The Golden Compass: The Abridged Script
By: Rod Hilton on Dec 23rd, 2007 | Movie Rating: 
INT. SOME SCHOOL - LONDON
DAKOTA BLUE RICHARDS walks around being ENGLISH for a while.
NARRATOR (V.O.)
This is a story about a parallel world. It is very much like your world, though different enough that the movie qualifies as “fantasy film” rather than “stupid movie made by someone who doesn’t understand physics.”
DAKOTA BLUE RICHARDS
For example, in this world roles that normally go to Dakota FANNING go to me.
NARRATOR (V.O.)
Also, people carry their souls around in animals called “demons.”
DAKOTA BLUE RICHARDS
Yes. Every single person is born with a talking animal who shares their personality. You kinda have to wonder if beastiality is a major problem for this society.
DAKOTA hides in a closet and watches her uncle, DANIEL CRAIG, interact with a member of the MAGISTERIUM.
DANIEL CRAIG
Oh, the Magisterium. You guys must be the symbol of religion that religious folks are all pissed off about.
SIMON MCBURNEY
Actually, in the movie we’re just a symbol of conformity and blind obedience.
DANIEL CRAIG
Er, so organizations like the Catholic League saw conformity and blind obedience, then decided it must represent their religion?
SIMON MCBURNEY
Yeah. Kinda telling, huh?
DANIEL proceeds to vanish from the movie almost entirely. NICOLE KIDMAN convinces DAKOTA BLUE RICHARDS to live with her without consulting her uncle, which nobody seems to mind.
DAKOTA BLUE RICHARDS
I hate it here. I love to express myself and exercise my free will, but you like to impose rules. You’re evil.
NICOLE KIDMAN
Either that, or I’m an adult, and you’re a fucking child.
DAKOTA escapes and is abducted by a bunch of scary-looking hobos, except they’re the GOOD GUYS.
JOHN FAA
Welcome. We’ll take care of you, because the story needs a group of characters to take care of you.
DAKOTA BLUE RICHARDS
Great, maybe you can tell me how to work this golden compass I have.
JOHN FAA
Whoa, whoa, whoa. Characters are trying to kill you for that thing. You just met us, why are you telling us about that? Are you stupid?
DAKOTA BLUE RICHARDS
Kind of. How do I work it?
JOHN FAA
To ask a question, point the three hands at three random symbols on the compass. The symbols are irrelevant, because the important thing is that you picture the question in your mind. Then the fourth hand will move to answer your question, except it is also irrelevant because what will happen is that you will get a vision of the answer.
DAKOTA BLUE RICHARDS
Great. Well what kind of question should I ask my golden 8-ball, er, compass?
JOHN FAA
Ask it how much longer this fucking movie is.
Meanwhile, NICOLE KIDMAN abducts children to steal their souls with the help of GOBBLERS, because “GOBLINS” is copyrighted or something.
DAKOTA travels toward the ARCTIC and runs into SAM ELLIOTT.
SAM ELLIOTT
Howdy, partner. I reckon you’re a-heading on up to the arctic.
DAKOTA BLUE RICHARDS
Ugh, you’re in this movie? Do you even consider yourself an actor?
SAM ELLIOTT
I reckon not. I also reckon you ought’a be getting yourself an armored polar bear. Reckon.
DAKOTA BLUE RICHARDS
Armored polar bears? Did Philip Pullman just show up last to call dibs on fantasy story elements?
DAKOTA tries to convince POLAR BEAR IAN MCKELLEN to help her on her mission to do whatever it is she’s trying to do.
POLAR BEAR IAN MCKELLEN
Roar! Why should I help some little girl? Roar!
DAKOTA BLUE RICHARDS
Dude… I’m a young orphan that lives under the care of her uncle who tries to prevent her from going on wild adventures to save the world until one day she acquires a mystical object, meets a wise older man that helps her understand the object, enlists the help of a cowboy-type person, and tries to understand a magical force that is present in all life.
(pause)
The only thing missing is Chewbacca, so pack your stuff and let’s go.
POLAR BEAR IAN MCKELLEN
Fine, but only if you help me kill the king of Polar Bear Village. By killing the king, I become the new king until someone kills me.
DAKOTA BLUE RICHARDS
Wow, bear society kind of sucks. Can we just skip over that part since it has absolutely nothing at all to do with the retarded plot of the movie?
POLAR BEAR IAN MCKELLEN
No. Sadly, it’s the best part of the film.
DAKOTA approaches POLAR BEAR IAN MCSHANE sitting in his throne. The AUDIENCE momentarily steps back from the context of the movie to realize they are watching a FUCKING POLAR BEAR sitting on a FUCKING THRONE, holy FUCK.
DAKOTA BLUE RICHARDS
Hello. I’m going to outsmart you now, since I am such a precocious, clever child.
POLAR BEAN IAN MCSHANE
Precocious? I’m a polar bear. Do you know what it takes to outsmart a bear? Anything that isn’t another bear. God damn.
POLAR BEAR IAN MCKELLEN wins and becomes the new king! He then leaves to continue helping DAKOTA.
DAKOTA BLUE RICHARDS
So you just waltzed into bear land, assassinated the king, became the new king, then left your subjects behind without saying a word? Wow, bear society really sucks a lot.
DAKOTA AND IAN come to a bridge made of ICE.
POLAR BEAR IAN MCKELLEN
I don’t think the bridge will hold us both together. You cross first.
DAKOTA BLUE RICHARDS
Doesn’t that mean that if it’s unstable, it’ll first break with me under it? And since I can’t continue on without you, what’s the point in me crossing and then having the bridge collapse under you, stranding me in the middle of the arctic without a ride?
POLAR BEAR IAN MCKELLEN
Don’t worry, I have a hunch that if I fell down that enormous gaping chasm, I’d simply come back to life in the next movie with whiter fur and more powerful magic.
She crosses, but the bridge collapses and she’s forced to enter the enemy base alone.
INT. BAD GUY LAIR
BAD GUYS wearing COSTUMES THAT DON’T FIT WITH THE REST OF THE MOVIE try to separate DAKOTA from her daemon using a weak chainlink fence. For some reason, DAKOTA doesn’t realize she can just stick her fingers out to the side of her cage to stay in contact with her daemon.
NICOLE KIDMAN
Dakota! I will rescue you from this embarrassingly stupid plot device!
DAKOTA BLUE RICHARDS
Why?
NICOLE KIDMAN
Daniel Craig never told you what happened to your mother, did he? Dakota, *I* am your mother.
DAKOTA BLUE RICHARDS
No. No. That’s not true! That’s impossible!
NICOLE KIDMAN
Search your golden compass, you know it to be true! Join me, and together we will rule the universe as father and so… er, mother and daughter. Heh.
DAKOTA BLUE RICHARDS
I’ll never join you. And this movie is very original.
She escapes and frees all the children that have been kidnapped. A bunch of guards surround them outside.
GUARD
There is no escape. We will set our wolf pets to agressive mode as soon as we finish feeding them so that they become happy and do 125% damage.
Suddenly, POLAR BEAR IAN MCKELLEN shows up to deflect the wolf attack and kick some ass.
GUARD
What the hell? How did a fucking bear sneak right up in front of me without being noticed?
(dies)
A huge battle ensues between the bears and a bunch of guards. Oh, and witches - why not? And the witches have, oh, let’s say bows and arrows.
DAKOTA BLUE RICHARDS
I sure hope we’re winning. I can’t tell, because utterly inept director Chris Weitz has decided to shoot the finale of the movie in the damn dark.
They eventually WIN! The movie runs out of film and stops suddenly.
FUNDAMENTALIST CHRISTIANS
This story was written by an atheist! We must boycott this movie! Atheists should not be allowed to write children’s stories!
DAKOTA BLUE RICHARDS
Aren’t you the same people who yell about being persecuted for your beliefs every time the government refuses to teach intelligent design in schools or post the 10 commandments in a court?
FUNDAMENTALIST CHRISTIANS
Yes, but that’s different. This movie has atheist themes and promotes atheism through allegory! It’s a dirty, insidious way to indoctrinate children into a line of thinking!
DAKOTA BLUE RICHARDS
Then is it safe to assume you guys also boycotted christian allegory Chronicles of Narnia, written by well-known christian apologist C.S. Lewis?
FUNDAMENTALIST CHRISTIANS
That’s totally different, that’s about Jesus.
(pause)
This movie might make children want to read the source material, which would mean they are reading books that aren’t the Bible. Therefore, it must be avoided at all costs!
DAKOTA BLUE RICHARDS
Isn’t it enough to avoid it because it sucks monkey dicks?
DAKOTA asks her compass what tomorrows lottery numbers will be and retires from making godawful fantasy movies.
END
Brilliant and hilarious as always. The NE Hunter in me particularly appreciated the wolves joke.
December 23rd, 2007 at 11:05 pmAs usual, the best part about The Editing Room is that I can now mock anyone who saw this movie without actually having to waste 2 hours of my life to see it.
And good call about Sam Eiliot - the only thing worse than being typecast must be being typecast and still sucking at it.
December 23rd, 2007 at 11:15 pmSo wait –
There’s TWO people named Dakota? What did I miss? When did this become a popular WHITE children’s name?
December 23rd, 2007 at 11:27 pmBest script of the past few months, IMO. Very nice work, I laughed a bunch of times. The thing that got lost in the whole debate about the movie’s anti-religiousness is that the author is kind of a dick who wrote a not-that-great book.
He bashes - and I mean bashes, complete with petty insults - Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, as if his own books are the pinnacle of originality and didn’t borrow at all from Lord of the Rings (or Star Wars as you point out as well).
And of course two years ago he was very open about his desire to “subvert the Christian faith” (his words) but quickly changed his tune when he wanted the movie to succeed.
I frankly don’t have a problem with the (some) Christians that got upset over the anti-Christian themes; imagine how some atheist parents would react if their next-door neighbor started teaching their kids about the wonders of Jesus, for example. But of course they’re overreacting: they talk about the movie like it was made as a conspiracy to get children to read the books. It’s a movie, people, they made it to make money. (And they failed.)
Not quite sure how this turned into an eighteen-page essay but I’ll stop now.
December 24th, 2007 at 1:24 amGreat Rewiew. Btw, Do you have a lot of problems with catholic funtamentalist? Because here in Argentina they don’t seem to bother about this kind of things.
This is my first comment, so I will add: Great site.
December 24th, 2007 at 7:56 amLoved the cheap shots at Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and WoW. They frickin made this script worth reading for them alone.
Awesome job as usual.
December 24th, 2007 at 8:31 ami think is a good movie… and i have watch it 2 times and really enjoy it…
December 24th, 2007 at 8:40 amBest caption ever.
December 24th, 2007 at 9:23 amDidn’t enjoy the movie or the book, it just wasn’t that original. Then again, I’m a “crazy, close-minded, evil Christian!” Oh noes! But really, the movie sucked. It doesn’t matter what the author says about Christianity. There have been a million movies made over the years talking about how religion is bad and religious people are all terrible and conformists and nobody cares, so why start with this one? I mean, I think movies with a lot of violence, death, rape, and other things are worse than some random generic fantasy movie with an author with some vendetta against Christianity.
December 24th, 2007 at 10:50 amMike says:
I’m not seeing the connection there.
This is not like a neighbor badgering someone’s kid about The Jesus. The easiest parallel to make is with Narnia. The appeal is the same, the goal is the same, and the level of subtlety in the message is approximately the same. Atheists who are offended by their kids seeing Narnia and Christians who are offended by The Golden Compass have a lot more in common than they think: they’re all complete fucking morons that shouldn’t have spread their idiotic seed to a new generation of future morons in the first place.
I used to love the Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe when I was a kid. I watched it all the time. I had no clue that it had anything to do with Jesus. Today, I don’t believe in Santa, Jesus, Witches, OR Talking Lions, so I really don’t think the cartoon had much of an impact on the course of my life. If a movie like this one is enough to push a kid away from whatever belief set their parents wish to instill in them, it means their belief set is probably bullshit, and their only course of action is full-fledged brainwashing.
Kids aren’t going to see any anti-religious anything in this movie, and probably not much in the books either. They’re kids. Kids are going to see a movie about talking animals and swords. Kids are stupid. Leave kids alone with no food for a month just to see how stupid they are (spoiler alert: they die).
Getting all pissed off about any anti-religious message in this kind of movie is asinine (especially when it’s more about not trusting authority). Getting pissed about pro-religious anything in Narnia is also asinine (especially when it’s more about the power of imagination). Hate these movies because they are dumb, simplistic, and provide nothing of any intellectual value to your kids. They’re brainless fluff, meant to keep children drooling at the TV screen while mommy gives daddy a blowjob on his birthday. They’re self-indulgent and pretentious. They contain no sense of magic because the all-CG layer removes the brain from any connection with reality. They’re just sequel trains, meant to maximize profits by splitting a simplistic story worthy of one movie into 3, 7, or even 10 parts.
My point is, there are so many reasons to hate all of these stupid movies - why bother peeling back the layers of stupid just to be upset about something else? Can’t Atheists and Christians just agree that Narnia and Golden Compass are both boring and pointless? Go to the store and rent Goonies or Back to the Future or The Karate Kid. Those movies are awesome adventures for kids, almost completely free of computer-generated bullshit. True, they don’t contain mind-numbingly identical scenes where hundreds of dudes battle hundreds of other dudes until nearly everyone is a bloody corpse on the ground, but they DO say words like ’shit’ and ‘damn’ which kicks fucking ass.
December 24th, 2007 at 12:03 pm^Agreed. Anyone who actually cares about the “message” conveyed in both films really ought to go get a life. The Star Wars and LOTR references were beautiful. Only thing is, I never heard of this movie; I’m guessing it’s in theaters, which makes me even happier I let other people who think like I do watch movies and then tell me about the good ones.
December 24th, 2007 at 12:39 pmDaniel Craig’s barely in it, eh? Well there goes my reason for watching it.
December 24th, 2007 at 6:04 pm^^^ That actually pissed alot of people off. They wanted to see their boy James Bond and he’s only in it for 10 minutes total. Instead you see Nicole Kidman and an annoying ginger for 2 1/2 hours.
December 24th, 2007 at 7:03 pmBravo, Rod! I agree whole-heartedly about the church’s reaction to crap like this, and I’m even Catholic! I think that it’s quite funny to watch people freak out about this kind of stuff.
December 24th, 2007 at 9:21 pmOh, and when are we going to get that final Harry Potter script that you promised us?
Having neither seen the movie nor read the book, I’ve heard that the anti-Christianity is much more explicit in the book, and is even more so in the later books in the series. Can anyone confirm or deny this?
December 24th, 2007 at 10:36 pm**Spoiler Alert**(If anyone gives a shit)
It’s worse in the books, and the farther you go in the series it gets worse as well. (spoiler)As a matter of fact in the last book the little children kill God, but eh if someone can write a shitty series about Christianity and shill it to millions why can’t an Atheist do the same?
December 24th, 2007 at 11:31 pmRod Hilton Wrote:
“Kids aren’t going to see any anti-religious anything in this movie, and probably not much in the books either. They’re kids. Kids are going to see a movie about talking animals and swords. Kids are stupid. Leave kids alone with no food for a month just to see how stupid they are (spoiler alert: they die).”
You may have a point in reference to Narnia, but as the above post says, it’s pretty explicit in these books. No beating around the bush with Pullman. He comes right out and says God is the villain, Satan is the misunderstood heroine. The goal of the protagonists is to kill God; no ifs, ands, or buts.
Even so, its still just a book/movie. Nothing to get pissed off about. If you don’t want your kids to see it, don’t take them to the damned theatre. If you don’t want your kids to read the books, don’t buy them. Try being a fucking parent instead of getting pissed off at the media for making parenting require a modicum of effort. Just a suggestion; thanks for another hilarious script.
December 25th, 2007 at 1:03 amPhixius:
But it’s still fiction. A fictional book about killing god is still fiction - it’s fantasy. So, in the universe of Dark Materials, god is a bad guy, satan is a good guy, and god needs to be killed. I *STILL* think any kid would see it as a fantasy ‘what-if’ scenario, and it would have absolutely no impact on whether or not the 30 year old that the kid grows into goes to church or not.
Think about every movie, tv show, or comic book that acknowledges greek/norse mythology in some way. There have been thousands, but the Thor comic book comes to mind immediately. Greek and Norse mythology are incompatible with Christian mythology, so in the world of Spiderman, The Hulk, The Punisher, and the Fantastic Four, because they share that world with Thor, the christian god does not exist. Where is all of the indignation about the Thor comic book, or the Kid Icarus video game? Where are all of the people furious with the Xena or Hercules TV shows? Hell, wasn’t Hercules even a Disney movie? HOW INSIDIOUS!
Every one of those pieces of fiction claimed, by it’s very nature, that the Christian God didn’t exist in the universe where the movie took place. But it didn’t matter - because it’s fiction.
Galactus tried to eat the entire fucking planet in the shitty Fantastic Four movie - if God were real in that universe, he would have stopped it (after all, we’re His Creation). The fact that God was nowhere to be seen when the entire planet was about to be destroyed is a clear indicator that God didn’t exist in the world of the Fantastic Four. Reed Richards doesn’t say “relax everyone, God won’t let this happen” - he convinces the Silver Surfer to do whatever the hell he does at the end instead. Five seconds of thought about the second Fantasic Four movie indicates that god doesn’t exist in their world (or at least nobody on the team believes in him). Where’s the outrage?
One of the weirdest movie moments for me growing up was when Han Solo tells his comrades in Empire Strikes Back that if he doesn’t find Luke he will “see [them] in hell!” This is a fucking bizarre moment for a lot of people. Han Solo believes in hell? As in, the Christian concept of hell? Are there christians in a galaxy far, far away? Does that mean that the same god who created our galaxy created that one? But he gave them the force and gave us jack diddly? What an ass. It’s a weird moment in the movie because, up until this moment, there seems to be absolutely no concept of any religion (other than jedi/sith). The use of ‘hell’ is jarring because everyone seems to understand that the Star Wars galaxy is not our own, and it doesn’t have the same religions as we do, and thus doesn’t have the same god/s.
Lots of movies and books are ‘atheist’ in that they claim that God doesn’t exist in the same universe that the work of fiction takes place, or that different gods exist than our own. But kids get it. It’s fiction. It’s ‘what-if’.
What’s going to have an impact on whether your kids grow up to continue going to church will be a combination of their own personality, how well you indoctrinate them, and how ridiculous or non-ridiculous your belief set actually is. The pieces of fiction that they read will have no impact whatsoever, because every kid who reads that kind of thing understands that it’s fiction.
In Philip Pullman’s world, God is an asshole and needs to be killed. Cool. That has no bearing on or connection to our world in a child’s imaginative brain. Don’t believe me? Go ask a kid who has read the books. Go ask an adult who read the books as a kid. The one type of person you have to avoid asking is an adult who has read the books as an adult, because adults are just as stupid as kids, but without the imaginative capacity. Guess which type of person is all over the news bitching and moaning about an atheist book/movie? Hint: I haven’t seen any children on CNN at all.
When a 10 year old would respond to an adult yelling and screaming about a book by saying “sheesh, it’s just a book” I think it’s a pretty clear indicator people need to find something better to get pissed off about.
December 25th, 2007 at 9:26 amI thought the movie was rushed. Dakota was ok but her accent kept slipping and a decent director would have at least kept her consistent.
And for people complaining about hardly any Daniel Craig…. idiots who go to see a movie based on a book which has been a bestseller for over 10 years but don’t read said book or even find out the story can hardly complain that they’ve been let down. The scripts available for just over a fiver!
December 25th, 2007 at 11:25 amI agree with the above poster. Yes, I am a Christian, but I remember what it was like to be a kid and not understand what on earth was going on in anything I watched. I read and loved the Chronicles of Narnia, but saw no Christian allegory until I was a teenager (though I wasn’t a Christian when I was a kid). Kids don’t notice this stuff in movies. They might notice it in the book, but again, it’s fiction. I used to love to read the “Goosebumps” series, but not at any point did I think they were real and that God was evil for allowing these poor kids to be haunted by ghosts or magic dolls or whatever was going on.
Anyway, it’s the responsibility of the parent to judge what is appropriate for their kids to see. If I as a parent wanted to take my kids to see a fantasy movie I would read reviews of it on the internet and get a general idea of how the movie is and what it’s appropriate for. If the critics seem to often mention the animosity of the writer towards God I will consider not bringing them. If it’s not mentioned by the critics, it’s probably not a big deal. And if I really had concerns I’d read the source material. It’s called being a responsible parent.
I think the reason that Christians in this country freak out about things like this and Christians in other countries don’t is we just have too much money and too much free time. In a country where you’re living day to day trying to feed your family and get by while doing the same for your neighbors, it doesn’t matter what movie is playing (not that many of these places have theaters) or what some celebrity or author says. I think the problem is in America we’re too self-absorbed and need SOMETHING to be angry about. Being angry about some random movie is a lot easier than, say, being angry about genocide in Africa. I decided a long time ago I wasn’t going to hop on the “anti-everything” bandwagon and bash anything that isn’t completely Christian. There’s too much going on in the world to care about that.
Anyway, this is just my way of saying that not all Christians are psychopaths. Just many of the rich ones who are in the media and apparently bored out of their skulls. Next time you see some rich white Christian talking about the evils of “The Golden Compass” and how it’s corrupting our youth, send him a letter asking him to use his cash to take a trip to a third-world country and make a difference instead. Maybe he’ll channel his energy and emotions somewhere positive and stop giving our faith a bad rap.
December 25th, 2007 at 12:28 pmHey, I love religion-bashing. but yeah, let’s get pissed off at the crappy stories instead, you’re right.
HOWEVER, I disagree that these movies/books cannot/don’t have an effect on the minds of kids watching/reading them. Maybe not the subtle hints in these cheap, plastic movies. But I do think that children ‘brainwashed’ with certain ideals and not otherwise allowed to experience the outside world (”reality”) can have questions emerge where their parents hoped there would never be any.
It’s a child’s nature to question innocently. But usually, the parents that are screaming about this stuff are answering those innocent questions with inaccurate/misleading/overly-simplistic responses that keep children “in line.” And when something comes along and gives a different take on these questions, I think that kids can begin to extrapolate other ideals, and question their belief system (something you’ve done, rod, according to what the hecateaus, eh?).
Some kids need more prodding to question authority than others. People are upset because they think things like this are the ‘gateway drug’ to questioning things that they’d hoped their children would just blindly accept for all eternity.
I’m going to cut this short before I start getting into the ultra-conservative right-wing connections/conspiracies, which I tend to invevitably turn any conversation to, but I can see why people of that persuasion would be concerned with films that have those undertones. I don’t agree with it as it amounts to brainwashing, but hey I can see where they’re coming from even if I don’t agree.
I just think that we’re off base saying that things like this cannot have an effect on the minds of others. I’d rather question why people are so afraid to let others ponder. Hey, if you’re so secure if your beliefs….
December 25th, 2007 at 12:28 pm19Lindsey:
A-F’ing-MEN!
You and that statement are a shining example that religion doesn’t HAVE to be a bad thing. Anything can be perverted, it really depends on the nature of the men involved, huh?
Yes, let’s get upset over a movie that questions authority. Questioning authority’s bad… Let’s not get upset over starving children in Africa… Starving children in Africa is…. OK?
Peace.
December 25th, 2007 at 12:32 pmNice mock script. Love the unrelated Bear Battle.
December 25th, 2007 at 6:39 pmThe really sad part is, the original books were brilliant.
I was desperately hoping that the film would, at very least, not be entirely dreadful. I wasn’t expecting a direct translation from the book, like so many Lord of the Rings fans got upset and bleated about. I think I have a bit of a stronger grasp behind adaptation than that.
The film was horribly rushed, and in the process left enormous parts that were inconsistent with what we knew about the characters, and gave us entire groups of characters we just didn’t care about. Parts that should have been cut as slowing down the flow of the story were left in. Genuinely well-handled elements such as Lyra’s parentage was handled in a far less hackneyed manner, and New Line were actively striving to pressure the film into becoming a successor to Lord of the Rings.
Oh well. Chris Weitz made ‘American Pie’, what more could we expect? He had great source material, and turned it to crap. New Line currently has no plans to produce the sequels, and I think that’s a good thing.
At least the books are still worth reading.
December 25th, 2007 at 8:00 pmI think if you find a children’s story (or anything, really) a threat to your faith then the problem lies with you. I mean, you’d have to lack even the tiniest shred of conviction to be influenced by this movie.
December 26th, 2007 at 2:19 amAnd yeah, bad movie, but I watched it to see CGI polar bears in armor kick ass and I got my money’s worth.
Sucky movie. Great script. Whee!
December 26th, 2007 at 9:48 amHaven’t seen the movie, but the polemic made me seek out the books. I’ve read the first two, they are quite entertaining, and I’m planning on going for the third.
But this is a “Bowling for Columbine” thing for me. Everybody else is deeply convinced that it’s an anti-gun movie. But after watching it I was pretty much the one saying “Wait! No it isn’t! There are some digs at the gun industry during the first half, but the final thesis is that it’s the culture of fear, not guns, what kills people!”
It’s a very similar thing here: I’m an atheist, and I understand atheist narrative as more or less an Asimov story:
“Superstitious people: Booo! Science is bad! Let’s destroy some scientific invention and get back to our good old-fashioned supernatural beliefs!
Hero: Wait! Progress is good! Look! (Solves some problem using SCIENCE)
Superstitious people: *grumble* Grrr! And we would have gotten away with it, too, if it wasn’t for those meddlesome scientists and their stupid robot!”
“His dark materials” is not like that at all. There is a God, there are angels, and souls. True, there is an evil religious organization that pretty much represents catholicism, but, at least up to the second book, there is not atheism anywhere. There is even a former nun that became an astrophysicist who can’t get a grant to investigate “dust” because the mainstream scientist are so closed-minded that they just won’t accept any supernatural explanation. That’s as theistic as you can get.
Sure, I know that Phillip Pullman is an atheist, but only because he has said so. If I had to guess his religious affiliation just for his books, I would have said that the guy is a deeply convinced Gnostic. I’ve met a couple of internet people who consider themselves Gnostics (probably after reading the Da Vinci Code or something) and they are pretty much what I read in the books, the anti-establishment christians.
Oh, but what do I know.
December 26th, 2007 at 10:36 amRod;
For the love of God, please do Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem next. You’ve never done any of the Alien films, and this one is on its knees begging to have the shit beaten out of it!
December 26th, 2007 at 11:19 amRod Hilton:
“But it’s still fiction. A fictional book about killing god is still fiction - it’s fantasy. So, in the universe of Dark Materials, god is a bad guy, satan is a good guy, and god needs to be killed.”
That’s all true but it’s also not the point I was trying to make. I was just saying that there are no analogies, euphonisms or metaphors in His Dark Materials. God is God, not a big talking lion that never actually comes out and says “I’m God.” I wasn’t saying that HDM is inappropriate because of that.
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“I *STILL* think any kid would see it as a fantasy ‘what-if’ scenario, and it would have absolutely no impact on whether or not the 30 year old that the kid grows into goes to church or not.”
Maybe not; even probably not. But it could. Either way: also not a point I was trying to make so I’m not sure why this rebuttal was addressed to me.
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“Think about every movie, tv show, or comic book that acknowledges greek/norse mythology in some way. There have been thousands, but the Thor comic book comes to mind immediately. Greek and Norse mythology are incompatible with Christian mythology, so in the world of Spiderman, The Hulk, The Punisher, and the Fantastic Four, because they share that world with Thor, the christian god does not exist. Where is all of the indignation about the Thor comic book, or the Kid Icarus video game? Where are all of the people furious with the Xena or Hercules TV shows? Hell, wasn’t Hercules even a Disney movie? HOW INSIDIOUS!
Every one of those pieces of fiction claimed, by it’s very nature, that the Christian God didn’t exist in the universe where the movie took place. But it didn’t matter - because it’s fiction.”
Exodus 20:3 “Thou shall worship no other gods before me.” So, biblically speaking, the Christian God Himself acknowledges the existence of other gods.
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“Galactus tried to eat the entire fucking planet in the shitty Fantastic Four movie - if God were real in that universe, he would have stopped it (after all, we’re His Creation). The fact that God was nowhere to be seen when the entire planet was about to be destroyed is a clear indicator that God didn’t exist in the world of the Fantastic Four. Reed Richards doesn’t say “relax everyone, God won’t let this happen” - he convinces the Silver Surfer to do whatever the hell he does at the end instead. Five seconds of thought about the second Fantasic Four movie indicates that god doesn’t exist in their world (or at least nobody on the team believes in him). Where’s the outrage?”
Okay… Hypothetically speaking: Galactus didn’t destroy the planet, because the Fantastic Four and/or the Silver Surfer stopped him. The Christian God, being omniscient, knew they would do that. So why would He need to step in? Ever since the New Testament, God has let people deal with their own problems. So how is this scenario different from any story in the second half of the bible?
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“One of the weirdest movie moments for me growing up was when Han Solo tells his comrades in Empire Strikes Back that if he doesn’t find Luke he will “see [them] in hell!” This is a fucking bizarre moment for a lot of people. Han Solo believes in hell? As in, the Christian concept of hell? Are there christians in a galaxy far, far away? Does that mean that the same god who created our galaxy created that one? But he gave them the force and gave us jack diddly? What an ass. It’s a weird moment in the movie because, up until this moment, there seems to be absolutely no concept of any religion (other than jedi/sith). The use of ‘hell’ is jarring because everyone seems to understand that the Star Wars galaxy is not our own, and it doesn’t have the same religions as we do, and thus doesn’t have the same god/s.”
Every religion on earth has their own concept of “hell,” whether they believe in the Christian God or not. Apparently the same holds true in other galaxies. You certainly had a point about adults reading too much into things….
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“In Philip Pullman’s world, God is an asshole and needs to be killed. Cool. That has no bearing on or connection to our world in a child’s imaginative brain.”
I never said otherwise.
I suppose your post was just a medium through which you could express your full opinions on the matter, and the fact that it was addressed to me was only because I brought the subject up. I don’t take any offense from your post, and I hope you take none from mine.
December 26th, 2007 at 1:03 pmPhixius:
No, I didn’t mean to address my points directly to you. As you mention, you just brought it up.
December 26th, 2007 at 1:13 pmAh, the joys of being Agnostic. I can skip right over the religious BS and concentrate on the actual BS that is thrown in my face. Hey, a talking bear, what a concept. No point in pining over the fact that there aren’t enough good movies that illuminate the human condition, I suppose, the studios are just giving the people (as my friend Geoff would say, 12 year old girls) what they want.
December 27th, 2007 at 8:48 amWow. Religious debate.
December 27th, 2007 at 9:12 amUm, the script rocked. I laughed out loud at “Reckon.”
Um. Bye.
[…] example: This humorous script for “The Golden Compass,” which touched off a debate in the comments about religion, atheism and whether all […]
December 27th, 2007 at 9:18 amHey wow, this script ends just like an e-mail I sent to someone who forwarded a “petition” to me to boycott this movie. I told him I didn’t care that it had an ahteist message, since Narnia is the same basic thing but with Christian message and turnabout is fair play. I said the reason I didn’t want to see it was because it looks stupid, nothing more or less. I still regret seeing the Narnia movie on DVD.
But… despite the very well-executed ending to the script, you had to go and mess the point all up by debating it so much in the comments. Oh well, I probably would have done the same thing. I can’t keep my big mouth shut either. :-P
BTW, I’m agnostic. Maybe God (in some form or other) exists and maybe he doesn’t, but it’s going to take much more than a fantasy movie to convince me either way.
December 27th, 2007 at 11:55 amUgh. And I was going to go see this.
Thanks Rod!
December 27th, 2007 at 11:58 pmRod wins. Script, thread… exquisite.
December 31st, 2007 at 2:21 amI read “Lord of the Flies” at age eleven. Didn’t fuck me up.
There seem to be a lot of new posters in this thread. Or are we addressing you as “Rod Hilton” now?
Matt,
I’m surprised people use any part of my name, honestly. Given the nature of the internet, I expected notes to be addressed to “editing room guy”.
Or if my e-mails are any indication, “Rob”
December 31st, 2007 at 9:52 amMaybe the site’s name is hard to internalize. I know everybody just says “Maddox” rather than “The Best Page in the Universe”.
December 31st, 2007 at 11:37 pm“Coca-Cola” is the best caption so far.
January 4th, 2008 at 10:45 amAt least the Narnia books didn’t openly attack other religions.
January 16th, 2008 at 9:50 amHahah I agree with A-Killa. And this has to be my most absolute favorite script so far.
January 16th, 2008 at 3:33 pmI hated this movie, and not just cause I’m Christian, this movie sucked nuts. The books are great though
OMG. I laughed so hard I was afraid I’d pop a vein or something. I must have woken up me neighbours. Weeping from laughter is sooo good! Rod, thanks a million. You ROCK. The hilariousest review in months. The parallels to SW and LOTR, and the RPG reference - priceless.
We’re not worthy! We’re not worthy!
January 22nd, 2008 at 6:09 pmWhat I thought was the most horrible about this movie is that it insults every ethnic subgroup that appears in it. Except Gypsies, who are the only ones who actually deserve it.
January 23rd, 2008 at 7:40 am@Dunn:
shutupshutupshutupSHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUP!!!!
@ everyone else:
Yeah, movie sucked. Everything about the movie was great except for the director, which means the movie sucked overall anyway.
January 31st, 2008 at 7:23 pmNice Christmas Day post there Rod.
“Galactus tried to eat the entire fucking planet in the shitty Fantastic Four movie - if God were real in that universe, he would have stopped it (after all, we’re His Creation). The fact that God was nowhere to be seen when the entire planet was about to be destroyed is a clear indicator that God didn’t exist in the world of the Fantastic Four. Reed Richards doesn’t say “relax everyone, God won’t let this happen” - he convinces the Silver Surfer to do whatever the hell he does at the end instead. Five seconds of thought about the second Fantasic Four movie indicates that god doesn’t exist in their world (or at least nobody on the team believes in him). Where’s the outrage?’
Well for a start its just an indication that an interventionist God doesn’t exist in their world. God fails to intervene in evil crap every day, and that’s not even in movies.
‘One of the weirdest movie moments for me growing up was when Han Solo tells his comrades in Empire Strikes Back that if he doesn’t find Luke he will “see [them] in hell!” This is a fucking bizarre moment for a lot of people. Han Solo believes in hell? As in, the Christian concept of hell? Are there christians in a galaxy far, far away? Does that mean that the same god who created our galaxy created that one? But he gave them the force and gave us jack diddly? What an ass. It’s a weird moment in the movie because, up until this moment, there seems to be absolutely no concept of any religion (other than jedi/sith). The use of ‘hell’ is jarring because everyone seems to understand that the Star Wars galaxy is not our own, and it doesn’t have the same religions as we do, and thus doesn’t have the same god/s.’
Okay that was just silly. It’s Star Wars. Written by a blithering moron who got lucky. As for ‘Hell’, it’s actually a concept from Norse mythology that was appropriated by Christians, the name included. So much for Norse/Christian incompatibility - Odin even sacrificed himself on a tree FFS. Most religions have parallel motifs.
Lots of movies and books are ‘atheist’ in that they claim that God doesn’t exist in the same universe that the work of fiction takes place, or that different gods exist than our own. But kids get it. It’s fiction. It’s ‘what-if’.
What’s going to have an impact on whether your kids grow up to continue going to church will be a combination of their own personality, how well you indoctrinate them, and how ridiculous or non-ridiculous your belief set actually is. The pieces of fiction that they read will have no impact whatsoever, because every kid who reads that kind of thing understands that it’s fiction.
In Philip Pullman’s world, God is an asshole and needs to be killed. Cool. That has no bearing on or connection to our world in a child’s imaginative brain. Don’t believe me? Go ask a kid who has read the books. Go ask an adult who read the books as a kid. The one type of person you have to avoid asking is an adult who has read the books as an adult, because adults are just as stupid as kids, but without the imaginative capacity. Guess which type of person is all over the news bitching and moaning about an atheist book/movie? Hint: I haven’t seen any children on CNN at all.
When a 10 year old would respond to an adult yelling and screaming about a book by saying “sheesh, it’s just a book” I think it’s a pretty clear indicator people need to find something better to get pissed off about.
February 4th, 2008 at 4:25 pmSorry I left the rest of your post in there - I agree with it anyway! And failed to acknowledge that you are as funny as shit too. Oh the shame :( Keep it coming.
February 4th, 2008 at 4:27 pmWell, reading a book could make you re-think your belief set in some way.
February 5th, 2008 at 3:20 amWhy were all the child actors in this movie so incredibly ugly?
February 12th, 2008 at 6:02 pmRegarding Mike Flattley’s post
I think you’re overdoing it on Han Solo’s line in TESB. Since most religions have some sort of afterlife it is not illogical that Han Solo believes in it. Even if he isn’t religious at all, the name for the afterlife can still be a part of his vocabulary. Lots of people without a clear religious background use words like ‘heaven’ and ‘hell’ in daily use without giving it much thought.
Besides, what else did you want him to say?
‘Then I’ll see you in that part of my religion’s afterlife where evil-doers get punished for their crimes’
That is just a bit awkward and if they had given it an actual name, the audience wouldn’t have understood without an explanation.
March 17th, 2008 at 11:26 amTaken in the proper context (i.e. that Pullman could be an atheist of the “no proof of God” variety and therefore still open to the possibility of the supernatural), the books are pretty good, or at the very least an interesting read from a philosophical (and work of fiction) standpoint.
From what I’ve heard, however, this movie sucked and didn’t follow the book all that much. :P
March 31st, 2008 at 6:06 pmThe script was average, too many Star Wars/Lord of the Rings references but I suppose that’s the fault of the writer. It seemed less gaping when I read the book. I still don’t understand the religious debate, I didn’t see any pro-atheism at all, just anti-authoritarian, and as you pointed out, the fact that religion linked themselves with it speaks volumes.
April 13th, 2008 at 12:31 amGood script. I enjoyed the books and the movie a little more than it looks like Rod did.
Josh - When you said the little children killed God you didn’t quite get it. The angel’s brough God’s casket to the children (if memory serves) and they saw his dead body. This is an idea first written down by Nietzche (read: crazy german philosopher). The books themselves were written to be introductions to other philosophies to middle school aged students. Most of the idea’s Pullman discussed weren’t supposed to be original, the point is they weren’t supposed to be his. He took the ideas of a lot of different philosopher’s and wrote allegorically about them.
Finally, anyone who gets their panties in a wad over a book that was published by “Scholastic” needs to take a step back, gain a little perspective, and think about how ridiculous it is to be threatened by a pre-teens fantasy novel.
April 14th, 2008 at 11:10 pmNot that anyone will read this but the book isn’t really atheistic. The main baddies are a big evil theocracy, but its not their religion that makes them evil. There are digs at the church but its much more against organised religion than against religion as a whole.
Also on the killing god front, theyr actually killing an angel who usurped the throne of god, sounds alot like Satan huh? The kids are out to kill Satan, whats so bad about that.
April 19th, 2008 at 10:33 amSee, what gets me about all the Christians going apeshit about this movie is that it’s not exactly something that hasn’t been done before. Weren’t people tossing around the idea of God being unimaginably evil like, a thousand years ago?
I’m not sure how, but somehow God has managed to pull off the biggest propoganda coup EVER. When something good happens, it’s ‘Why, this is a miracle! God did this! He must exist!’
And yet when something shit happens, it’s ‘God moves in mysterious ways’, or ‘God has a plan for us all’. What the fuck?
April 24th, 2008 at 8:39 amGreat script, I enjoy this site very much.
I think the that a lot of films that religious people get worked over explicitly attack or challenge their religion. It’s not “let’s portray atheists as positive people only” its often instead “religious people are superstitious and backward, and we should kill god.” Or “This is REALLY what happened, Jesus got married and had a kid. This means your holy book is a lie.”
Of course you are going to get riled up at things like that, because it is designed to rile you up. Otherwise religion wouldn’t matter at all.
I agree though about what you said with narnia. God that was painful to watch, as someone who loves the books, and the sequel looks worse.
April 27th, 2008 at 5:26 pm