Okay, I have now watched all four and a half hours of the SyFy miniseries Childhood's End. And to me the verdict is mixed.
On the good side, the performance by Charles Dance as Karellan was excellent. Also the visuals were top notch and many were of cinematic quality. Some of the other performances were strong also, and it did touch most of the basic points of the book.
Also on the good side is that while it did devolve a LOT into relationship based drama it was not "soap fi" in that the relationships did not drive the story.
Alas there is a reason I said mixed bag. And the core problem is one that haunts every attempt to translate Arthur C Clarke books to the screen. Clarke's writing was contemplative, had a slightly detached tone and always seemed to go into metaphysical arenas. As a result, it is hard to translate it to the screen without it coming off as slow paced and sort of dull (not saying his books are that just that trying to put them in a visual medium suffers that effect).
For example, 2001 A Space Odyssey was (at least to me) overlong and could have lost the first and last 10 minutes and been a better film for it. Ironically to me its sequel 2010 is a better film precisely because it is a tighter story.
In the case of Childhood's End, it could have and should have been done in two 90 minute segments instead of three. To me at least both of the first two parts dragged badly. And they also made a decision to ditch Clarke's stretched out timeline and detached tone.
By stretched out timeline I am referring to the amount of time elapsed between events. In the book the Overlords were here fifty years before revealing themselves, and the reason was so that most of the population alive at the revelation was either born after their arrival or too young to really remember a world without them. In the miniseries they wait only fifteen years which causes plot issues.
And why do they only wait fifteen years? Because the miniseries takes a single character from the book (Rikki Stromgren) and not only turns him into a farmer but has his character be present for most of the events in the miniseries. Plus his character has the most overwrought drama in the whole presentation.
Maybe its just me, but by compressing the timeline and expressing the story in personal relationship terms it loses the contemplative feeling as well as the slightly detached tone. In essence the TONE is wrong. Add on them handling the separation of the children in a different manner that reminded me of "The Omen" and I started having problems paying attention.
Still, Dance's layered performance as Karellan and the visuals came close to saving it for me.
Overall, I think SyFy is heading in the right direction and some elements of this effort were encouraging. Where I think they need to go from here is simple - be more faithful to not just the plot but the tone of the stories they adapt. I in fact would love to see them take a crack at something like "Ringworld".
On the good side, the performance by Charles Dance as Karellan was excellent. Also the visuals were top notch and many were of cinematic quality. Some of the other performances were strong also, and it did touch most of the basic points of the book.
Also on the good side is that while it did devolve a LOT into relationship based drama it was not "soap fi" in that the relationships did not drive the story.
Alas there is a reason I said mixed bag. And the core problem is one that haunts every attempt to translate Arthur C Clarke books to the screen. Clarke's writing was contemplative, had a slightly detached tone and always seemed to go into metaphysical arenas. As a result, it is hard to translate it to the screen without it coming off as slow paced and sort of dull (not saying his books are that just that trying to put them in a visual medium suffers that effect).
For example, 2001 A Space Odyssey was (at least to me) overlong and could have lost the first and last 10 minutes and been a better film for it. Ironically to me its sequel 2010 is a better film precisely because it is a tighter story.
In the case of Childhood's End, it could have and should have been done in two 90 minute segments instead of three. To me at least both of the first two parts dragged badly. And they also made a decision to ditch Clarke's stretched out timeline and detached tone.
By stretched out timeline I am referring to the amount of time elapsed between events. In the book the Overlords were here fifty years before revealing themselves, and the reason was so that most of the population alive at the revelation was either born after their arrival or too young to really remember a world without them. In the miniseries they wait only fifteen years which causes plot issues.
And why do they only wait fifteen years? Because the miniseries takes a single character from the book (Rikki Stromgren) and not only turns him into a farmer but has his character be present for most of the events in the miniseries. Plus his character has the most overwrought drama in the whole presentation.
Maybe its just me, but by compressing the timeline and expressing the story in personal relationship terms it loses the contemplative feeling as well as the slightly detached tone. In essence the TONE is wrong. Add on them handling the separation of the children in a different manner that reminded me of "The Omen" and I started having problems paying attention.
Still, Dance's layered performance as Karellan and the visuals came close to saving it for me.
Overall, I think SyFy is heading in the right direction and some elements of this effort were encouraging. Where I think they need to go from here is simple - be more faithful to not just the plot but the tone of the stories they adapt. I in fact would love to see them take a crack at something like "Ringworld".
I read Dune before seeing it and I did not like the original version, although I did like The Children of Dune.