First, a little conversation
After spending a little time at my blog, you may have noticed I'm a little obsessed with Cassandra Clare. Like with any healthy relationship, sometimes I'm frustrated with her, sometimes I even yell at her from my polka doted chair (luckily she doesn't live anywhere close and can't possibly hear me). None the less, Ms. Clare writes exactly what I want to read (most of the time).
When it was first announced that some wonderful Hollywood type was turning one of my favorite reads into a film, I went through the following stages: Elation! My book is going to be a movie! It will be wonderful!! Sharing! I need to tell the whole world right now. Interest! I must find out everything about this movie. Standoffishness! Oh no, what if they cast someone terrible in this cinematic masterpiece? Fear! It will be terrible, they cannot make a good adaptation of a book. Why did Cassandra agree to let them make a movie? Why are they casting all of those terrible people .... this usually ends with me, deciding not to see the film because it will, obviously, be terrible. I cannot support terrible movies, after all.
Okay, so I saw it ... and I'm smiling as I say this ... it was grand entertainment. However, it wasn't perfect as they followed very little of the original storyline ... but let me elaborate.
Loved/Hated
What I loved: I loved hearing the words I'm familiar with spoken from real live characters. I loved seeing Simon cast as a nearly normal looking nerd. I love Magnus (just overall, but the actor and the costumes were spot on). Jace and Clary, they might not have been my first choices to play those parts, but together they have chemistry ... heartbreakingly so.
What I didn't love: Kevin Zegers as Alec, looks too old, too big, his has terrible hair - plus I can't think of him as anything but a spoiled drug dealer in Gossip Girl. So many of my favorite parts were gone. The flowers on the roof looked so fake. Where are Clary's mom's paint splattered overalls? As will all books to movies, where is the character development?
A Break Down - Spoilers!
Okay, so from here are spoilers - don't continue if you haven't both read the book and seen the movie. Unless you want it to be spoiled, then totally continue.
1. Where is all the glamour? I love the carriage ride through the city as Clary learns about how the glamour works. Where was it? It would have been such a cool scene.
2. The Pandaemonium club was all a blur and the book reads with more clarity - if I hadn't read the book this would have been a tumble of confusion.
3. Protective Simon? Nope, the movie Simon just seemed to blend into the shadows. How does he expect to win Isabelle's heart doing that?
4. Jemima West is beautiful, but I expected Isabelle to look more made up, even in gear.
5. The movie doesn't let us see/feel/hear Jace's pain, his feeling of being an outcast, his over confidence, his love of Isabelle and Alec (they argue in this movie, just like the book, but the other side isn't shown).
6. Simon is supposed to turn into a RAT! It is the blue juice, he drinks it and nothing ... what a let down.
7. Jace is intelligent, and we don't see that at all. When they go to the church and Jace starts telling Clary all about how services work, where people sit, etc. Where was that? I would have sat through a four hour movie here Hollywood!
8. Hodge is bad. Seriously, a bad guy. A total traitor. Yet, the audience knows he is evil and Jace, Clary, etc. don't seem to take notice of everything.
9. What is with the full ending rewrite? How are they even going to incorporate the first half of the second book?
... I'm sure there are more. I've started re-reading the book. I want to remember everything I missed seeing come to life. The movie falls flat. Although there were parts I enjoyed, straying so far from the storyline into never-neverland, ruining a couple of the characters with poor casting, and just general lack detail. People have read and loved this book, they know all the parts, why can't Hollywood figure it out? They totally should hire fangirls to approve the scripts for these things :)
I really disliked that they made Jace not recognize Valentine... his internal struggles with loving and hating his father, and trying to find out who he is, is one of the best parts of the book.
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