As a huge fan of the His Dark Materials books I was extremely disappointed with the film. It started off with changing the name; The Northern Lights to The Golden Compass. Things quickly wen't downhill from there.
I'm not against adaptations, I was a massive teen fan of the Harry Potter books and films, the build up of the films was just as exciting as the films themselves. But The Golden Compass didn't seem to understand the books - at all. It was a shame, as it should have worked. Let's hope they just re-make the whole thing - Spiderman style!
The Catholic church hates a lot of things. The Vatican called the Twilight sequel New Moon "a moral vacuum with a deviant message", and that's only the second in a series. Cardinal Francis Arinze started huffing about legal action when The Da Vinci Code was released, and that got a sequel in which loads of Catholics run around on fire. The Pope said that Harry Potter would "corrupt the Christian faith" and that got seven sequels. It's not just movies. Madonna spent much of her 2006 concerts writhing around in an age-inappropriate leotard strapped to a giant glittery crucifix, something that Cardinal Ersilio Tonini called "an act of open hostility", and that went on to become the highest-grossing female tour of all time. The Catholic church couldn't even stop a middle-aged lady in a horrible leotard singing about her holidays.
http://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2009/dec/15/golden-compass-sam-elliot-catholic-church
