The first chapter of Philip Pullman's ambitious, mysterious theological fantasy His Dark Materials trilogy comes to the screen in an undemanding, blunt, simplified adaptation. The Golden Compass introduces us to Pullman's multi-dimensional world, where people's souls live outside their bodies in the form of daemons (talking animals), witches fly in the sky along with aeronauts (cowboys in airships), and armored bears roam in the North, but the magic and ambiguity have been lost in translation. There are many fantastic sights to behold in the movie, but they come across shallow.

People familiar with Pullman's books will fill in the blanks (and wonder why there are so many blanks in the first place when so much is spelled out), while those who have yet to encounter his slowly revealing narrative structure will wonder what the point is. I wonder what went wrong. Part of it is a studio that reportedly wanted to take out the religious aspects of the story (Anyone who's read the books will immediately say, "Huh?"), and the other part is writer/director Chris Weitz, who gives us neutered version of a complex story, easily digested by the masses (who will still wonder what the whole thing is about).

The problems start early on as we're told everything we need to know about the world (daemons and witches and what have you), just so there's no reason to flesh it out later on. Lyra Belacqua (Dakota Blue Richards) lives in a world similar but different to ours at the University of Oxford. She's an orphan, who spends her days with her daemon Pantalaimon (voice of Freddie Highmore) playing with local children. One day, she hides out in a wardrobe in the retiring room of Jordan College to overhear her uncle Lord Asriel (Daniel Craig) talk to representatives of the college and the powerful Magisterium about the mysterious entity known as Dust.

He's discovered that Dust travels from another world, through a person's daemon, and into the person and wants funding for further study. While her uncle's away, Lyra and her friend Roger (Ben Walker) learn about children disappearing, taken away by "Gobblers." Roger and another local boy are kidnapped after the appearance of Marisa Coulter (Nicole Kidman), whose daemon is a golden-haired monkey. Mrs. Coulter has decided to take Lyra with her to the North, but not before she's given an Alethiometer, a device that tells the truth.