They ruined this amazing story.**Spoilers**

Rating: 2/10 (22 January 2007)

I read Children of Men and was so excited to see that they were making a movie out of it. But by the time I walked out of the theater, I was disappointed and angry. They had mangled the entire story until it was a pointless mishmash with zero character development.
Whoever (a bunch of studio jerks sitting around a conference table perhaps?) did the screenplay, paid so little attention to the subtlety and details of the book, that the finished product is a pale imitation of the great movie this could have been.
My biggest complaint is the totally random changing of major elements of the book, which accomplished nothing and watered down the story. Example: Let's change the main character's professor friend (played by Michael Caine in the movie), from a crusty, old-fashioned old dude living in an austere English townhouse, to an out-there ex-hippie guy living in a cabin in the middle of the woods. Why?? Adds nothing, no meaning to it.
Example: Let's kill off a main character (Julian, played by Julianne Moore in the movie) early on and eliminate an entire main thread of the story as laid out in the book (which is the slowly growing bond between Theo and Julian,and thus his increasing need to protect both her and the baby). Instead, let's create a entirely new character, change her race from the original character, and make her the pregnant one instead of Julian. Why?? Adds nothing, no meaning to it, and removes meaning from the very heart of the story.
Example: Let's remove what could have been a haunting and shocking scene, the Quietus (in the book, a forced suicide march of the elderly, orchestrated and monitored by evil government forces-it is seeing one of these in action which initially prompts Theo to join the band of rebels), and replace it with an ill-explained box that says "Quietus" and the idea that the elderly take the drugs inside and kill themselves. Why?? Adds nothing, no meaning to it, removes what could have been a very dramatic scene in the movie, and removes the impetus for Theo to join this ragtag group of rebels in the first place.
Example: Let's not provide any details that illustrate the terrible effect that infertility has had on the people of this future world, and just run through the movie like it's a video game. In the book, we learn how families had been so desperate to conceive, they were having christenings for kittens and pushing around baby carriages with teddy bears in them. It's the small, odd details that bring a story to life. This movie eliminated nearly all of them, and sucked the life out of the story.
Example: Let's get rid of the whole storyline that the evil ruler of England, is a childhood friend of Theo, and thus remove the whole reason why the band of rebels come to Theo in the first place (so he can go to his childhood friend, the "Warden of England", and try to convince him to make reforms). In the movie, it Julian is some old flame who randomly asks Theo for help. Why this change?? Adds nothing, no meaning to it, and removes a major plot element which helps make the story make SENSE.
I'm all for changing some things from the book, to make a movie, if it results in a better movie. But this is a case where the movie turned out to be garbage precisely because they changed everything. For no reason. No meaning to it.