The Lead Compass
Monday, December 24th, 2007
In case you were wondering if the latest cinematic assault on God would spell the end of Christianity, never fear. Noted atheist Phillip Pullman’s The Golden Compass was release a few weeks ago to a flurry of news and entertainment stories. Was it an atheist manifesto? A secular Lord of the Rings? An epic fantasy? A sanitized effort to get unsuspecting children to read the books? The answer is in: what it actually is, is a ringing dud. After three weeks, Compass managed to take in “just” $48 million dollars. That sounds like a lot of money, until you realize that the investors who put up the cold hard cash to make the movie – and who were hoping to start a money-generating machine like The Lord of the Rings or National Treasure – spent more than $150 million to make the movie. The investors may recoup their losses through foreign ticket sales and DVDs, but you can bet that no one will be lining up to make installment 2 in this series. Producers may not like bad reviews, but they cannot stand bad financial returns. The movie business is after all, a business. Compare Compass’ meager take to the old-fashioned Disney move, Enchanted, which has taken in more than $98 in almost the same length of time. Even the campy Alvin and the Chipmunks (with far less CGI effects) managed to take in more than $80 in just more than half the time.
Of course, even if this movie was the greatest financial success ever, it would not change the truth that God created man, that Adam fell by sinning against God, and that God made provision for reconciling a people to Himself through the most unlikely of methods: sending His Son, the eternal Second Person of the Trinity, the Lord Jesus Christ into the world as a baby. How can we possibly think that God is afraid of a piece of colloid when He was confident enough to change the entire world through a baby?
