Children of Men: The Movie!

This is such an old draft, I’m not sure why I never finished it. I watched this movie in October.

Alert readers may recall that I read the P.D. James novel, Children of Men, last summer. I didn’t like it. See the link for why.

Now, I’ve finally gotten around to watching the Movie that prompted me to read the book. I didn’t like it, but it was a good movie, I think.

For one thing, it’s depressing as hell. I don’t really care for depressing movies, no matter how “quality” they are. Almost all of the major characters die (true to form from the book) but without the tragic majesty of Hamlet. Some of them die suddenly, some pointlessly, and some forseeably.

For another thing, they flipped the bitch in the movie. In the book, it’s men who can’t father children. In the movie, it’s the women who are sterile. I’m not sure what that change was supposed to accomplish, except maybe the screenwriters agreed with my point from the earlier post that if a man was suddenly found to be fertile, go find him and get him to impregnate every single woman possible! Flipping that makes it much more about the pregnant woman, which lends to the drama.

For a third thing…I’ve got no third thing. Did you read that note up above about how I sat on this draft for 4 months? Back in October I was all full of righteous fury; now, not so much.

I wouldn’t watch this movie again, and I’d only recommend it to people who are interested in dystopian depressing movies. It’s not scifi in the sense that there’s any science fiction going on. The only SF bit is the assumption that every man is sterile, for some reason.

But, that’s another movie off of my list of summer (2007) movies to watch. Maybe I’ll finish the list before 2009.