YMMV / The Golden Compass

• Audience-Alienating Premise: The changes New Line made in order to avoid the controversy from the novels included changing the villainous organization, the Magisterium, from a clear parallel of the Catholic Church to a more generic Evil Empire. This ended up pleasing no one: the people who were complaining in the first place were not the sort to back down over a slight story change, and the fans of the series were outraged at such a capitulation and wondered why the studio had bothered getting the rights to such a controversial series if they weren't prepared to go all the way with it. This led to the film becoming a Box Office Bomb.
• Awesome Music: The soundtrack includes a gorgeous original song from Kate Bush. There's also "Ragnar Sturlusson".
• Critical Backlash:
  • While the movie is generally considered So Okay, It's Average at best, once word got out about the sheer amount of Executive Meddling and how much the final film got butchered in the edit, it got partially Vindicated by History, with people pointing to several aspects - the cast, the production design, some intact scenes - that indicated there was a good movie in there somewhere. In the late 2000s there was even a petition to get a director's cut released to see the movie Chris Weitz had intended to make. A former crew member who worked on the film and saw the original cut confirmed it was far superior (seen here under 'Luke Allen').
  • When the trilogy was later remade as a television series, some still compared a few elements favorably to this film; notably the actors for Mrs. Coulter, Lord Asriel and Lee Scoresby, as well as the overall look and visual effects. Even Philip Pullman loved several of those aspects, especially the cast, and was reluctant to completely disown the film.
• Faux Symbolism: Another reason for the original ending being removed; test audiences apparently thought it looked as though Lyra had decided to die rather than join Mrs Coulter and her going to Cittigazze was actually her going to Heaven.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: The movie bombed hard in the US, but made over $300 million worldwide. That would be impressive if New Line didn't sell the worldwide rights just to get the movie funded.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Specific to the video game adaptation: Hellena Taylor, who voices Serafina Pekkala, would later lend her talents to another Dark Is Not Evil Hot Witch.
• Misaimed Merchandising: Aww, who wouldn't want a cute widdle armored bear plushie?
• Narm Charm:
  • Dakota Blue Richards's cockney accent is rather obviously put-on (she speaks in RP naturally) but not enough to ruin her performance.
  • It's a similar case with Tom Courtenay's West Country accent as Farder Coram.
• Never Live It Down: Chris Weitz claimed, not entirely by his own will, that the anti-religious aspects of the story would be toned down or used euphemistically. This caused plenty of fans to turn their back on the film before even seeing it. Several reviewers noted that Weitz still got it his way, as even despite just saying "Magisterium" instead of "church", the visuals and symbolism made it very obvious what the parallel was.
• Offending the Creator's Own: Nicole Kidman is a devout Catholic and claims she wouldn't have made the film had she interpreted the material as anti-theist. She almost did turn the part down initially, though only because she wasn't originally in the mindset to explore a complex character like Mrs. Coulter and was interested in lighter fare at the time (she changed her mind after Philip Pullman personally asked her to accept the role).
• Overshadowed by Controversy:
  • New Line tried to avoid this at the start by announcing that the criticism of religion would be completely neutered, but this, as states above, only ended up pleasing no one. The religious thought it still wasn't enough, and the fans were left wondering why they would adapt such a controversial book series in the first place if they were so worried about this. As with The Da Vinci Code released the year prior, the movie attracted a large amount of controversy in the US before its release due its perceived anti-Christian themes. Yet unlike The Da Vinci Code, the film ended up doing poorly (at least in the US).
  • The story of the sheer amount of Executive Meddling and editing and re-cutting to make the movie more marketable is likewise more infamous than the film itself. As the film's failure (largely due to said meddling!) destroyed New Line Cinema, it's often used as a cautionary tale on studio interference. Notably, George R. R. Martin officially swore off allowing A Song of Ice and Fire to be adapted for film after this one's failure - resulting in Game of Thrones a few years later.
• The Problem with Licensed Games: Zig-zagged. From a technical perspective, the game's experience is marred by clunky execution and less-than-stellar graphics, but many players appreciated the developers arguably having a more loyal grasp of the source material than the film executives. Several incidents from the novel omitted from the film were incorporated almost word-for-word, and the game notably follows the original sequence of events, avoiding the film's subsequent restructuring. To date, playing the game is the only way to view some of the cut footage.
• Signature Scene: The bear fight, particularly the ending. People went in expecting Lord of the Rings-lite, and then all of a sudden "holy crap, that bear just bitchslapped another bear's jaw clean off".
• So Okay, It's Average: Critical and audience consensus seems to be that, by removing or toning down all the books' controversial elements, you're left with a pretty bog-standard fantasy film with nothing to make it stand out among the glut of them that were released in the wake of The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter. However, the cast and production values were generally considered very spot-on even by Pullman himself, which compensates for a bit.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: The film probably would have been able to live down the awkward swapping around of the Bolvangar and Svalbard sequences for the sake of pacing. However, the complete removal of the ending was met with an uproar.
• Took the Bad Film Seriously:
  • Nicole Kidman. She was Philip Pullman's first choice for Mrs Coulter, even deciding he was "wrong" about how he'd written her hair colour in the book (she's dark-haired in the book and Nicole is blonde). She's considered an excellent Mrs Coulter, and commands every scene she's in.
  • Daniel Craig despite his short screen time is a brilliant Lord Azriel. It helps that he was a massive fan of the books.
  • Sam Elliott as Lee Scoresby. Even though the His Dark Materials series received a more positive reception, a lot of fans still insisted they preferred him as Scoresby, especially given how different his portrayal in the series was.
  • And of course Eva Green as Serafina Pekkala. Even though she's reduced just to giving exposition in most of her screen time, fans were eager to see her do more in The Subtle Knife adaptation that sadly never came to pass.
• Visual Effects of Awesome:
  • Say what you will about the film, but there's no denying that it has a lot of truly spectacular visuals, particularly the airships. It even won an Oscar for Best Visual Effects, beating out Transformers (2007) (which many people expected would get the award).
  • The clips of the ending sequence that made it into the trailer show some truly stunning effects to create the portal.
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: The film adaptation of the first book of His Dark Materials trilogy was marketed to children, and is considered a family film. But despite the Disneyfication process that suffered the adaptation (like removing most of the hardcore atheist rants), it still had lot of dark elements, like a very violent polar bear fight, people being shot, lots of killings and many other things... such as the ending scene which was left off the theatrical release.
• Woolseyism: The European Spanish dub of the film changed the translation of "Gyptian" to "Gypsian", with an S, trying to hide, though not delete, the linguistic relationship with "Gypsy". This was not done without a good reason, though; Iberian Gypsies have an awful reputation in Spanish history due to their involvement in crime, drug trafficking and sexist cultural practices, and having the film using a word that was transparent to that ethnicity would have made it, at the best, very hard to take seriously.

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