Product Description

In a parallel universe where witches rule the skies and armoured bears are the bravest warriors young Lyra Belacqua journeys from her home among the scholars at Oxford to the far North to save her best friend. Based on the first book in the Carnegie Medal-winning series His Dark Materials.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: SCI-FI/FANTASY/FANTASY UPC: 794043120435 Manufacturer No: 1000038167

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1707 in DVD
• Brand: Warner Brothers
• Released on: 2008-04-29
• Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Formats: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, Special Edition, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English, Icelandic, Russian
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish
• Number of discs: 2
• Dimensions: .30 pounds
• Running time: 113 minutes

Amazon.com
A fantasy epic with more than a passing resemblance to the Lord of the Rings and Chronicles of Narnia film franchises, The Golden Compass takes place in an alternate universe where each human's soul is embodied in a companion animal called a daemon. Lyra (Dakota Blue Richards), an orphan who's lived most of her life among the scholars at Oxford, is intrigued when her uncle, Lord Asriel (Daniel Craig), announces his plans to travel north to investigate the source of some mysterious particles called Dust. Lyra has little hope of following her uncle until a mysterious woman named Mrs. Coulter (Nicole Kidman, at her most icily beautiful) asks Lyra to travel north as her personal assistant. All is not as it seems, however, and the disappearance of Lyra's friend Roger (Ben Walker) sets her on a dizzying adventure. She does have an alethiometer, or golden compass, that can help her see the truth, and a number of companions, including her shape-shifting daemon, Pantalaimion (voiced by Freddie Highmore of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), polar-bear warrior Iorek Byrnison (voiced by Ian McKellen), Texas aeronaut Lee Scoresby (Sam Elliott), and witch queen Serafina Pekkala (Craig's Casino Royale co-star, Eva Green). Even before its release, The Golden Compass was the subject of controversy over its perceived anti-religious themes. While it does involve an oppressive institution called the Magisterium, it's not overtly religious, particularly to a young viewer. The movie's PG-13 rating should be taken seriously, however. Suitable for an older audience than Narnia (though younger than The Lord of the Rings), it deals with complex concepts, violence (though largely bloodless) and implied death, children and animals in peril, and an unrelentingly ominous and unsettling mood.

Despite a few changes and rearrangements, the overall plot of the movie is remarkably faithful to its source material, the first installment of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. It doesn't finish the book, however, and--much like The Fellowship of the Ring did--leaves the viewer hanging in anticipation of the next film, The Subtle Knife, due in 2009. So even though The Golden Compass is impressive--especially with its spot-on cast and terrific visual effects--we probably won't know its full emotional impact until the story is complete. --David Horiuchi

Customer Reviews

ADD Character Development REMOVE Hate-Fest
This movie (and I assume the book) started out with what could have been a great premise. People in a parallel universe live with their souls outside their bodies.

The special effects in the movie made the scenes wonderful to watch. However, I didn't go to the theater in order to go to a kind of moving picture art museum; I went to see a movie. And a movie requires enough character development for me to care whether or not the heroine lives or dies or the person she's trying to save lives or dies. Consequently, there's no comparison between this and Lord of the Rings. None at all.

People who read the book already might have had the character development in their heads. And if so, maybe that's how someone could give this thing three stars.

So what's even worse than the lack of character development (and therefore lack of a story worth caring about) is that the movie didn't even get close to resolving like Lord of the Rings did at the end each segment. And you can't call the end of the movie a cliff hanger because....you don't care what happens to the characters next.

But the thing that was most alarming about this film was how directly the author of the book (or the film makters)attack the Catholic Church, if not people of faith in general. I had heard some of the religious hoopla about the film before I went to see it, but there's been religious hoopla about movies before that didn't amount to very much(Example: The Last Temptation of Christ) That is NOT the case here.

Even though I'm not Catholic and am very aware of the Catholic Church's troubled history and some of its abuses, I could see that this movie was not a representation of a difference of opinion OR simply lopsided in its representation of organized religion. It was a hate-fest. I suppose this should have been clear from the beginning of the movie--before I saw how the Catholic imagery was handled--but I was trying to give the movie the benefit of the doubt. However, I doubt there's another reason to name the souls outside the body "demons," no matter how you spell it, other than to put Catholics and people who believe in God down. (Except for creating enough religious hoopla and controversy that people go to see the movie)

Then again, it also seems like the author must have been hurt very deeply at some point by someone who CLAIMED to be a person of faith which is a very sad thing. And I'm sorry for him or her.

But back to the movie--I almost hope someone redoes the movie (and the book it's based on) and does the story again without the anti-religious messages. I know there's a good story to be built around humans having their souls outside the body. I just know it.

just a little review
I just had to stop and do a quick review of this movie. This is the first review of a movie I have ever done. The reason I had to review this one in particular is because while glancing through DVDs on Amazon.com I noticed this one had only 3 stars. What??? I thought this was one of the best movies I've seen in a long time. Definitely one of the best "family" movies ever. Sometimes I find myself falling asleep during "family" movies. Not this one. The only thing I can think of to why it has only 3 stars is because of the bad rep it got before they even started filming it. I'm one of those people who like to actually view a movie before talking about it. I, like many other people, got the emails "warning" me not to watch it. It's anti-God. You will be supporting Atheists. Well, I have also watched Weeds, Hostel, and Veggie Tales. Does that make me a smoking, serial killer, who sees talking Veggie's??? It's a movie people! If you haven't seen this movie, please watch it! I believe you and your family will love it and will be waiting for the sequel to come! Oh, and I'm sure the people who rate this movie badly are the same people who rate Harry Potter poorly just because there are witches in it.

Better than expected
Due to the not so great reviews and the supposed complexity of the story if you didn't read the books, I was not expecting to really like this one, but hey the library was renting it. I watched it with my 8 year old, and we had to laugh as we remembered picking it out at the library and a friend of my daughter saw the movie in my hands and proclaimed "it has no God in it". A lot of movies don't, so I didn't really care.
Anyways, we put the movie in and I told my daughter to really pay attention and I was able to follow and 'get' what they were talking about even though I hadn't read any of the books. I enjoyed the movie quite a bit, even though my 8 year old couldn't follow it all, and I think she was even a bit spooked at some scenes. I put it up there with the Narnia series, definitely better than Eragon and even better than the latest dreary Harry Potter. I still don't get the religion aspect of it, I watch a movie for enjoyment, not critical analysis.
Entertaining!