Pointing kids in a direction you don’t want them to go

Have you heard about The Golden Compass yet?

DOES this scenario sound familiar? Movie studio bets the house on a beloved epic fantasy trilogy, filling fans of the novels with as much breathless anticipation as dread.

The studio is the same: New Line Cinema. But adapting “The Golden Compass” — the first in Philip Pullman’s complex and heady series “His Dark Materials” — is far trickier a gamble than “The Lord of the Rings.” This time around, New Line’s grappling with a story that many perceive as anti-religious, written by an outspoken atheist who merges fairy tale characters with Christian theology, quantum physics and Nietzschean pondering. And it has entrusted the $180-million, special effects-heavy production to Chris Weitz, a director best known for his romantic comedies.

That disclaimer doesn’t work, “a story that many perceive as anti-religious”. This story and its series is blatantly anti-religious, which was its intent from the beginning.

THE “Golden Compass” movie is set in a parallel universe similar to Oxford, England, where everyone’s soul is physically manifested as a “daemon” or talking animal counselor. Witch clans patrol from the skies and warrior polar bears do battle. The malevolent governing body “the Magisterium” — also referenced in the book as “the Church” — is racing to decipher the true nature of the mystical particles known as “Dust” by kidnapping children and cutting away the invisible thread that bonds them to their daemons, which, in essence, removes their souls. Lyra Belacqua (12-year-old newcomer Dakota Blue Richards), a canny urchin raised by scholars, is thrust into the drama when her best friend is snatched.

So that’s pretty clear. Even if Pullman sometimes denies his story is anti-Catholic, a hollow denial.

Pullman’s refutations aside, Catholic theology in the books is depicted as sinister and the villains are often cardinals and priests. The “Church,” or the “Magisterium,” answers to the “Vatican Council,” and kidnaps children, tortures witches and aims to suppress all natural impulses and control the world. In one book, “Dust” is described as the physical manifestation of Original Sin.

Speaks for itself.

But Bill Donohue is speaking for the Church that is so maliciously portrayed here. In fact, this project prompted the Catholic League to put out illuminating materials that respond to Pullman’s Dark Materials.

And it’s generating a buzz now across the heartland, through email warnings and questions by concerned parents. Which generated this explanation from Snopes, the online reference source. It quotes Pullman as telling The Sydney Morning Herald that “My books are about killing God.” And his Compass aims to show children how to do that.