When Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass (book one of the His Dark Materials trilogy) hits the big screen on December 7, I will be interested to see if Hollywood neuters the book's heretical elements for the sake of broadening the film's audience and avoiding an all out war with the Vatican.
I'm guessing they will. Hollywood loves money more than it hates organized religion, and Pullman's engrossing fantasy shares the basic formula of Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code, another subversive book-turned-movie that ended up extolling the virtue of personal faith--albeit only after demeaning it for two hours.
Like Da Vinci, Compass is a quick read, a well-oiled narrative with engaging characters and unexpected plot twists in a vivid landscape populated by armored bears and gypsies. Pullman doesn't "waste" pages on dwarf songs or recipes for wild rabbit stew (a la Tolkien). You won't find him delving into messianic allegory or extended expositions on "deep magic" (a la Lewis). The self-described atheist doesn't open a can of heterodoxy until around page 270 (of 299). But when he does, he opens it wide, rewriting the Adam and Eve narrative, sanctifying original sin and casting the church as a virulent and dehumanizing force in the world. And, from what I've read in summaries of the next two books in the trilogy, this just the beginning.
Even if these elements are transferred to the movie (and I predict they won't be), I don't see the The Golden Compass emptying churches or creating a generation of skeptics and God haters. I said it about Da Vinci, and the same applies to The Golden Compass. "Movies like this can only gain traction in a nation where careful explorations of challenging concepts like the virgin birth and deity of Christ [or Adam and Eve and original sin] have been exchanged for motivational speeches [or books about "becoming a better you"]."
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