Children of Men/Fridge

Fridge Brilliance

• After watching Children of Men for the first time I thought it was just a pretty good action film, then I started thinking about the characters, and realised that Theo (Clive Owen) is an allegory for Jesus - the affinity for animals, never uses a weapon, is barefoot for half the film, sacrifices himself to save humanity - now it's one of my all-time favourite films - Sgt Pepper 9
  • add to that the fact that "theo-" is the Greek root for "god" and you've got yourself a valid interpretation.
    • Moreso, Theo is the short version of Theodore, which comes from Theodorus, which means 'Gift from God'.
    • Not necessarily, it can be short for other names: I went to school with a kid name Theobald. The important part is that Theo comes from Theos meaning "God".

Fridge Horror

• The movie, Children of Men. A trip to the fridge might not be required for viewers, but one really hopes the people who made it did need one: while the novel has the gender that goes sterile be men (so humanity could be restored easily by artificial insemination--not terribly good, but at least all you need to do with the sole fertile man is ask him to jerk off into a vial regularly) the movie genderflips this. If humanity is going to have a snowball's chance of surviving? The sole remaining fertile woman will have to spend the rest of her life being used to pop out as many babies as possible, by as many different men as can be arranged. It won't really matter if possibly other women could carry the fetuses to term, because the drugs damage the ovaries and there's a reason they don't use surrogate mothers who've never had their own successful pregnancies. Just to make it worse, her daughters are going to meet the same fate, unless they are fortunate to be infertile--oh, and they're probably going to get raped a lot even if they are, anyway, starting from whenever they hit menarche, if not before. Meanwhile, in the novel's universe? All he needs to do is have regular dates with Mrs Rosy Palms.
  • One can assume that they can find what is special about Key and apply that to other women who are infertile. Remember: the Human Project proposed to find a cure for infertility, not just any way to get around the problem of mass infertility
    • Additionally, given that the movie's entire plot is based around keeping her safe and getting her to a specific location to prevent her exploitation, I don't think that's her implied fate at all.
    • However, the fridge horror here is that if Key is able to become pregnant, it is likely that other women may have as well, and what has happened to them? Especially since the horror above is only averted by successfully getting her to the safety of the boat.
• So Theo finds the only known fertile woman on Earth, the key to the continued survival of the entire human species, quite literally the most important single being or object on the planet, and his reaction is to drag her through warzones and god knows how many other dangerous situations, all in the hopes of not significantly affecting the current political landscape, the specifics of which would be almost completely irrelevant to humanity only 100 years later, let alone 1000 years later? Would you put the entire survival of the human race at risk just to prevent the American South from potentially winning the Civil War? Any rational person would have turned her over to the nearest semi-reputable fertility doctor or authority immediately, regardless of the potential short-term political effects.
  • Theo trying to take Kee to the Human Project had nothing to do with politics. The Fishes were the ones wanting to use Kee and her baby as a symbol to motivate an uprising among the refugees. Theo was trying to protect Kee and the baby by taking them to the only (admittedly something of an urban legend) people who would protect her and figure out why she is fertile and how that knowledge can be used to save humanity. Given the fascist nature of the government it would be safe to say that they cannot be trusted as authority.
• When you think about it, the film automatically has a Downer Ending simply by making women be infertile; while harvesting sperm is a very simple matter ("Here's a vial"), the drugs used to harvest ova are damaging....and that's only the tip of the iceburg. So, for the above-mentioned possible Bittersweet Ending, she's going to have to be kept pregnant, and for genetic health, it'd be best to have a different father for each and every pregnancy. If she's lucky? It'll be done by artificial insemination, instead of direct methods. The same goes for her daughters, and that by older men if you want to avoid the problems of Brother-Sister Incest. Hello, High Octane Nightmare Fuel!
  • This troper always thought that it wasn't that all the future infants would descend from Dylan, but that people would do studies and figure out why Kee was fertile.
  • This troper was under the impression that Kee was just a series of random women that were spontaneously becoming fertile. Basically she probably just developed anti bodies to whatever was causing the infertility, what says that other women haven't done the same or aren't going to do the same.

Fridge Logic

• It is worth noting that artificial insemination, using frozen donor sperm, had been around for a few decades at the time of the novel's writing, and by the time the film was made, stored donor ova and fetuses are established medical technology. Did nobody think to save some or use them? In the film, at least, this might be answered if the mass infertility is due to problems with implantation, meaning that the stored ova and fetuses are useless unless/until somebody comes up with an artificial womb, but...
  • Isn't that more of a "it just bugs me" thing? Anyway, in the movie, it wasn't just that women couldn't get impregnated, the problem was much worse than that.. Remember, the moment shit hit the fan, ALL women around the world suffered miscarriages.
  • I would also argue that WHY nobody can have children is irrelevant. The film is about humanity, and how they react.
  • All the fertility techniques require a functional, fertile womb. It may very well be that women are infertile in that way, meaning no embryo implantation and/or development will happen even after artificial insemination or other method.