Children of Men: Book vs. Movie
Alfonso Cuarón's Children of Men (2006) is based on P. D. James's 1992 novel The Children of Men. Clive Owen plays a man asked to protect a pregnant refugee in a world where years of infertility have put humanity's future in doubt.
From Books Adapted
What changed from the book
Theo has a different place in the government
The movie takes the novel’s infertility crisis as its starting point, then tells a substantially different story. It is a loose adaptation, rather than the first part of the book. Alfonso Cuarón said he and his writers used the premise to pursue their own account of a society losing hope.
James’s Theo is an Oxford historian and a cousin and former adviser to England’s ruler. The movie makes him a government employee whose relative can obtain travel papers. Instead of approaching someone closely tied to the ruler, the resistance needs him to secure permission for a journey.
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Julian’s pregnancy becomes Kee’s story
Julian is the pregnant woman in James’s novel. Kee was created for the movie. The adaptation gives the pregnancy to an African refugee, while Julian becomes Theo’s former wife and a resistance organizer.
It also brings the pregnancy and the journey forward. The book spends longer with Theo and the political conspiracy before that discovery. The movie builds much of its story around getting Kee out of Britain.
The Human Project and the plan to reach its ship are additions too.
About the book and the movie
- Author
- P. D. James
- Year
- 1992
- Pages
- 256Buy book
- Audiobook length
- 9 hr 34 minGet audiobook
- Narrator
- David Case
No children have been born for years, and Oxford historian Theo Faron has withdrawn from a society preparing for its own extinction. A woman named Julian asks him to approach his cousin, the Warden of England, on behalf of a small group opposing the government. Their demands disturb Theo's comfortable detachment and draw him into dangers he has been able to ignore.
- Director
- Alfonso Cuarón
- Writer
- Clive Owen, David Arata, Timothy J. Sexton, Mark Fergus, Hawk Ostby, Alfonso Cuarón
- Year
- 2006
- Runtime
- 1 hr 46 minWatch on Amazon
- Cast
- Clive Owen, Julianne Moore, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Charlie Hunnam
- Genre
- Adventure, Drama, dystopian, post-apocalyptic, science fiction, speculative fiction, tech noir, Thriller
- IMDb
- View on IMDb
In a Britain that has become a police state after years of worldwide infertility, Theo Faron is asked to help a young refugee travel safely. Discovering that Kee is pregnant turns the job into something far more dangerous. With authorities and rival groups threatening her safety, Theo must get her through a country that treats people like her as disposable.
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