Childhood's End

December. 14,2015      
Rating:
6.8
Trailer Synopsis Cast

After peaceful aliens invade earth, humanity finds itself living in a utopia under the indirect rule of the aliens, but does this utopia come at a price?

Charles Dance as  Karellen
Mike Vogel as  Ricky Stormgren
Colm Meaney as  Wainwright
Julian McMahon as  Rupert Boyce
Georgina Haig as  Annabel Stormgren
Daisy Betts as  Ellie Stormgren
Ashley Zukerman as  Jake Greggson
Yael Stone as  Peretta Jones
Hayley Magnus as  Amy Morrel
Osy Ikhile as  Milo Rodricks

Reviews

Clevercell
2015/12/14

Very disappointing...

... more
Steineded
2015/12/15

How sad is this?

... more
Sexyloutak
2015/12/16

Absolutely the worst movie.

... more
Bea Swanson
2015/12/17

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

... more
zannatlaws
2015/12/18

I only needed to watch the trailer to know this film is not worth watching. The book is amazing. Read that instead.

... more
diegomfranc
2015/12/19

A dreadfull adaptation of a sci fi classic novel plagued with cheap tv melodrama, lobotomized and not even close to the spirit of the original story. If you did not read the novel and want to watch this, be warned that the actual book is noting like this, and if you have read the novel, don't expect this to make justice.

... more
huh_oh_i_c
2015/12/20

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.

... more
pwtatl
2015/12/21

The first of 3 discs was spot on--crisp, engaging, well produced and compelling. Truly promising with wonderful special effects. All of a sudden, as if the flush lever were hit, disc 2 swirls into nonsense and turgid drama, descending rapidly through disc 3. The story gets absolutely derailed with Hallmark moments and sappy "love" strewn about like cars from a massive train derailment. The mawkish teacle swirls into strident emotionalism, drawn out sentiment, pointless dialogue, and continuity disasters. Many of the cast are just plain annoying, especially Jennifer's mother, whose tremulous delivery was uncomfortably vulnerable and fragile to me. The series swaggers drunkenly from cloying to banal, from shock to boredom with plenty of nonsense thrown in. (The Devil visually is really amazing, though, despite an emotionally constipated demeanor.)

... more