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Actor blames Catholic Church for lack of Golden Compass sequels

Or so I read here: http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/actor_blames_catholic_church_for_lack_of_golden_compass_sequels/


London, England, Dec 16, 2009 – Actor Sam Elliot has blamed the Catholic Church for stopping sequels from being made to the Golden Compass movie based on the first book of Philip Pullman’s atheistic trilogy His Dark Materials. The film, starring Nicole Kidman, Daniel Craig and Eva Green, grossed more than $380 million worldwide after its Christmas 2007 release, but took in only $85 million in the U.S. According to the Internet Movie Database, the film had a budget of $180 million.

The 65-year-old Elliot, who played a Texan “aeronaut” in the film, charged that a Catholic-led campaign against the movie stopped its sequels from being made.

“The Catholic Church happened to The Golden Compass, as far as I’m concerned,” Elliot remarked to the Evening Standard.

My comment: HURRAH! What a bait-and-switch load of horse phooney Mr. Pullman’s trilogy turned out to be. It started out so good and ended up so lame, halting and sickly.

The numbers recited in the first line tells you the real story, however: the film was pleasing to the elitist taste of our atheist-nihilist-gnostic-lefteroid masters, and displeasing to the healthier tastes of the common man, to whom mass entertainment, after all, is directed.

In a Capitalist society, for better or worse, the commoners and their lucre have the last veto over what kind of art gets made, and gets rewarded.

I do not know whether the Church had anything particular to do with this bit of box office stumble. It had more to do with the joyless, humorless, heroless plotline, which veers between a duel of armored bears, an airship flight, some University intrigue, and then a somewhat pointless battle in the snow between gypsies, wtiches and cossacks, and then a "what happened?" sort of ending where nothing much is resolved.

If the Catholic Church gets the credit, then YIPPIE. Learn to fear the Iron Crosier of Benedict XVI, ye heathens! Quail in terror, lest ye be impaled on our pointy hats, or forced to behold the voluminous rose-pink cassocks our priest wear only on Gaudete Sunday!!

Yessss, precioussss! Our army of deadly Jesuit-trained Eucharist-intoxicated cyborg-assassins have already been loaded into the launch tubes! As soon any any military on Earth develops cyborgs, we’ll have assassins ready to assassinate them! Our rosary-garottes have been sharpened and blessed!

Yesssss! And the secret wealth of the Templars that bulge in the catacombs below Rome are ours to command! As is the occult knowledge hidden in the Vatican libraries (including the only unredacted version of the hellish Leiber Eibon: for Azedarac the Bishop of Ximes owned a copy written in the original Hyperborean script. It has dragon’s-blood illuminations and drawings, and is bound in aboriginal, sub-human skin!)

Sure, sure, the American Government has the Ark of the Covenant hidden in a warehouse somewhere, but they have probably misfiled the index, and will not be able to find it in time. And Japan has the Science Police Defense Force, but those losers cannot even defeat the giant monsters appearing from outerspace or from beneath the sea every Saturday! What chance do you have against the might of the Roman Empire?

Of course, we cannot actually get enough men to join the priesthood, so we don’t have anyone actually on Island X at the moment to throw the switch and start the launch. But the Knights Hospitaller still exist! The very same! The Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of St. John of Jerusalem of Rhodes and of Malta! True, they no longer occupy Jerusalem, Rhodes, or Malta, and no longer maintain an active military force, but THEY HAVE A WEBSITE! http://theknightshospitallers.org/ Ha! hoo HA! The Knights of Malta!

That makes you shake in your Nikes, does it not, crewman and sailors and officers of the USS Nimitz! You think your few hundreds of nuclear missiles, cruise missiles, and heavy guns can stop a half a dozen or more heavy cavalry armed with, um, spears — well, they mostly do charity work these days, but I sure we could scare up a few pointed sticks and maybe borrow a horse from the local stable.

No, just kidding. I have no idea how much a Catholic boycott had on the income of the GOLDEN COMPASS movie. Myself, I prefer to think the series of articles I wrote whining and bellyaching about Mr. Pullman’s magnificent work altered the course of stars and planets, released a two-tailed comet freighted with dire omens, also called a bearded star, whose baleful astrological influences burning coldly in the upper ether panicked and cowed the movie-going crowds, and therefore indirectly brought about the doom of the movie.

I would not have used my vast power over stars and destinies to smite the Golden Compass movie if only the beautiful Mrs. Coulter had remained loyal to the Magisterium! Why did you betray us, fair one?

About

John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.

December 16, 2009 @ 4:49 pm
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