My thoughts on the movie...I'll do this as an "extended" entry, so I won't spoil it for anyone who hasn't seen it yet.
For openers, it's important to keep in mind that I rarely meet a movie based on a novel I've read that I didn't like. I mean, it's really got to be a bad and unfair treatment of the novel for me to get upset. For one to enjoy speculative fiction, there has to be a "willing suspension of disbelief." To enjoy a movie based on a novel, there has to be a willing acceptance of the limitations of film. (Same goes for TV shows as well. I'm OK with Harry Dresden driving a Jeep on TV even though so much of novels is about him and his crazy VW beetle.)
That said, on now to Golden Compass. I enjoyed it. Dakota Blue makes a good Lyra, and Pantalaimon was everything I wanted him to be. Lyra's world is much more steampunk-y than the film showed us, though. I would have liked more "alternate technology."
The movie glosses over the complex morass that the Church has become when compared to the books. Granted, there are a lot of people who won't get the implications for an alternate history line when Calvin becomes "pope" and then abolishes the papacy, but the movie's presentation of the Magisterium was too monolithic and not in sync with the books.
Nicole Kidman was hawt. The monkey daemon was wicked as well. She plays the evil that is Mrs. Coulter nicely. Still, the tie between Coulter and the Church is emphasized well. The monolithic "M" presentation of the Magisterium, with that world's equivalent of the real-life Gay Old Men of the Vatican, then there's this hot blonde who works with them? It don't connect.
The ending--well, I get that, it's the same thing Jackson did to encourage the making of the next one.
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