Have you read the novels? Because the characters are more fleshed out in them and there is a great deal missing from the film - the book was 300 pages while the film is two hours. Also it was a very dense book - much more so than the CS Lewis Narnia series.
Mrs. Coulter changes a bit in the next two books and is redeemed. Lord Asrial becomes darker and in some respects nastier. (The film didn't show the dark twist at the end of the novel - where Asrial betrays his daughter's trust.)
From what I've read of Pullman's interviews - I got the feeling that he felt the adult world had a tendency to "romanticize" childhood. To idealize children. And had a desire to preserve childhood - unwillingly to allow people to grow up. His biggest issue with Lewis (His Dark Materials is in some respects Pullman's response to the Narnia books and Lewis's writings) - was that Lewis wanted to keep children children forever. That the child was innocent and it was better to be a child than an adult. To be submissive and humble. Pullman felt that childhood is just a stage - and the point is to become an adult. To learn. To know good and evil. To have free will - to not stay forever in the preadolescent garden of eden. (This was my reading of Pullman's take on it. It's subtler in The Golden Compass - but really obvious in the last volume of the triology - The Amber Spyglass.)
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Mrs. Coulter changes a bit in the next two books and is redeemed. Lord Asrial becomes darker and in some respects nastier. (The film didn't show the dark twist at the end of the novel - where Asrial betrays his daughter's trust.)
From what I've read of Pullman's interviews - I got the feeling that he felt the adult world had a tendency to "romanticize" childhood. To idealize children. And had a desire to preserve childhood - unwillingly to allow people to grow up. His biggest issue with Lewis (His Dark Materials is in some respects Pullman's response to the Narnia books and Lewis's writings) - was that Lewis wanted to keep children children forever. That the child was innocent and it was better to be a child than an adult. To be submissive and humble. Pullman felt that childhood is just a stage - and the point is to become an adult. To learn. To know good and evil. To have free will - to not stay forever in the preadolescent garden of eden. (This was my reading of Pullman's take on it. It's subtler in The Golden Compass - but really obvious in the last volume of the triology - The Amber Spyglass.)