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?
Not a movie, but the Expanse tv show was vastly better than the books.
I found a lot of the internal monologue of the characters in the books to be particularly tedious but the show cuts that out and immediately makes things way better. But also the show runners are working with a much more complete story so while they are telling one story they are also setting up the next one which I think is a lot more fun than the more self contained books.
Interesting take. I’ve only seen the beginning of the show, and strongly disagree as it’s okay, while the books are an all-time great sci-fi series imo. The first two in particular were absolute rides, and the show didn’t really capture that for me (not enough for me to keep watching obviously)