Rotten Tomatoes gave it a score of 42% – ranking it alongside such masterpieces as Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle – with reviewers calling it "bland", "patchy" and "a crushing disappointment". So maybe, just maybe, The Golden Compass wasn't given any sequels because it didn't deserve any. The Catholic church couldn't even stop a middle-aged lady in a horrible leotard singing about her holidays. Madonna spent much of her 2006 concerts writhing around in an age-inappropriate leotard strapped to a giant glittery crucifix, something that Cardinal Ersilio Tonini called "an act of open hostility", and that went on to become the highest-grossing female tour of all time. The Pope said that Harry Potter would "corrupt the Christian faith" and that got seven sequels. Cardinal Francis Arinze started huffing about legal action when The Da Vinci Code was released, and that got a sequel in which loads of Catholics run around on fire. The Vatican called the Twilight sequel New Moon "a moral vacuum with a deviant message", and that's only the second in a series. The Catholic church hates a lot of things.
Pullman has always been impressively vocal in his atheism, plus writing a book about some children literally murdering God is probably as overt an anti-Catholic statement as you can get – but there's something about Elliot's argument that doesn't quite ring true. The attacks shouldn't have come as a surprise to anyone.
The Golden Compass was the subject of a prolonged attack from the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, who proclaimed it to be "atheism for kids", and Fox News's Bill O'Reilly who, with typical restraint, apparently called the film a "war on Christmas".
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