The first trailer for His Dark Materials: The Golden Compass is online and viewable in high definition.

The trailer is pretty good, and covers a lot of the footage we saw in the previous behind the scenes featurette, but now it's finished and pulled together as a coherent teaser story. The effects look wonderful, especially the animals and the city scapes, one wonders why Chris Weitz was first concerned about working with such an effects heavy film.

Now you can see how he's doing with the first trailer, and indeed how Dakota Blue Richards is standing up to the might of the other big names in the epic His Dark Materials: The Golden Compass.

My only real annoyance here was the comparison to Lord of the Rings, I don't see the need for it, and it feels a bit like they are trying to ride on the coat tails of that trilogy. Hopefully it won't need to and it can stand for itself.

You can see the trailer over at Yahoo Movies [WMV:QT:480p:720p:1080p] through Coming Soon. So, what do you think?