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?
Jurassic Park is my go-to answer whenever this question comes up.
- Michael Crichton is… let’s say, not great… at writing female characters. (At least women and girls. He did OK with the dinosaurs.)
- In the book, Lex is the younger sibling. Timmy is the dinosaur fan and the computer expert, borderline Marty Stu. The computer stuff Lex does in the movie? That’s all Tim in the book. Lex is just a whiny brat. By the time I was 1/3 of the way through the book I was rooting for the dinosaurs to eat Lex.
not great… at writing female characters.
Crichton is bad at writing people in general, it’s just particularly noticeable with the woman in his books, because he seems to hold contempt for them. Saddler is one of the few presented as competent, and the book goes to great lengths to let us know what nice legs she has. Ian Malcom, the author insert character, comments on them to her face and we are left with no indication of how she felt about it, and it’s presented as a completely normal thing to say.
Other characters are just 101 level textbooks with hints of a personality, which Crichton just takes from professionals that he personally likes or dislikes.
What he does exceed at in Jurassic Park, is demonstrating all the little decisions made by management, as you see them continuously compound into larger and larger problems. In the film, it’s almost like the storm is solely responsible for Jurassic Parks failure.
Additionally, despite the terrific performance by Samuel L. Jackson, Tom/John Arnold from the book is really the stand out character of the novel. An intelligent, competent engineer, who’s confident in the park, but comes to realize that Malcom is right over the course of the book (making him the only character with an arch). He realizes his hubris, yet still ultimately pays the price for it. He and Wu were both brilliant, but unable to see outside of their own personal responsibilities to notice the broader picture.
I agree with Jurassic Park, but some of Crichton’s other novels have terrible movie adaptations.
I love Congo the book, the movie is trash.
I love Sphere, and again, trash movie.
Timeline is considered one of his best (I enjoy it, but not one of my favs), and the movie is pretty shit.
Rising Sun is an odd case, as I don’t really like either the book or the movie, but for fans of the book, they usually prefer it, and the movie didn’t get good reviews when it came out.
The Great Train Robbery and The Andromeda Strain are classics, but I’ve never seen the adaptations of either.
I love Congo the book, the movie is trash.
Mm yeah. I read the Reader’s Digest version when I was a kid and bought a copy after 25 years or so. While it’s still a cool techno thriller (and the tech has caught up with its vision), I was surprised how much Crichton fantasized about >!native women having sex with apes and gorillas!<.
How dare you disrespect the masterpiece of cinema that Congo is.
C’mon, it’s got Bruce Campbell! A gorilla that does sign language that’s played by a woman in a gorilla suit! Laura Linney shooting a laser gun and saying great one liners like “put them back on the endangered species list”
Ok yeah, it’s kinda trash. But I love it.
My first thought as well. I think the smaller scale of the movie also really helps contain it, like having only 3 raptors makes them more consequential than the 11 or so they dispatch in like one chapter. Although I miss the Baby T-rex in the movie. Overall, Crichton is really good at the science aspect and the theme of chaos theory, but the movie treats every character better. Like Grant is way more interesting in the movie imo
I’d say pretty much everything Crichton wrote was better as a movie in large part because he was writing books rather explicitly intended to be turned into movies.
In addition to being a misogynist he was also hilariously petty. He hated a critic name Michael Crowley so much that in his novel Next he had a character named Mick Crowley, who was a critic, who was a pedophile. Just to be a dick and get back at a critic he hated.
i like how the book sets up the world but boy do i not like most of the characters in it.
Ian malcolm dies but his speech at the end is some of the most up your own arse, ego self insert anti science BS i have seen from a writer and feels like ian dies like jesus. Ian in the movie is funny, critic who plays the devil advocate on maybe dont play god, with some great lines. Ian in the book is anti-science self insert for Michael who gets so annoying by the end
John Hammond, there is no depth there, just big evil billionaire, which i enjoy a takedown but i dont get any interesting thing out of it. Hammond in the movie is so much warm and a joy too be around but also a great way too show hubris in playing god and how captalism gets in its own way.
Lex is awful in the movie too. She gets the genius idea to shine a gigantic flashlight right into the eyeballs of a t-Rex and then screams because she can’t find the button to turn it off? At least in the book she had thr excuse of being only like five years old instead of 13.
The dinosaurs were also written more as just scary monsters, with a lack of the respect/beauty of them the movie had.
I hear this complaint about Lex a lot, and how she’s annoying, badly written and frankly unbelievable. Once upon a time I might have agreed. However, since becoming a parent, and thus being exposed to many more real-life children (not just my own), I can confidently say that Lex’s annoying little sister behavior is not that unrealistic. It just really isn’t. Many young kids are just like that.
Michael Crichton always wrote like a dad with experience lol. Hyper obsessed with certain topic kids, annoying whiney brats, babies who just wouldn’t eat their f******g oatmeal, toddlers who got diaper rash because someone didn’t wipe them well enough and they had crusty poop in their genitals. Absolute undying unconditional love for your kids. He was so real for that lmao
Agreed.
And for that reason, I wasn’t too upset that they swapped the ages and aged her up. It’s difficult to write for a small child in a way that’s coherent to the plot and doesn’t just turn them into wallpaper (emotional or otherwise).
Dakota Fanning’s character in War of the Worlds gets similar flack for being very much like Lex.