While The Golden Compass, based on the first of the books in Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials series, was not a huge box office hit and suffered from some negative reviews thanks to a critical detail left out of the ending, it was a gorgeously designed film and a spectacular showcase for costumes influenced both by the Art Deco period and the increasingly popular "steampunk" aesthetic.

With looks that range from the slinky evening gowns of a woman with political ambitions to the fur-lined parkas and goggles of adventurers, The Golden Compass does a magnificent job of showing up a full society in its wardrobe choices, including rich and poor, children and adults. It's a look that also makes us yearn for the past, while speculating about the future.

While steampunk wasn't a part of the mainstream lexicon at the point The Golden Compass was shot, it was an idea that sci-fi fans and culture buffs have been enamored with for some time. What would the Victorian era have looked like if it had high-tech, steam-based machinery, including airships? How would history have evolved from that point? Steampunk is a way of fusing technologies, real and imagined, with the elegance and formality of the past. It was a concept the film, which starts at an alternate universe version of Oxford University, latched onto brilliantly.

Despite some fantastic imagination and special effects, it seems unclear whether the other two films in the book trilogy will be made. With challenging and controversial themes about religion (the books are, in many ways, classifiable as fan-fiction based on Milton's Paradise Lost) and a rather adult narrative that is told through the lives of children, His Dark Materials was always an odd choice for a Hollywood film that was destined to alienate fans as some plot elements were watered down. But even if those fans didn't get the movie magic they hoped for, they still got to see a fantastic glimpse -- thanks to the costumes -- of the world Pullman created.