It grieves me to say that the film misses the point concentrating instead, on the fantasy, the action and the giant talking polar bears (panserbjorne). The books are gritty, rugged and at times violent, and the stories' themes are philosophical and even spiritual in a way. I had fallen in love with the books a while back not due to the fantastical elements, but due to the way it introduced this fantastical parallel universe to the reader in a slow, subtle, familiar way and made it feel real and tangible. As a huge fan of Philip Pullman's epic trilogy, I had been eagerly anticipating this film adaptation for at least a year. The Golden Compass? Well, it doesn't quite have the same impact, does it? The use of the American name of the book for the film really didn't bother me at first, but as early warning signs come, it doesn't get much more obvious than this we should have guessed from the off that this was going to be a very different beast to the book. What a poignant, mysterious title for a book. His Dark Materials: Northern Lights, the original name for the book, in the UK.

And as she journeyed into unbelievable danger, she had not the faintest clue that she alone was destined to win, or to lose, this more-than-mortal battle. Catapulted into the heart of a terrible struggle, Lyra was forced to seek aid from clans, 'gyptians, and formidable armored bears. But there were those who feared the particle and would stop at nothing to destroy it. Microscopic in size, the magical dust- discovered in the vast Arctic expanse of the North -was rumored to possess profound properties that could unite whole universes. But Lyra's greatest adventure would begin closer to home, the day she heard hushed talk of an extraordinary particle.

It was no ordinary life for a young girl: living among scholars in the hallowed halls of Jordan College and tearing unsupervised through Oxford's motley streets on mad quests for adventure. In a parallel universe, young Lyra Belacqua journeys to the far North to save her best friend and other kidnapped children from terrible experiments by a mysterious organization.

The golden compass movie cast