Lyra, I am your mother.

Thanks to the Japanese pre-preview I've managed to finally see The Golden Compass (or "Lyra's Adventure: The Golden Direction-clock" as they call it here).

After all the changes I'd heard about I was kind of scared, because I absolutly love the books and I've been waiting for the bloody movies to come around for ten years or so, and that tends to be a surefire way to end with a big disappointment (cf.: The Lord of the Rings; good though the movies were, they were not good enough).
And I was surprised.
There were a few things that bugged me - some overly corny dialogue, some characters looking totally unlike I'd imagined them, some major changes in the background, above all the unnecessarily lengthy depictions of the Dust forming images that in my opinion really, really obscured the way the Alethiometer really works - but on the whole it works well (though I am not sure that a novice to the story would be able to follow). Even the plot changes make sense from a movie perspective; the books are a bit too full and complex for a two-hour movie, especially if it's supposed to be marketed as a children's movie (despite torn-off jaws) for the Christmas season...
Of course it would have been great to see a movie just like the books, but it still works.

So, yeah, actually I liked it.

What I didn't like was the horror of an end credit song. Who the hell came up with that? The singer can't sing, and the lyrics are, to put it mildly, trite crap. I am a notorious end-credit watcher, and I couldn't bear it and fled after the first verse. Horror!

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( Lyra, ich bin deine Mutter. )

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Das verstehen jetzt nur ein paar Insider

Also, ich hab ja so meine Theorien zum Fushimi-Inari-Schrein.

Ich denke ja, das ist eine Springer-Basis. Jedes Torii steht für ein anderes Universum, und wenn man nur weiß wie, kann man vom "Schrein" aus zu jedem beliebigen Punkt springen.
Verrottete Torii stehen für tote Universen und die kleinen auf den Schreinen für weitgehend unerforschte.

Schließlich kann das doch kein Zufall sein, dass da überall Spielleiterstatuen sind, oder?

( Beweisbilder unterm Cut. )

Ladies and Gentlemen, I rest my case.