who enjoy the fantasy genre, such as Lord of the Rings. The problem is, the movie, and the books upon which it is based, a series called His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman, are thoroughly anti-Catholic and anti-Christian.Visit American Papist to see the trailor, and some reviews from amazon about the books, which are even worse it seems. Here are some of the highlights from his post, discussing the trailor:
Narrator: "[This] is a world dominated by the Magisterium, which seeks to control all humanity, and whose greatest threat, is the curiosity of a child." (oh darn, he's on to us!)
Scientist Good Guy: "... [there is a] parallel universe, where there is no Magisterium." Religious Evil Guy: "That is heresy." Scientist Good Guy: "That is the truth." (aw shucks, science proved us wrong again!)
.............
The official trailer begins with the line "In 2001 New Line Cinema opened the door to Middle-Earth. This December they take you on another epic journey", while the Golden Compass is falling through air and spinning around to look like the One Ring from the LOTR promotions. How cute, but also how wrong.
I don't think I'm being pedantic on this point. People love LOTR not just for its fantasy world, but for its philosophy. To say that LOTR and the Golden Compass are two epic journeys is to ignore what kind of epic journey the LOTR presents. While perhaps sharing a similar genre of fiction, these sound like two very different tales.
Definitely sounds boycott-worthy to me!
5 comments:
In reality, I haven't been the movies in years, so I guess I've been "boycotting" them for years now.
"Imagine a world without the Magisterium...", and it's called the Lutheran church...all 140 of them! :)
I think the word "boycot" gives this sort of thing too much attention. I prefer to say "I'm not wasting my time with that".
Mass media attacks on the Church are a dime a dozen, Why would I waste my time?
Movies that are genuinely insightful, challenging and fun are much rarer. Maybe we should start making a list and sharing it round the blogosphere?
Oh I agree...perhaps it was a misuse of the word as I don't really go out of my way to boycott anything myself, lol. Since we have our own little movie theater at home, we can be pretty picky about what we watch, and we don't go to the movies often. For me, boycott just means it definitely won't be on my "to watch" list. :-)
A list of good movies would indeed be fun!
You should mention that this comes from His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman. Not being Catholic, the movie sounded interesting to me, and I was just getting ready to send it to my wife and say, "We should try to see this when it comes out." I find the "science trumps stupid religion" theme to be pretty distasteful, of course, but the "one (human) authority for the entire world doesn't work out so well" theme is one we like.
And then I went to look it up in Wikipedia and saw it was part of His Dark Materials. And that's enough for me. No way, no how. I have no interest in seeing such for fun. Pullman's flames against C.S. Lewis are almost enough for me to swear off his work entirely, and knowing that the basic thrust of His Dark Materials is to be an atheist counterpart to the Chronicles of Narnia (this I am told secondhand and haven't confirmed; it could be just fundamentalist misunderstanding and overreaction :) ) is enough to make me say definitely not! I've got no interest in this work for fun. I might conceivably watch it some day if I thought it were necessary to know how somebody is thinking, but I've never actually met anyone who read the books. Maybe after the movie comes out (movies, I presume, sigh) it might become more widespread.
So if you'd thrown that in up front, you would've helped turn me off to the movie sooner, and probably other people as well. :) If they are planning to make the entire series then it sounds like this will be something that will be all over the media soon and for a few years (like the LOTR hype, and the many-years Star Wars hype), so you might as well start familiarizing people with it as soon as possible.
Thanks jdavidb! I actually didn't realize that was the name of the series...I'll certainly add that.
And yes, I heard that the author wanted to be C.S. Lewis "in reverse," although I don't have a source either. But from what I've heard, he didn't exactly keep that hidden and was pretty vocal about it.
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