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Director: Chris Weitz
Stars: Nicole Kidman, Daniel Craig, Dakota Blue Richards The Golden Compass is a fantasy film based upon Northern Lights (also known as The Golden Compass), the first novel in Philip Pullman's trilogy His Dark Materials, and was released on December 5, 2007 by New Line Cinema. The project was announced in February 2002, following the success of other recent adaptations of fantasy epics, and at $180 million is one of New Line's biggest-budget projects ever after a series of box office disappointments preceding the release.
The story concerns Lyra, an orphan living in a fantastical parallel universe in which the dogmatic dictatorship of the Magisterium threatens to dominate the world. When Lyra's friend is kidnapped, she travels to the far North in an attempt to rescue him and rejoin her uncle.
Before its release, the film received criticism from secular organizations and fans of His Dark Materials for the dilution of the religious elements from the novels, as well as from some religious organizations for its perceived anti-Catholic and atheistic themes. The film was met with mixed reviews, and has thus far failed to meet expectations at the U.S. box office, despite performing well internationally. Plot Lyra Belacqua (Richards) is a young orphan girl who lives in a parallel universe in which a person's soul resides outside the body in the form of an animal called a "dæmon." The land is controlled by the Magisterium, an authoritarian organization that restricts freedoms in order to impose its own systems of belief upon the populace. A ward of Jordan College, Lyra spends her free time with the local children and her best friend, Roger (Walker). Lyra and the others tell of the "Gobblers," who they hold responsible for the disappearance of several local children.
When Lyra's uncle, Lord Asriel (Craig), visits the college, Lyra saves him from assassination at the hands of a Magisterial representative, who wants to prevent Asriel from presenting evidence to the college which indicates the existence of particles called "Dust," in opposition to official Magisterium doctrine. Asriel obtains funding from the college to mount an expedition to the far north in order to investigate the substance, which he believes originates in a parallel universe to his own, entering the body via a person's dæmon. Fearing the effects of Dust, the Magisterium is conducting experiments on children in order to find a means of inoculating them against it.
After Asriel departs, the college is visited by Mrs. Coulter (Kidman), who offers to take Lyra north as her assistant. Lyra assents and, before she leaves, is entrusted with an alethiometer by the master of the college. The last remaining since the Magisterium forbade their use, the alethiometer is a device that is able to reveal the answer to any question asked it by a trained user. While unable to operate it, Lyra accepts the gift and takes it with her to Mrs. Coulter's home. When Mrs. Coulter arouses Lyra's suspicions by delaying their journey, Lyra discovers that Mrs. Coulter is head of the General Oblation Board – the "Gobblers" who have been kidnapping children, and that Roger and her Gyptian friend Billy Costa (Rowe) have been taken by this group to the north. Mrs. Coulter learns of Lyra's possession of the alethiometer, but Lyra escapes.
The "Gobblers" pursue her, but she is saved by the Gyptians, a nomadic boat people, who are planning to travel north by sea in order to rescue the kidnapped children, many Gyptians amongst them. Lyra travels with them and comes to an understanding of the alethiometer's use with the aid of a Gyptian and Serafina Pekkala (Green), the queen of a witch clan who appears during the journey. At a Norwegian port, Lyra befriends aeronaut Lee Scoresby (Elliot), who advises her to hire Iorek Byrnison (McKellen), an exiled prince of a race of armoured polar bears, who is employed as a metalworker in the port after being tricked by the local townspeople and his armour (which houses his soul) stolen. Lyra uses the alethiometer to discover the armour's location, which Iorek recovers. He pledges his service to Lyra's cause, while Scoresby is hired by the Gyptians to aid them on the trek north.
The alethiometer guides Lyra to Billy Costa, who has escaped from a Magisterium research station. Finding him dazed and without his dæmon, she returns him to the Gyptians. The group is attacked by a tribe of Samoyeds and Lyra is captured. Taken to the king of the armoured bears (McShane), Lyra tricks him into fighting Iorek for the throne. Iorek wins the fight and becomes king. Iorek carries Lyra to the Magisterium research station at Bolvangar, but the two are separated by the collapse of an ice bridge. Pretending to be lost, Lyra is welcomed into Bolvangar by the Magisterium scientists and locates Roger, instructing him to have the other kidnapped children prepared for escape. Lyra eavesdrops on a group of scientists talking with Mrs. Coulter about the experiments they do on the children, discovering that they attempt to prevent Dust from entering a child by severing the bond to his or her dæmon. Discovered by the scientists after Mrs. Coulter departs, she is taken to a room where the scientists intend to perform the procedure on Lyra. At the last moment before it is completed, Mrs. Coulter intervenes, taking Lyra to her rooms.
Mrs. Coulter explains that the procedure is to prevent the flow of Dust into the child when he or she enters puberty, saying that the Dust causes bad thoughts as children near maturity. She also tells Lyra that she is her mother, and Lord Asriel her father. Lyra learns that Asriel is engaged in his research further north and that assassins have been sent to kill him. When Mrs. Coulter asks for the alethiometer, Lyra incapacitates her and escapes. Lyra destroys the severing apparatus, leading to a series of explosions, which begins to tear down the facility, and she leads the children outside. Magesterial Tartars block their escape, but a battle ensues when Iorek, the Gyptians, a band of witches and Scoresby arrive. The guards are defeated and the children are rescued.
Instead of travelling back south with the Gyptians and the rescued children, Lyra and Roger choose to travel north with Lee Scoresby, Iorek Byrnison and Serafina Pekkala to find Lord Asriel. Title For some time during the pre-publication process, the series of novels was known as The Golden Compasses. The word Compasses referred to a pair of compasses—the circle-drawing instrument—rather than a navigational compass. Pullman then settled on Northern Lights as the title for the first book, and continued to refer to the trilogy as The Golden Compasses.
In the US, in their discussions over the publication of the first book, the publishers Alfred A. Knopf had been calling it The Golden Compass (omitting the plural), which they mistakenly believed referred to Lyra's alethiometer, because the device superficially resembles a navigational compass. Meanwhile, in the UK, Pullman had replaced The Golden Compasses with His Dark Materials (a title that Pullman had taken from a line in Paradise Lost) as the title of the trilogy. But according to Pullman, the publishers had become so attached to The Golden Compass that they insisted on publishing the US edition of the first book under that title, rather than Northern Lights, the title used in the UK. |
