MovieChat Forums > Children of Men (2007) Discussion > If Children of Men had less dialogue...

If Children of Men had less dialogue...

posted 8 years ago by kvothe_snow
3 replies | jump to latest

I find the Michael Caine scenes boring. Some scenes on immigration were a bit preachy. If this film focused on the journey and just subtly showed the sociopolitical by visual context (ala-Y tu mama tambien) in the background, would this film have been more appreciated? I did not appreciate Clive Owen's dinner with that rich guy with the David sculpture and Guernica painting...like what was the point of that? Anyway, other than that, I thought it was a great film and one of my favorites ever.

[–] smoko 8 years ago

@kvothe_snow I didn't find the Michael Caine scenes boring, but that's because I like the actor.

But some of the lines from Jasper bugged me, like when he told Theo about the plight of refugees and how the government hunts them down like cockroaches. Theo would've already known this, and we the audience would've figured it out on our own from the government announcements and the scenes of immigrants in cages. Same with Jasper telling Theo that the government hands out suicide kits - completely unnecessary information, as Theo would've already known this.

Using a character to give exposition is one thing, but they used Jasper to give us unnecessary exposition. It would've been better if they had trusted the audience to figure it out. Show, don't tell.

As for the scene of Theo's dinner with his cousin Nigel, I thought it was terrible - it was needlessly futuristic with that device on Alex's hand. Everything else in the movie is so realistic, but that scene looks like it belongs in another movie.

Still a great film of course, with plenty of attention to detail.

[–] dayvit78 8 years ago

it was needlessly futuristic with that device on Alex's hand.

This is an interesting point. I was actually expecting it to be more futuristic given it's set in 2027 (21 years from production date). For example, in a normal future, there would be no more gas cars, they would all be electric. And the game on the son's hand is something that would very well be possible.

Then I realized the world went to h*ll in 2009, so they would be stuck with the technology they had at that time, plus some other miscellaneous things that were invented to counter nuclear fall-out, immigration problems, etc. But certainly no iphone 7, no electric cars. Even though the UK was relatively stable, they wouldn't be investing in that type of tech research. So now I'm agreeing with you, how did they get that toy?

[–] KingNee 7 years ago

I think most of that scene was just a straight up Pink Floyd / Animal Farm reference.. hamfisted and all. Especially the food gives it away.. dishes after dishes of extravagant food that they don't even feel like eating.

"You'll be taking a soul train straight to a disco inferno where you never can say goodbye!"