I LOVE Alfonso Cuarón’s sci-fi action movie Children of Men. I’ve watched maybe six times and every time, the ending always almost brings me to tears. So when I learned it was adapted from P.D. James’ book of the same name, it was a no-brainer deciding what my next book would be.
After finishing the book, it wasn’t difficult to reach to the conclusion that I enjoyed the movie better.
While James’ book gives a more in-depth look at how human infertility and humanity’s slow death march towards extinction affects the sexual dynamic between men and women and almost demented ways humans try to cope with a world without children or a race of dead men walking, I feel the book dedicates WAY too much time describing the failing of human civilization and the Regrets and guilt of Theo Faron. It’s not even until after 2/3 through the book where it feels like the plot and story are properly paced and stuff of consequence actually begin to happen.
The film’s adaptation by, comparison, feels consistent in its pacing and the world building and woe-is-mes of Theo feel more compact a take up less of the audience’s time.
What books do you feel were worse than its film adaptation and why?
Having the girl be nude and half-nude all the damn time felt especially ridiculous because in pretty much every scene without her in it, the book was taking such great pains to establish how absolutely freezing cold it was and the necessity of bundling up to avoid frostbite and hypothermia. And then she’d appear, topless. It was so blatantly obvious that it was just for fanservice reasons because it didn’t even make fucking sense.
And word on her incredibly gross romance with Crozier, and the show making a great decision on making her an adult and cutting said romance.
I was also irritated at the book’s depiction of Crozier’s ex - she felt like a gold-digging stereotype straight out of an incel forum. The show improved on things here too - it kept the character and her place in Crozier’s backstory, but had a lot more empathy for her.
The depiction of homosexuality was another area where the show fixed things - in the book, the chief human antagonist, Hickey, was a gay man with a history of preying on children, until he’d found it more convenient to instead target mentally disabled adults, such as his current boyfriend/bodyguard. There’s another gay dude, and the second he’s introduced, the book goes off on a rant to let us know that he’s the good kind of homosexual, because he “never bragged of it,” and because he didn’t “bring his activities to sea,” and therefore he could be trusted not to be a pedophile. Unlike those guys who didn’t go celibate while out at sea for months or years on end, who are all predators, apparently.
Meanwhile, in the show, Hickey was still gay and still a villain, but the two weren’t linked. He wasn’t a child molester, his boyfriend wasn’t mentally disabled, and the show definitely didn’t suggest that such behaviour was usual amongst gay men regardless of whether they were celibate at sea or not. The other gay dude is still there, and the show felt no need to introduce him with “Hey, this is Bridgens, he’s gay - but don’t worry, he’s actually not a child molester.”
In the show, Bridgens is a nice normal dude who happens to be gay, Hickey is an evil little fucker who happens to be gay, and that’s all there is to it.