Cassandra Clare

August 26, 2013

Review of The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones Movie

Mortal Instruments City of Bones Movie Poster

The Basics (spoiler free): I did not want the hours of my life back. However, there were scenes where I audibly groaned or yelled, “Oh, puh-lease!”  The movie did a good job of portraying the world of the Shadowhunters, and the action scenes were tense and interesting. The movie was fairly true to the book, but the changes that were made ranged from mildly irritating to one that was downright infuriating. Most of the cast was great.

Grade: B-

More in depth analysis that assumes you have read the books, so SPOILERS if you haven’t:

Just so you know where I’m coming from, I have read all of Cassandra Clare’s wonderful books in the Mortal Instrument series as well as the Infernal Devices prequels. I was excited about the movies, and would say I went into the movie with reasonable expectations. I know that movies will never be the books. Screenplays are usually about 120 pages, so they are never going to be as rich as the book itself. This outlook allowed me to enjoy the Harry Potter movies and the first Hunger Games.

On the whole, the casting decisions were great. I was particularly pleased with Jamie Campbell Bower’s Jace. I had some mild reservations about him playing Jace, and my friend who went with me had been lamenting JCB’s casting for months, and she also freely admitted that he was perfect as that character. I felt Lily Collins represented Clary well, and Robert Sheehan was a breakout as Simon.

The notable exception to the otherwise impressive cast was Godfrey Gao as Magnus Bane. Gao has a great look for Magnus, but the man cannot act. You know how sometimes SNL will have a host who’s an athlete or a musician instead of an actor, and it’s just painful to watch sketch after sketch? Yeah, it was like that. Thankfully, Gao was only in two scenes, but I winced my way through both of them. As Magnus is the only character in all of Clare’s books, I think a recast might be in order. Every single one of her books has been optioned, including the Shadowhunter books she hasn’t even written yet. That’s a lot of bad to have to sit through although one would hope Gao would get better by the twelfth movie.

Godfrey Gao as a terrible Magnus Bane

Other than Gao, the most offensive parts of the movie were, not surprisingly, the parts Hollywood added in for no reason that I can ascertain. There was an unforgivably bad storyline about how Bach was a Shadowhunter. If you play his music without passion, you can irritate demons enough to show themselves. Even my friend who had not read the books found this so ridiculous that he covered his face with his hands and groaned. The film even shot to a portrait of Bach in his puffy wig where you could see the dark runes peeking out of his collar. Ugh. I assured my friend that none of that nonsense was in the books.

Bach as Shadowhunter nonsense.

Another particularly horrible scene was the one in which Jace and Clary kiss. This is a moment that I’m sure all fans of the books have been waiting a long time to see play out on the big screen. If you are twelve, then maybe your expectations were fulfilled. They were in a garden. Fine. Then the dialogue got awful, the kind of sap that Jace would have mocked in the books. Then—I am not making this up—suddenly there were little twinkly somethings everywhere. I don’t even know what they were. Fireflies? I’m praying they were witchstones to at least stay with the plot somehow. Then the music (which was pretty awful throughout the movie) swelled with something way melodramatic, AND THEN it started raining AND THEN flowers burst into bloom everywhere. They kissed! Eeee! And I threw up a little bit.

Jace and Clary in the Garden of Twee

I feel I must point out, though, that part of why those two scenes stood out so much is because for most of the movie I was quite happily absorbed in the world of the Shadowhunters. All of the fighting scenes were good. The demons were appropriately creepy and gross. As out of character and stupid as the kissing scene was, the one that followed it where Jace makes a snarky comment about Simon being in Clary’s bed was spot on.

There were a number of other changes or cuts that even if I wasn’t thrilled about them, I did understand. Alec came off as a little stilted, and Magnus and his storyline was hardly touched. Neither was Simon and Izzy’s initial tension. In fact, poor Izzy didn’t get much in way of development. Alec and Izzy’s parents aren’t even characters, nor is Max. Simon’s run in with the vampires is much abbreviated, as is all of the Daylighter stuff and his struggles with his faith and mother. The Silent Brothers, City of Bones, and the Clave were touched on so briefly that my friend who hadn’t read the books didn’t really follow most of it. He also never made the connection that Luke was a former Shadowhunter.

All of those things I can forgive—maybe even Jonathan Rhys Meyers’s ridiculous dreadlocks. The movie was trying to fit a dense book with a very complicated world into two hours. You have to pick and choose what you focus on. I felt the screenwriter made the right choice by initially focusing on Clary and her relationship with her mother/Luke/Valentine and Jace/Simon. Everyone else can be fleshed out in subsequent movies.

What the movie did that was unforgivable was reveal a major plot twist that isn’t sorted out until a few books later. Not only did the screenwriter divulge the secret, she did it as a casual aside between Hodge and Valentine. That’s right sports fans, Hodge says almost as a throw away, “Lie to them and tell them they’re related.”  Oh no, I will climb over these theater seats into the screen and throttle someone for that. Not only did you just ruin a major tension between Jace and Clary for the casual moviegoer, but then the movie also immediately proceeded to confuse the issue even more. By implying that Jace was given false memories, my friend who hadn’t read the books did not understand that Valentine had actually raised Jace. That abusive relationship explains so much of Jace’s future actions.

Anger against screenwriter decisions

So the first Mortal Instruments movie was definitely a mixed bag. I think it did more right than it did wrong, but when the movie screwed up, boy did it screw up.

Thoughts? If you read the post this far, I’m assuming you also read the books. Are you planning to see the movie? Why or why not? If you already saw it, what did you think was done well? What could be improved for the next movie?

June 17, 2013

Epic Romance: A Character Study from Lost

The couples of the TV series Lost

Recently while my husband and I were grocery shopping and trying to locate some Goo Gone, he asked me a surprising question.

Husband:  “What’s Desmond’s wife’s name?”

Me, with absolutely no hesitation: “Penny.”

Husband gets a blank look on his face, followed by a frown. I have come to learn this means I have said something he wasn’t expecting, and he’s trying to figure out my mental leap. He smiles when he finally makes the connection to the character on Lost. He clarifies:  “I mean our neighbor Desmond.”

Me:  “Oh!  Hmm, I have no idea.”

There’s undoubtedly some social commentary here about knowing a fictional TV character better than the man that lives fifty feet from me, but that’s not where I’m going. I heard the name Desmond, and my brain immediately retrieved the name Penny with it. The two names are inseparable to me, even though the characters spent more time apart in the series than they did together.

Lost had no shortage of couples. It seemed each character in its sprawling cast had at least one significant other except for poor Boone. As everyone paired off two by two, fans picked their favorites. I certainly had couples I liked better than others, but there was only one couple on the show I would have given the label “epic,” and that was Desmond and Penny. I’d never really thought about why until an article appeared in Entertainment Weekly last month asking fans to vote for the best TV couples ever.

The only Lost couple that made the list was Sawyer and Juliet. I mentioned this to a few friends who had also watched the series, and the debating ensued. I’ve found if you get any five people in a room and ask them who their favorite Lost character was, you’ll get five different responses. However, while many of us did like the S & J pairing, it was Desmond and Penny that were universally loved.

As a writer, I have to come up with new characters continually. I want my characters to be so well loved that my readers see them as old friends. Additionally, what I write almost always has an element of romance to it. All of this Lost debate made me wonder what makes an audience root for a couple. What made D & P  or S & J so compelling? I decided to take a look at who I saw as the four main couples of Lost and try to analyze why they did or didn’t work. As with all things Lost, I’m sure some people will heartily disagree with me.  That’s fine; I’m not against some lively debate in the comments section.

Jin and Sun fight to the bitter end.

Jin & Sun:  These two certainly had an interesting storyline, and I absolutely wanted them to work through their martial issues and fall in love again. The redemption theme in their relationship was compelling, but in the end, these two were never going to be the “it” couple because they were just exhausting. As a side plot they were fine, but I’d never write a couple like them as my main characters just because I think my readers would give up in despair. An occasional fight can make the romance interesting, but I think this couple crossed the line into depressing one too many times.

Jack and Kate never worked as a couple.

Jack & Kate:  Blech, I don’t even know where to start with these two. Jack missed so many opportunities with Kate early on. She would kiss him, and he’d pretend like nothing happened. She’d tell him she liked him, and he would respond by ignoring her and running off into the jungle. He had the relationship skills of a middle schooler. I kept expecting him to put gum in her hair.

Kate was no better. If Jack did anything, anything, she didn’t like, she just threw herself at Sawyer, even long after Sawyer had any interest in her. She shuttled back and forth between the two of them so fast, there were some episodes I got a crick in my neck. By the end of the series I felt they deserved each other, but mostly because I wouldn’t have wished them on anyone else. In fact, I disliked them together so much, I stopped liking them as individual characters.  Considering Jack and Kate were the leads of Lost, that seems like a critical error authors should avoid.

Lost kills off Juliet.

Sawyer & Juliet:  I can see why these two made EW’s list. Once they extricated themselves from the Kate/Jack/Sawyer/Juliet quadrangle mess, they were a solid couple. I have to acknowledge the writing genius here.  S & J were only together for roughly a season, and we never actually got to watch them fall in love, yet I absolutely was convinced of their dedication. How did the writers pull it off? They changed Sawyer.

We had seen Sawyer love Cassidy poorly in flashbacks and love Kate slightly better for the past few seasons. Still, he himself admits he’d make Kate a terrible boyfriend. So when we suddenly see Sawyer in a steady respectable job happily cohabiting with Juliet, it begs the question, “What happened?” We instantly know that what they have has to be real because the impossible has occurred:  Sawyer has settled down. When Kate and company reappear three years later, he’s not happy. He’s angry that they’ve disrupted his happily ever after.

desmond penny and charlie

Desmond & Penny:  So why are these two the only couple I’d label epic? S & J were in the running, but ultimately their romance was just too short. If you’re going to make me wade through several seasons of love triangle then quadrangle, then you need to make up for that later. Lost’s way of making up for it was killing off Juliet. Not okay. What made D & P triumph over the others was their constancy–a theme the writers captured brilliantly in “The Constant,” arguably Lost’s best episode. For Desmond there was only Penny, and it was the same for her. Each searched for the other overcoming both an island impossible to find and even time itself. Nothing deterred them, and unlike other characters (uh-hem, Kate) there was no “loving the one you’re with.”

There is much advice written about plotting that involves giving your hero a desire and then putting obstacles in the way of him getting it. The ending is just a matter of the hero finally getting his heart’s desire. Lost followed this formula with D & P really well but also in unexpected ways (the time travel element was fascinating). A lot of books I read and shows I watch make the obstacle a love triangle. I am not a fan of this plot device because I don’t often see it done well. Either it descends into a mess like it did on Lost, or it’s just never believable because the winner is clear from the beginning. I can count on one hand the number of love triangles I’ve liked, Cassandra Clare’s Will/Tessa/Jem triangle in The Infernal Devices being the best I’ve read so far. I applaud the D & P storyline for being moving and fulfilling without the need for a third person distraction, and for that, I deem it epic.

Now, in the spirit of all things Lost, let the disagreeing commence!  The comment button is in the left margin.

Up Next:  Ten Tips–a new blog series that will give highlights from helpful books for writers.