Golden Compass (12)

For some, the Golden Compass is merely a child's fantasy film with witches, "dust", daemons, and talking bears, but it has been rumored that it has a much more complex purpose among the fantasy figures.

Of course if you actually analyze the film, religious references can be seen. Prime Example: The Magisterium. The Magisterium is also known as the Authority and keeps the people in check. The Magisterium wants a pure society, no dirty thoughts, no dirty actions, etc. Sound familiar? It almost directly represents the Christian religion, perhaps the Catholic Church. However in order to relate the people to this symbology, Pullman uses other characters such as the daemons. The daemons represent the souls of the people, for example Pan is daemon of Lyra and also her soul. Children's daemons shifts from animal to animal, and when the childrenare grown up, the daemon settles to one animal. This shape shifting can represent the many stages that children go through until their true selves are discovered.

Was it Pullman's intention to antagonize Christianity with this film. Several critiques of the trilogy claim that Pullman's intention was to encourage children to somewhat rebel. But maybe Pullman had an entirely different purpose that is not as evil some make it out to be.

"Sometimes people think that if something is done in the name of faith or religion, it must be good. Unfortunately, that isn’t true; some things done in the name of religion are very bad. That was what I was trying to describe in my story."

Perhaps it was Pullman's primary goal to suggest that religion is not always the right thing, not that religion is an entirely bad thing.

Personally, when I see these types of movies, I don't automatically jump to conclusions that the film has some underlying message. In fact, I highly doubt that several of the children that see this film or read the books interpret this as being an attack against their religion. If anything, the complaining that the parents do only influences the child to think such things. So it is out in the open that Pullman's trilogy does refer to Christianity, but do the fantasy-craving 10 year old readers see this when reading it, or do they just see a giant, cuddly, heroic bear and small child on an adventure?