The Ultimate Showdown: James vs. Cuarón

Personally, I enjoyed the book, Children of Men, written by PD James. From my experience with Harry Potter, Lord of The Rings, The Notebook (yes, THE Notebook with Rachel McAdams), Eragon, Spiderman, Batman, Romeo & Juliet, Alice In Wonderland, etc, I usually prefer the novel(s) first and foremost. If I decide after reading the book that it seems decent enough to see how a director tried to interpret and adapt it, I'll then scrounge for change enough to pay $7.50 to see it. (Or go to Cineplex on Tuesdays). To me, the book is always the best source. I am a visual learner, but reading a book helps me consider and imagine how the characters would feel and act. For me, adaptations are just another way to imagine a book's scenery. With The Children of Men, however, it was an entirely new concept which Cuarón devised. Sure it maintained the same themes of finding hope in a lost cause, looking on the bright side, a race against time and the last dying generation of human beings incapable of giving offspring; but there were new characters, new scenes and new conflicts within the movie's plot.

The adaptation in this case, in my opinion, is great. For me, I enjoyed the visual interpretation and the cinematography. If I were given the task of recreating a world of despair and hopelessness filled with illegal immigrants and pre-apocalyptic chaos, it would not look as good as the movie for sure. In the film, there were burning cows, pollution, wide pans of the countryside and technology (produced by special effects). The feel and atmosphere from the movie was well carried out and I felt it was accurate visually to that of the book, if not better. To me, Cuarón did a fantastic job because the scenes were very detailed. The plasma screens, the props, the debris and the shootings and bombings everywhere helped establish each scene and made me feel as if I was watching an apocalypse happen before my eyes.

The characters were well casted. I particularly liked watching Clive Owen act in this movie because he has played out angry and brave, yet sentimental characters before. I thought that the person who played Julian, Julianne Moore, was not only casted based on her talents, but her appearance. Unfortunately, we don't see much of her due to her death by the Omegas early on. The actress who played Kee was a decent actress since she had to fake the accent, go through birth and act scared most of the time.

The film exceeded my expectations of what I thought the book was about. Sure, Cuarón made Theo die and he added an illegal refugee to carry the baby instead of Julian, but it all made sense. I think that Cuarón did these changes to help the conflict and make it more realistic to the audience. Having the main character die is also another way in which to pull the audience closer emotionally. However, I think that we saw less of the scenes which went on in the book including the Quietus, Theo's and Julian's baby accident and Xan's antagonizing ways. This is where adaptations lose out to a novel. Since the film has to have a certain length, the events in the book have to either be shortened or cut off. Thus, the film doesn't establish the mentioned events and only mentions them briefly. The audience doesn't understand the same context or meanings as deeply as those who read the original book. However, adaptations do allow people to visualize the scenes better with either CGI, the use of green screens, set designs and props and costumes.

I guess this was all the fan-girl craze about Twilight was about. The original book by Stephanie Meyer versus the movie starring Robert Pattinson and Kristin Stewart. I suppose Edward was too much of an idolized and dreamed after persona to be portrayed by a lowly human being such as R-Patz.

 Image Source: http://theoatmeal.com/story/twilight