Sometimes you just want to pitch one straight up the middle, you know?

Of course, now upon inspection, I might have pulled out this gag to sell it a little more. The delivery of this one… it just feels like a “what’s in the news?” late night kind of thing.

The Golden Compass comes out on Friday and I couldn’t be more bored with the idea. Gordon saw a sneak preview of it last Saturday, so we talked about it a little bit on Monday night’s Triple Feature. I was dead serious when I confessed that I thought The Golden Compass was the sequel to The Chronicles of Narnia. Can you blame me? Winter scenes, witches, talking animals. A little too similar for me, I guess. But what can I say? I’m a dullard. I don’t read “books” – whatever those are.

Curiously, unlike Narnia which rankled some atheists for it’s detection of Aslan the Lion as a Jesus-like figure for leading a land out of sin. Now her comes it’s spiritual (pardon the pun) brethren in The Golden Compass and the shoe is now on the other food. Religious groups claim the film promotes atheism because the books written by Phillip Pullman depicts organized religion as evil. Pullman himself has made comments in the past describing himself as an atheist and deliberately “…trying to undermine the basis of Christian belief.”

For me, personally, religion fits nowhere into the equation of either Narnia or Compass. I’m not overtly religious in my own life, so I view the conflict from an outsider’s perspective. Looking at it from a distance, I ask myself, “Aren’t these pretty heavy themes for children’s fantasy?”

Granted, most fairy tales have bleak and violent conclusions. So it’ s not as though children can’t process the weight of good and evil in a literary allegory. But why does everything have to be politicized to such a degree?

I think I have some more thoughts swirling around in my brain on this one, but I might hold off until Friday to set them loose. They might get me in trouble. We’ll see.

Until then, thanks for stopping by the site. See you again real soon!