Colibel Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

LouHomey From my favorite movies..

SpunkySelfTwitter It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

Ogosmith Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Tina Willis I am a pretty avid reader, so when I read a book, it is nearly impossible, when it is adapted to film, to separate the two and to not compare. The book, in all cases, has been, will always be, better then what can be reproduced on film. Even if it is followed exactly.I did not read the book before I saw Childhoods end. So I review this film strictly as a film. I have seen enough reproductions now that I believe I would always, if I had the choice, rather see the screen version first. Then the book. Rather then the other way around.I have always been fascinated by the science vs. spirituality debate and essentially that is what this film is contemplating.The choreography and camera use was excellently done, with many creative uses. The script/screenplay was just cerebral enough to add credibility but not confound even the simplest watcher. For a sci-fi the special effects were minimally used or needed, but was sufficiently applied realistically, but was also kept simple and effective.The pace applied a nice slow burn, with twists and turns to keep the audience interested and surprised.The acting was well done, the characters full and evoked emotions.Although it may offend people who are wanting this film to represent the book, I can appreciate the film, for just what it presented. Which was good entertainment and enjoyment of the journey it took me on and a contemplation of an age old question.

J M A good effort, but there are so many faulty premises. First of all, if the overlords were intent on eventually destroying mankind why did they waste time "making the world perfect" for them?. Second, why was the Earth itself destroyed-- There was nothing to blame the Earth itself for mankind's failure, right? Why didn't they simply kill off the older (in their view contaminated) generation? What they did is like arresting the DWI driver and impounding and scrapping the Lamborghini he was driving.

huh_oh_i_c Let me repeat: Even worse than usual crap full of American self-righteous chest thumping descends from awful to absolutely despicable.This is another very deeply disturbing of how Americans(Israelis??) screw up every good SF book there is. See what they did to Nightfall. Only the P.K. Dick stuff seems to get good movies. Heinlein, Asimov and now Clarke: all of the Big Three have been thoroughly raped up the bum hole by Hollywood.This is a story written by a scientifically conscientious English gay writer, who had scientific training and integrity in his knowledgeable writing. None of HIS characters had all this emotional baggage, since that is NOT what the story is about.First American self-righteousness: The character Stormgren. In the book he was the secretary of the UN, but in the TV show he's some farmer from a flyover over state. This shoves the amateuristic idea down our throats that "regular" folks know better than experts, the same utterly stupid idea that got Trump elected. Like Obama said: "I prefer experts to pilot planes or do heart surgery". Yep, for those, as with EVERYTHING, you need seasoned and ooh scary elites, to do the job.Second American self-righteousness: The utter lame idea that we'd be interested in Stormgrens love life, that he can't move on from his first wife and that he now betrays, or cheats on his second wife, with his dead first wife.In general, all the characters are changed, and for the worse. Peretta is an insane woman, and it's utterly unbelievable she can get close to the second wife. The Greggsons are not meant to be suspicious provincialists, Rupert Boyce is not meant to be so arrogant and slavish, Milo was meant to be a colored South African called Jan, and why would anyone blame, least of all he, that the Overlords killed scientific curiosity? The situation did that, and people could have gone and studied other, non astrogation/space/rocket stuff. Jennifer is supposed to be a baby, and not some 10 year old actress pretending to be four years old, playing a Nazi type fascist Fearless Leader. It's obvious the writer doesn't have or know anything about kids, if he really thinks we're gonna buy this crap. If you can't find an actor to play a four year old, use CGI, it's hyper-realistic these days.In the book, 50 years pass before Karellen shows himself, which is two generations. But, because Hollywood demands you apparently can't just use actors for one episode, it got shortened to 15 years ... Once again, Hollywood greed screwed up a good story. Also, Milo gets saved immediately from a LETHAL bullet wound, but Karellen can't? And the Overlors are magically curing cancer by not even looking but Ricky can't be cured? Suuuuuuuuure! I get that is done to get even more emotional badly acted crap scenes, but WHAT IS THE POINT OF THAT?Anyway, while the first episode only gets screwed up by the spoilerish beginning, the 2nd deviates so far from the book it really stops making sense and has a lot of plot holes. The 3rd descends into some Lifetime emo crap about relations and sickening nostalgia.I was really looking forward to see scenes of the Children doing their "dancing" but apparently that had to make way for a total lie about New Athens and stuff.About halfway through the 2nd episode I, an atheist, began thanking "Gawd"(sp?) that my fellow atheist Arthur C. Clarke was dead long before they raped this book. Which is the only good thing about this all. Why can't we give minus numbers? Zeros?The Melancholic Alcoholic.

alex-vernon The production was remarkably true to the book, which like the first-cited reviewer I read almost a half-century ago and dearly love, except in one respect - no doubt with understandable but not forgivable artistic license, the scriptwriter in the final episode removed the dignity and eventual acceptance of the evolutionary process of the 'remaindered' humans and thus allowed the separation scenes to become - doubtless televisually attractive - those of panic and distress, at odds with Clarke's view of humanity as expressed by Karellen - that they were worth the effort. After all, the Overlords had the job of 'midwives to this process, but we ourselves are barren': they had the greatest respect, as did the writer, for their charges, who eventually deserved it.