Turning Books to Movies

So my hatred for The Golden Compass movie has been expressed to, well, pretty much everyone I know. At first I thought my repulsion was due to the movies straying too far from the book. Over the Christmas holidays I finally watched I Am Legend (read the book about six months ago) and finished reading Children of Men (saw the movie, which I actually enjoyed more than the book, about a year ago). Both these movies detoured drastically from their source material. Compared to them, The Golden Compass was faithful as all hell. But I liked both movies and felt that they did no dis-service to their book counterparts. So why would I have no problem with Children of Men and I Am Legend while being appalled by The Golden Compass?

1) The Golden Compass is part of a larger trilogy, not a stand alone work. And more so, it's part of that particular genre of epic fantasies (The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Star Wars). These books or movies were all created over a series of years and have an absolutely die-hard following. The days spent reading/watching these series created a bond between book and reader. We have a certain perception of the works that we expect to be met in their subsequent adaptations. So while you can get away with drastic changes in I Am Legend or Children of Men (books that simply do not, and cannot, create the same type of bond) there's no way to change things in the epic fantasy sagas without, in the eyes of fans, destroying the very fabric of the story.

2) Though I Am Legend and Children of Men were nothing like their books, they still managed to capture the essence of them. The hopelessness and helplessness and spawning of new life that are present within both books are also present in both movies. The Golden Compass book is full of longing, skepticism, and, ultimately, a lost innocence. NONE of this is present in the movie. So while the movie, relatively speaking, stays true to several scenes from the book, the overall tone and essence of the book are completely lost. What good is a work if you utterly destroy its message, its purpose? The answer: it's no good at all. I Am Legend and Children of Men differed from the stories of their respective books while keeping the underlying tones of each, and in this they succeeded in creating excellent pictures; meanwhile, The Golden Compass ripped out the essence of its source and turned a veritable masterpiece into a hollow, soulless piece of crap.