The Golden Compass opened yesterday. Reviews have been pretty positive, but I predict it's not going to be a hit.
This is not, mind you, because the Catholic Church has called for a boycott of the movie. I don't know how it's viewed elsewhere, but here in Massachusetts, the moral authority and political influence of the Catholic Church is pretty much in the toilet. (Full disclosure--many of my relatives and friends are practicing Catholics. I envy their faith and think they deserve a better church.) First there's the way the church hierarchy protected pedophiles, valuing its own power and prestige over the safety of children. And then the church attempted to mobilize its membership to fight a terrible social ill threatening Massachusetts. Homelessness? Nope! Poverty? Negative! Hunger? Wrong again! It was people who love each other getting married!
So, anyway, nobody's listening to those clowns on the whole moviegoing question. But I can see why the church is against this movie--it depicts a church who, in the name of protecting its own power and prestige, does unspeakable things to children! Hits a little close to home, I'll wager.
But, still, this isn't the reason the movie's not going to be a hit. I asked the kids if they wanted to see it. "Eh," they replied. They're usually pretty easily swayed by a marketing juggernaut such as the one behind this movie, so that portends a problem.
But the books (which I'm currently reading) are really masterpieces, an amazing tour de force of imagination and good writing. So why won't fans flock to the movie even if it's no good, like the first Harry Potter movie and the fifth Harry Potter movie?
Partially I think it's because the books are just too complex to translate well to the screen. I'm almost through the second one now, and I'm still not quite sure if Lord Asriel is doing a good thing or a bad thing. If he's doing a good thing, he did a very bad thing in order to accomplish it. So there aren't the clear good guys and bad guys that, say, Lord of the Rings has.
But even this isn't the reason the movie's not going to be a hit. It's not going to be a hit because, even though the books are more imaginative and better written than the Harry Potter books, they're just not loveable. They are fundamentally kind of cold. Whereas Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter take place in fantastic worlds, they're about human emotions: fear, courage, grief, friendship, etc. That's why people love these books in spite of Rowling's overuse of adverbs and Tolkein's insufferable Tom Bombadil.
His Dark Materials, while I admire the hell out of it, hasn't captured my heart the way the others have because it's about ideas rather than emotions. It's more brain, less heart, and it won't inspire the devotion that will get people to the theater to see an adaptation.
