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No sequel to "Golden Compass"


Catholic League's Bill Donahue claims credit for getting the Phillip Pullman sequel film pulled.

POST SCRIPT: A pertinent question, I suppose, is: how would Bill Donahue react if atheists had boycotted and lobbied re. the first Narnia film - succeeding in getting sequels stopped - on the grounds that such films are Christian propaganda (C.S. Lewis was a fairly conservative Christian, Aslan represents Christ, the White Witch Satan, etc.) and, in particular, that the films represent those who fail to follow Aslan/Jesus - i.e. atheists - as morally weak and/or depraved and evil creatures in the grip of The White Witch/Satan.

If he would be somewhat disgusted (and I think he'd have a right to be, to be honest - damn, I'd be disgusted at such petty-minded, bullying censorship from atheists!), how would he square that with his crowing over (he claims) his success in getting the Pullman sequels stopped because of their supposedly implicit anti-religious message? Is it OK to be a bullying censor if it's in the cause religion, but not if in the cause of, say, atheism? I wonder what he'd say...

Comments

Hannah said…
This cannot be! How terrible!

I was looking forward to the sequel...
On the other hand , I suppose the whole thing demonstrates how close-minded certain religious folks can be...
Anonymous said…
He claims credit. That's easy to do. But it would be difficult to prove.
riotthill said…
It seems censorship is something to be proud of in Christendom --- I wonder if the same holds true of intolerance.
DM said…
Looks like your website is under attack from supernatural forces…

http://dyn.politico.com/members/forums/thread.cfm?catid=2&subcatid=7&threadid=3449994

you really need to add comment moderation to your blasphemy…
Andrew G. said…
Nitpick: C.S. Lewis was Anglican, not Catholic.
Stephen Law said…
oops, really? I could have sworn he was Catholic. will fix it...
DM said…
Looks like your website is under attack from supernatural forces…

http://boards.history.com/topic/Nostradamus/Atheism-Is-Deadforever/520085067

you really need to add comment moderation to your blasphemy…
Yaeger said…
I don't really know if the sequels would be any good if they would have made them. They changed the order of a lot of things in the book and gave it a bit of a happier spin in the end.
anticant said…
Lewis was a died-in-the-wool Calvinist Ulster Protestant.
Andrew G. said…
Lewis was a died-in-the-wool Calvinist Ulster Protestant.

I haven't seen any confirmation of this from any credible source. Lewis was indeed from Belfast and was brought up in the (protestant) Church of Ireland but rejected it at an early age; his adult conversion (in which he was strongly encouraged by Tolkien, who was a Catholic) was to a fairly mainstream/orthodox Anglican position (which is not Calvinist in the sense that the term is usually used now).

His theological writings are said to be pretty much non-denominational, and my fairly limited reading of his works confirms this. I certainly haven't seen any references to specifically Calvinist positions in any of his works that I've read.
Chthoniid said…
In the end, it may have been a commercial decision. It was expensive to make ($180m) and New Line (allegedly) was not thrilled at the revenue it pulled. For something that was hoped to be the next "Harry Potter" franchise, it fell short.

Fwiw, the critics were generally not kind to it and I was somewhat disappointed at the rushed and rapid movement of scenes, swift introductions to a multitude of characters, and the way it bordered on incoherence at time.

I was fairly certain it could have been done better with that budget and the actors it had employed.

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