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?

  • harrisonisdead@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    11 months ago

    This may be slightly cheating, as they’re both based on short stories, but After Yang and Drive My Car are both so massively better than their source material. Everything Alexander Weinstein writes feels pretty unremarkable to me as far as sci-fi goes, but After Yang builds upon his work beautifully. Drive My Car is especially astonishing as a work of adaptation in the way it takes a handful of middling (unrelated to each other) Murakami stories and stitches them together into one of the best screenplays of recent years. The screenwriters take the best elements of Murakami’s work and pair them with elements that fill in the gaps of his failings.

    Lee Chang-dong’s Burning is another great adaptation of a Murakami short story, but the story that’s based upon may actually be my favorite of Murakami’s, and it’s one I feel stands alone much more strongly than those that inspired the Drive My Car film.