Have someone watched "Children of Men" ?

heer0

heer0

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This movie has strong simmilarities with the HL2 story - the era, the dark future, where people can't have children, riots, even the urban areas (like the refugee camp) look very similar to City 17. There are some battles between the police and the rebels that look so HL-ish...Anyone watched it?
 
yeah, i actually leaned over to my buddy and said "man, its ****ing hl2 the movie". the whole style just reminded me of valve and their commitment to perfection. its just feels so flawless and grand. quite a good movie.
 
Hey, read around man. People have been raving about it for ages.
 
Meh, it's not that similar, it seems like each other on the surface but the style of CoM is pretty different from HL2. How you can say that the battle scenes towards the end remind you of HL2 I don't get at all :P
 
Well, they do remind me...In the end the battle on the streets in the refugee camp between the police and the rebels, and the fight in the big building where the rebels were shooting the police tanks with RPGs from the windows. Even the train station looks like Point Insertion, with all these guards and fences.
 
I need to see this film also, but i doubt I will find many similarities
 
In all fairness, it is very similar in its visual style. That sort of...grey, dirty and 'future' look.
 
I see what you mean looking back at it, but it didn't occour to me whilst I was watching.
 
I could see where you would find some similarities - but the stories are vastly different.
 
If there were CP operatives instead of SWATs, then it would be just HL, but it seems i want too much :E
 
Jebus I was mighty disappointed when that lady took her clothes off, that stupid rag was just covering her nipples:cheese:
 
Flynn(Snarkpit) said:
Jebus I was mighty disappointed when that lady took her clothes off, that stupid rag was just covering her nipples:cheese:
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I don't think this guy has Aspergers Syndrome. Maybe we just need to replace the "perger" with "hole."
 
A fine movie but still a bit unsatisfying. Things were a bit to ****ed up for this miracle to make all the difference.

Anywho, moving on. I agree that HL2 and the movie are simular but the movie manages to look a lot darker than HL2. If there would be made a movie about Half-Life, do you think it would be made just like "Children of Men" or a bit more colorful like the game.

*ponders*
 
Aye there is nothing colourful about half life 2, the world was pretty much at its knees before Freeman came
 
You might be right, I've benn flipping through pages in "Raising The Bar" book and looking at early artwork for the game and it should have looked a bit more bleak.
I am however pleased that they put some color in the game, even the combine gunship looked more pleasing to the eye than Clive Owen.
 
ScroogeMcDuck said:
YI am however pleased that they put some color in the game, even the combine gunship looked more pleasing to the eye than Clive Owen.
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I loled.

Well, I thought alot of the concepts in Raising the Bar were fairly generic. You know, post-apocalyptic wasteland and the usual ho-hum conventions. I found HL2 bleak in that there was no hope. The ultimate fate of humanity is to be transformed into Stalkers, shipped off-world and sent to a slave camp.
People can't breed - everytime someone dies that's one less human in the world. No one's replacing him.
 
The only color in the game was coming from the alien combine tech - striders, gunships, elite uniforms. Maybe this is exactly the contrast Valve wanted to create - in one side the poor enslaved humans and the wasteland once called "Earth", cities in ruins, no children, it's quiet and athmosphere is depressing (i have to admit i stood many times in one place during Water Hazard just watching around when there's no battle, i like the athmosphere there, the floating rubbish in the water, the leafless trees, the old soviet-style panel buildings, it reminds somehow of home :E), in other hand, we have all types of alien combat super-technology with unconventional weaponry, that's where the most color comes from.

To Samon: Wow, looking under Flynn's name and the fact that there is no "banned", i suppose you're in good mood recently :E
To Flynn: Don't push your luck boy!
 
I remember when the first previews for this movie came out, people here were comparing it to HL2...
 
I just saw CoM for the first time last night, and it blew me away. Awesome to see how technical achievement and thematic content were combined to create a really emotionally-involving film.

As far as the similarities go, a few of them are striking, with the most obvious being the human race's inability to reproduce. Others included:

--Prison break-in / refugee camp break in
--Abondoned playground / abandoned school (with playground)
--poingant use of an audio track of children laughing
--armed uprising
--ghettoes
--an escape via underground canals

etc. etc.

But, in fairness, the film and the game mine some similar thematic territory. What's more a propos to apocalyptic narratives than the prospect of the death of Earth/humanity/both...

Also, I think the similarities are probably coincidental. I read somewhere that Alfonso Cuar?n had had the idea for the project as far back as 2001. And the P.D. James novel which is the film's sourcework dates back to the early 90s.
 
nokori3byo said:
And the P.D. James novel which is the film's sourcework dates back to the early 90s.
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Although it's a very detailed book, the book doesn't half describe the bleak, dark world that is shown in the film. Not to mention that the book is, actually, very much different to the film. Still the same story, but the film has changed it a considerable amount. So yeah, it wouldn't surprise me if the bloke who did CoM looked at some of the stuff in HL2. But then, post-apocolyptic, opressive, dystopian, etc stuff isn't exactly Half-Life 2's own original terrirtory, it just shows it off really well.
 
Another interesting thing HL2 and CoM share is an oblique approach to exposition, with both revealing plot details on news clippings tacked to bulletin boards and through other in-game/in-film media. Also, critics of both the game and the film complained about holes in the plot, which is odd given that these oblique styles of narration were, in both cases, integral to the effectiveness of the stories.
 
Yeah, they both didn't force-feed you the plot (or perhaps, in both cases, smaller parts of one big plot) down your throats and instead you had to look out for everything, be it by word of mouth or, yes, newspapers, posters, articles, etc.

I loved both of those features.
 
I have to agree with everyone there are huge similarities both in plot and tone. To name just a few:

-Humanity's inability to reproduce
-Complete absence of children
-A totalitarian government oppressing humanity beneath its fascist boot
-A resistance group against the government that uses abandoned farmhouses as bases and transports people through underground sewers
-Abandoned schools and playgrounds. The shot of the empty swings was extremely reminiscent of of HL2
-The haunting laughter of children
-Cultured cities that have become warzones
-The cinematography in general looks a lot like Half-Life 2
-The whole movie is shot at eye level, as if from somebody's viewpoint.
-The long unbroken shots, especially of street warfare - like being in an FPS - the camera is like a person, ducking and diving and finding cover.
-The 'ringing-in-the-ears' effect we hear after a large explosion nearby.

I'm sure there are more.
 
Still can't wait to see this. Despite Pi being a total pooper about it.
 
Unlike HL2, the government in CoM were actually the good guys, but they were so desperate that they had to do things to keep its own populace safe from outsiders.
 
Unlike HL2, the government in CoM were actually the good guys, but they were so desperate that they had to do things to keep its own populace safe from outsiders.
Click to expand...

Yeah, they are good, they only sent two F16s to nuke out a whole refugee camp full with mostly innocent men and women, yes, they are good...
My question is, why are all these fences, camps and police, when they know there will be no alive humen in a matter of years?
 
Yeah i definitely noticed some similarities there. Though I wish there were more actual fighting scenes. Plus, nobody in the movie had a gravity gun :P
 
yes, but i hate that movie, and its so boring. i hate the style of british films. and when she when to that shed and showed off her..yeah..it was sick. and my mom almost saw it (thank god)
 
soulslicer0 said:
yes, but i hate that movie, and its so boring. i hate the style of british films. and when she when to that shed and showed off her..yeah..it was sick. and my mom almost saw it (thank god)
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The style of Children of Men isn't typical of most British films really. I, for one, loved CoM's style though.
 
The movie was very tense, and everything got more and more complicated until she saw the boat. Then everything was like "WHEW!" Cause... ya know... he'd been helping her the whole way, and obviously, without him she'd be dead by now. Then he died on the boat while she was out in the middle of the ocean holding that baby... O_O

then "HOOOOOONK!" << >> ^^ A BOAT!

I think in ep 2 their might be some *ahhem!* "Sexytime!" goin on. ;) ;) ;)

then ep 3 will have pregnant women, then in hl3 gordon will have to carry a baby (which will look like it's floating in front of him) across a mine field or something... :|
 
Van Halen there's a spoiler tag now so you don't ruin the movie for people who haven't seen it.

That said, I loved Children of Men.
 
I see some similarities, but they are common among apocalyptic stories. Children of Men was rather upsetting to me. Fantastic movie, though.
 
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