It started with a trilogy of books by Philip Pullman. "His Dark Materials" is the overarching title of them and the three books "Northern Lights", "The Subtle Knife" and "The Amber Spyglass" are just spellbindingly brilliant. Read them if you haven't already.
The National Theatre have made a two-part play of the books (touring the UK next year). See it if you haven't already.
New Line, the cinema people (now merged with Warner) made the first book into a film called "The Golden Compass". It was good. If you hadn't read the books you'd probably love it. If you had read the books you'd love the fact that it had been made as it would encourage more people to enrich their lives with the books.
Anyway, I got myself some tickets for the play(s) and have been genuinely bubbling with excitement (intermittently) ever since. It was with a great sense of anticipation, then, that I headed to the internet to find information on the imminent release of the next film installment.
Imagine my dismay when I find that the studio have decided not to make the remaining 2 films because the fundamentalist christians in America protested so hard against the first one that it only took $70m at the US box office. (they seem completely unaware of the fact that in the rest of the world - where people are more aware of the ridiculous logic behind following the morals of a book written 2,000 years ago- the film took a massive $300m)
But what is it exactly that the church finds so objectional in the films (and books)?
Anyone fortunate enough to have read the books will know that they are fantasy books which involved an organisation which controls its followers and behaves rather appallingly. The only way the church could be offended is if they recognised themselves in it...
Methinks they protesteth too much.
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