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This will go into spoilers, so if you haven’t seen The Golden Compass, or read any of the His Dark Materials trilogy, then you’re probably a member of the Catholic League, right?

Some children were being told by their parents that they couldn’t watch The Golden Compass because, “They kill God” at the end! I don’t know who "they" are, however there is some confusion. Ill-informed parents must have assumed The Golden Compass to be a complete adaptation of Philip Pullman’s trilogy of fantasy novels, His Dark Materials. It is in the final book, The Amber Spyglass, where a God-like character, known as The Authority, dies.

This might as well be a good a time to say that the filmed adaptation of The Golden Compass does NOT contain God, or a Jesus-like character and Jesus is NOT God (otherwise who was up in Heaven?). Still, you would think that even with this level of misunderstanding the film should have a seen a spike in audience attendance. After all, millions flocked to see the death of a certain biblical leader in The Passion of the Christ and that made over $350 million in the US alone.

After Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy earned over $2.9 billion worldwide, New Line Cinema wanted to take the next logical step by milking the franchise as much as possible. So they set about developing J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit (given rights issues, it would be co-financed by MGM and New Line). However, Jackson believed that he had not received what he was owed from merchandising revenue for the Lord of the Rings trilogy, so launched a lawsuit against New Line. Head of New Line Robert Shaye said, “I do not want to make a movie with somebody who is suing me.” Fair enough.

In looking to replicate the success of the Lord of the Rings trilogy by starting a new franchise, part of the problem came with New Line’s chosen source material, Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy. Although immensely popular (the first novel won the Carnegie Medal in 1995), there was a touch of controversy due to their anti-religious slant. Pullman even describes himself as an atheist and in an interview declared, “My books are about killing God.” Instead of adapting each novel by filming back-to-back, they would start by adapting the first in the trilogy, Northern Lights, renamed The Golden Compass in the US.

The story takes place in an alternate world, where every human’s soul is manifested in the form of an animal creature (known as a daemon), where armor-clad talking-polar-bears roam the Arctic, and everything is run by an institution known as The Magisterium. Orphaned girl Lyra Belacqua (Dakota Blue Richards) resides at Jordan College. She secretly watches her uncle Lord Asriel (Daniel Craig) lead a presentation to fellow scholars, and members of the Magisterium, showing visual proof in the Arctic of a mysterious magical particle known as "Dust." Later, when dining at the high table, Lyra meets with Mrs. Coulter (Nicole Kidman), described as "a friend" of the college. Mrs. Coulter requests to take Lyra with her as her assistant. Before Lyra leaves, the master of the college bequeaths her a magical golden compass, which allows her to see the truth. Lyra soon discovers the truth about Mrs. Coulter; that she’s leading a sinister organization referred to as "Gobblers," kidnapping local children and doing experiments on them.

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