And many people agree with you.
My problem is that there was a tremendous seriousness about the film, as you put it, it was pretty bleak, but also a total vagueness as to what it was being prophetic about. If it was a metaphor for our lives, then neither was I certain what it was supposed to be a metaphor for. To put it bluntly,
the Day After Tomorrow, is a prophesy that something very bad may happen to us if we fail to address human-caused climate change;
Planet of the Apes can be seen as a similar warning about nuclear war in the first first bunch of movies and incautious genetic meddling in the latest. In both cases, notwithstanding the alleged seriousness of
the Day After Tomorrow, they are primarily entertainments.
Children of Men announces itself though its style and portentous title as being something more. I'm sorry but unless it's literally a warning that the human race may die out in a bleak and chaotic future by becoming sterile, then it amounts to a wagging finger saying 'carry on like this and things could get pretty bad, you know'.
It isn't that I demand specific details or some kind of precise prediction. I'm not one of those people who point at the calendar and say 'Hah! It's 2018 - Orwell was wrong', but I do like some depth to a story that's set up like an allegory or metaphor. In the original novel, the point (if you like) is the loss of soul and future and this is investigated through development of a society that parodies and emphasises features of our own. It is also, crucially, done through character description and development. This is missing in the film and instead we are given reconstructions of the kind of terrorism and broken down towns that we see in trouble spots around the world combined with rather under-drawn characters working through some kind of story plot.
EDITED: 17 Feb 2018 10:32 by WILLIAMA