Some of you no doubt think that a post on the Golden Compass is a week overdue, given that the movie came out last Friday. I'm aware of that, but I wanted to wait for the box office numbers, which sorta proves that New Line banking on this one was a bad idea. New Line will sadly almost certainly lose money on the film, which is well-enough done to be worth a rental but not a full price movie ticket, in this reviewer's opinion. But what's killed the movie is not the average quality (see "Ghost Rider" and "Fantastic Four" as two examples of bad, yet successful blockbusters); rather, the movie has simply been covered as a controversial film, and has been the victim of many a smear campaign by the Christian right, who apparently care more about this one than Harry Potter, which, one should note, glorifies magic, which is kinda technically maybe paganism. On the other hand, His Dark Materials (the name of the trilogy) comes in for far too much criticism, when, in this Catholic's opinion, it is by far the best fantasy novel ever written. More on the death of God, Death Eaters, and the spinelessness of directors after the jump.

And for those who don't like spoilers, I've kept spoiler paragraphs separate. 

Fundamentally, the Christian right has accused Pullman of glorifying atheism in his book. They cite mostly that the Magisterium (the group out to capture Lyra, while torturing children and assassinating do-gooders in its spare time) is clearly meant to stand in for the Catholic Church, which won out in this parallel world's reformation, as well as noting that "God" in the book is weak, scheming, and deceptive. *Spoiler* In fact, at the end of the book Lyra and Will (her sidekick/boyfriend) kill God, a huge blasphemy to these people. *spoiler ended*

First of all, anyone who has read the books knows that this isn't the Catholic Church: in fact, in Lyra's parallel world, John Calvin actually basically took over the Catholic Church, moved the papacy to Vienna, and then abolished it upon his death. In other words, it's a Calvinist church, with predestination and various other doctrines that no Catholic believes. This may be small to readers, but you'd hope that the Christian right (and the reporters who wrote about this) would know the facts on the differences between Calvinism and Catholics.

Second, *spoiler* God's death is somewhat more complicated than Lyra and Will killing him. Rather, in this world, God was merely the first angel, and angels weaken and age like humans do, just over longer periods of time. They find him completely powerless, unable to do much of anything, having been basically used by his second-in-command, Metatron. They decide to release him from the glass bottle that contains him, and he dies with a look of peace on his face. The point here is that it is not a malicious killing of a deviant being, but rather a release of an old and enfeebled one. That's probably not the worldview that the Christian Right would like, but it's not a huge affront. *spoiler*

As for promoting atheism, the truth here is that, for all his attempts to express dislike with organized religion (which Pullman has done so frequently), he had to do so within a supernatural context. There is a supernatural, unexplainable dimension in the trilogy that is just as "irrational" as anything in Christianity. To kill God or angels, he had to acknowledge their existence. If a book does promote atheism, it's when there is no mention of God whatsoever.

Which leads us to Harry Potter, the series that once again proves that while what's most popular is often very enjoyable, it's never the best in its genre. Christopher Hitchens wrote in his NYT review of the 7th book: "The schoolchildren appear to know nothing of Christianity; in this latest novel Harry and even Hermione are ignorant of two well-known biblical verses encountered in a churchyard," and quotes Hermione as saying, "How can I possibly prove it doesn’t exist? Do you expect me to get hold of — of all the pebbles in the world and test them? I mean, you could claim that anything’s real if the only basis for believing in it is that nobody’s proved it doesn’t exist." One is left to conclude two things. First, the combative tone Pullman took overrode the in absentia approach of Rowling towards the role of God. Second, as we found with Iraq, too often the news media takes a narrative and runs with it without bothering to see if the facts back it up. I'll be the first to admit that the narrrative for two kids' book serieses does not matter, but, as we found with Iraq, too often they drop the ball on the bigger issues.