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glitter_n_gore) wrote2016-04-06 09:34 pm
glitter_n_gore) wrote2016-04-06 09:34 pm
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YA Adaptations: The Mortal Instruments
Have you heard of the Suck Fairy?
It's a wiley and sadistic little creature who visits all your favorite childhood movies, books, and TV shows, waves a wand, and POOF! Sucks all the magic and charm out of them. This is why when you revisit your favorite things from when you were a kid, you find yourself saying, "I used to think this was so cool, why does it suck now?" Because it's been visited by the Suck Fairy.
At least that was the explanation offered to me on the Internet awhile back. I forget which discussion brought this up. But actually, I'm experiencing sort of the opposite phenomenon now. What's the opposite of the Suck Fairy? A whimsical elf who visits things you didn't like that much on first encountering them, but then when you go back, you go, "Wow, I actually don't remember why I didn't care for this the first time, because it's actually awesome!" Any ideas? The Awesomeness Elf, perhaps?
Let's talk about The Mortal Instruments.
Book cover of City of Bones via Goodreads. Tangent: How gorgeous is that new boxed set? Wow. I'm glad I didn't buy the first editions, because now I can collect the prettier ones!
This best-selling YA urban fantasy series by Cassandra Clare has six books in the main line-up, plus a spin-off prequel series called The Infernal Devices, and most recently a spin-off short story collection called The Bane Chronicles. Since the adaptations so far are focused on the first book, City of Bones, that's mainly what we're talking about today. I have been wanting to love this series since the first book came out. Last week, I finally got it.
The story follows Clary Fray, an ordinary human girl (or so she thinks) with a passion for drawing. One day, she sees a murder take place at a New York dance club, a murder involving someone that apparently no one else can see. Turns out the "victim" is actually a demon, and its killers are elite warriors called "Shadowhunters" who protect the human race on the sly. It's a pretty standard urban fantasy type thing, with a dash of paranormal romance but not enough to be obnoxious.
When I first picked it up a few years ago, I remember being underwhelmed. I hated the characters, I was uninspired by the plotting and utterly grossed out by the plot twist at the end (which I won't spoil for you). However, I also thought that since the story had so much action and such an interesting (if somewhat derivative) magic system, it would work really well on-screen. So I reread it for this project, and I don't know, something happened. The words hadn't changed, but I was just in the right frame of mind for it somehow, and it became awesome. Ridiculous and convoluted, sure, but in a fun way.
I was really excited when I found out there was going to be a movie, since as I said, I thought from the beginning this story would work well on-screen.
It's not good. In fact it's pretty uniformly awful. There are some moments in it that work okay, but not many, and as a whole it's kind of a hot mess. The biggest problems are the dark, gritty direction taking the whole thing way too seriously; and the confusing miscasting of almost all the characters. The main love interest, Jace, is played by Jamie Campbell Bower, who I normally like a lot--especially when he sings. Jace in the book is a preening, emotionally crippled narcissist who arms himself in sarcasm, mostly because of some childhood trauma that made him afraid to get too close to anyone. Bower plays him very soft-edged and even tempered, which was confusing and extremely contrary to how he was in the books. I don't blame Bower, necessarily, but he is the wrong person for this job. Same with Aiden Turner, who is supposed to be Clary's father figure, and he's my age. I know I'm not actually a teenager anymore, but I'm nowhere near old enough to have an eighteen-year-old child, and neither is he. Don't even get me STARTED on Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, who plays the Big Bad, Valentine. I know I used to like the guy, but between this and NBC's Dracula, I am struggling to remember why.
Many parts of the movie feel rushed, which I guess is down to the filmmakers trying to cram yet another YA adaptation into the queue before the trend wore off (which as far as I can tell, it still hasn't). It creates these weird pockets of exposition and memorable moments from the book without any sort of connecting thread, so it's both over-explained and very difficult to follow at the same time. The pacing makes no sense, it feels crowded and sloppy, and I had a hard time paying attention to it. There was supposed to be a second movie after this one, but given the disappointing box office results, it got scrapped.
BUT THE SHOW. You guys. The show is addictive and amazing and OMG I love it so much!
Let's get one thing out of the way first: they changed a lot of things from the books. And I mean a LOT. The central "Institute" is no longer an abandoned cathedral / boarding school type thing, but a high-tech training and surveillance base. The Shadowhunters use the place as a base of operations in both versions, but I like this one more. It just makes sense considering we're in a universe that recognizes both technology and magic to have the main strike team take advantage of both. Additionally, a lot of character development stuff and minor side-plots are folded in from books further along in the series, which gives us more to focus on than just Clary and Jace (a much buffer and snarkier Dominic Sherwood, who is perfect in the role). Also, while Alan Van Sprang's Valentine still in no way resembles the character that Clare originally came up with (and I don't know why, since Valentine as written works fine as a villain), at least he feels dangerous and threatening. Also-also, several major characters have been reimagined as something other than Caucasian, or brought in sooner, so the cast is refreshingly diverse as compared to the movie.
Most importantly, it's funny. Say what you will about Cassie Clare (and boy, has a lot been said about Cassie Clare--do your own Googling, but don't say you weren't warned), but she has a sharp, wry sense of humor that was utterly lost in the movie. That humor is back with a vengeance in the show, and everything is so much better for it. It's not perfect. But it renewed my interest in the series again, and I can't wait to go through the rest of them and get caught up. There's a lot that I could gush about here, but we have several more recaps to go and LJ does have a word count limit. But seriously. Even if you didn't like the books, check out Shadowhunters. The series finale aired last night, so you can get caught up while we're waiting for the DVD set by streaming the whole thing on Freeform.go, here. You'll thank me.
It's a wiley and sadistic little creature who visits all your favorite childhood movies, books, and TV shows, waves a wand, and POOF! Sucks all the magic and charm out of them. This is why when you revisit your favorite things from when you were a kid, you find yourself saying, "I used to think this was so cool, why does it suck now?" Because it's been visited by the Suck Fairy.
At least that was the explanation offered to me on the Internet awhile back. I forget which discussion brought this up. But actually, I'm experiencing sort of the opposite phenomenon now. What's the opposite of the Suck Fairy? A whimsical elf who visits things you didn't like that much on first encountering them, but then when you go back, you go, "Wow, I actually don't remember why I didn't care for this the first time, because it's actually awesome!" Any ideas? The Awesomeness Elf, perhaps?
Let's talk about The Mortal Instruments.
Book cover of City of Bones via Goodreads. Tangent: How gorgeous is that new boxed set? Wow. I'm glad I didn't buy the first editions, because now I can collect the prettier ones!
This best-selling YA urban fantasy series by Cassandra Clare has six books in the main line-up, plus a spin-off prequel series called The Infernal Devices, and most recently a spin-off short story collection called The Bane Chronicles. Since the adaptations so far are focused on the first book, City of Bones, that's mainly what we're talking about today. I have been wanting to love this series since the first book came out. Last week, I finally got it.
The story follows Clary Fray, an ordinary human girl (or so she thinks) with a passion for drawing. One day, she sees a murder take place at a New York dance club, a murder involving someone that apparently no one else can see. Turns out the "victim" is actually a demon, and its killers are elite warriors called "Shadowhunters" who protect the human race on the sly. It's a pretty standard urban fantasy type thing, with a dash of paranormal romance but not enough to be obnoxious.
When I first picked it up a few years ago, I remember being underwhelmed. I hated the characters, I was uninspired by the plotting and utterly grossed out by the plot twist at the end (which I won't spoil for you). However, I also thought that since the story had so much action and such an interesting (if somewhat derivative) magic system, it would work really well on-screen. So I reread it for this project, and I don't know, something happened. The words hadn't changed, but I was just in the right frame of mind for it somehow, and it became awesome. Ridiculous and convoluted, sure, but in a fun way.
I was really excited when I found out there was going to be a movie, since as I said, I thought from the beginning this story would work well on-screen.
It's not good. In fact it's pretty uniformly awful. There are some moments in it that work okay, but not many, and as a whole it's kind of a hot mess. The biggest problems are the dark, gritty direction taking the whole thing way too seriously; and the confusing miscasting of almost all the characters. The main love interest, Jace, is played by Jamie Campbell Bower, who I normally like a lot--especially when he sings. Jace in the book is a preening, emotionally crippled narcissist who arms himself in sarcasm, mostly because of some childhood trauma that made him afraid to get too close to anyone. Bower plays him very soft-edged and even tempered, which was confusing and extremely contrary to how he was in the books. I don't blame Bower, necessarily, but he is the wrong person for this job. Same with Aiden Turner, who is supposed to be Clary's father figure, and he's my age. I know I'm not actually a teenager anymore, but I'm nowhere near old enough to have an eighteen-year-old child, and neither is he. Don't even get me STARTED on Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, who plays the Big Bad, Valentine. I know I used to like the guy, but between this and NBC's Dracula, I am struggling to remember why.
Many parts of the movie feel rushed, which I guess is down to the filmmakers trying to cram yet another YA adaptation into the queue before the trend wore off (which as far as I can tell, it still hasn't). It creates these weird pockets of exposition and memorable moments from the book without any sort of connecting thread, so it's both over-explained and very difficult to follow at the same time. The pacing makes no sense, it feels crowded and sloppy, and I had a hard time paying attention to it. There was supposed to be a second movie after this one, but given the disappointing box office results, it got scrapped.
BUT THE SHOW. You guys. The show is addictive and amazing and OMG I love it so much!
Let's get one thing out of the way first: they changed a lot of things from the books. And I mean a LOT. The central "Institute" is no longer an abandoned cathedral / boarding school type thing, but a high-tech training and surveillance base. The Shadowhunters use the place as a base of operations in both versions, but I like this one more. It just makes sense considering we're in a universe that recognizes both technology and magic to have the main strike team take advantage of both. Additionally, a lot of character development stuff and minor side-plots are folded in from books further along in the series, which gives us more to focus on than just Clary and Jace (a much buffer and snarkier Dominic Sherwood, who is perfect in the role). Also, while Alan Van Sprang's Valentine still in no way resembles the character that Clare originally came up with (and I don't know why, since Valentine as written works fine as a villain), at least he feels dangerous and threatening. Also-also, several major characters have been reimagined as something other than Caucasian, or brought in sooner, so the cast is refreshingly diverse as compared to the movie.
Most importantly, it's funny. Say what you will about Cassie Clare (and boy, has a lot been said about Cassie Clare--do your own Googling, but don't say you weren't warned), but she has a sharp, wry sense of humor that was utterly lost in the movie. That humor is back with a vengeance in the show, and everything is so much better for it. It's not perfect. But it renewed my interest in the series again, and I can't wait to go through the rest of them and get caught up. There's a lot that I could gush about here, but we have several more recaps to go and LJ does have a word count limit. But seriously. Even if you didn't like the books, check out Shadowhunters. The series finale aired last night, so you can get caught up while we're waiting for the DVD set by streaming the whole thing on Freeform.go, here. You'll thank me.