The trouble with the movie was that the studio got scared out of continuing by fundamentalist Christian groups who really objected to the central premise of the books; namely that God can be killed and all life will be better off for it.

They then fumbled the shit out of it, editing it so poorly that what they did make was a jumble of shit that no one who wasn’t familiar with the stories would care to see, and no one who loved the books would be happy with. For me it was shit like revealing Lyra’s parentage right at the beginning, rather than it being a huge surprise as in the books.

It was a massive shame though, because the casting was damn near perfect. If they’d got Sam Elliott back to reprise the role of Lee Scorseby for the BBC adaptation, I’d have been as happy as a pig in shit. To my mind he is Lee. Lin Manuel Miranda was fine, but lacked the essential taciturn nature of the character as written. And Sir Ian McKellan as Iorek? Perfect.