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?
I think DaVinci Code was better as a movie. I found the book to be a linear slog through a series of deus ex machina puzzles that each lacked any kind of sufficient solution that a clever reader could see ahead and in a book that takes a day to read that's much less fun than a 2 hour movie with the charisma of Tom Hanks driving it.
+ That Hans Zimmer soundtrack 👏
I think that whole book series suffers from the motif of characters running in to famous landmarks and exclaiming ‘where is the clue!’
Then Langdon looks about, confused and then smiles and says ‘I know exactly what xyz is…’
Chapter end.
In the movies they smoothed out those very well in to enjoyable popcorn films.
Dan brown is a bad writer.
The book was written like a Hardy Boys mystery. The clues were always in plain site and puzzles were so easy I seriously thought the book was written for kids. I had a hard time reading the book as the main characters bungled through things that were so obvious.
I believe the book only became popular after added to Oprah’s book list. Kind of turned me off to anything else she recommended.
I understand where you are comming from and everyone has an opinion. However I hated the movie compared to the book. Hut that's just me.