**This blog is full of spoilers for the movie and the book Mortal Instruments: City of Bones. Proceed at your own risk.**
When the Mortal Instruments: City of Bones movie was announced, MI fans went into a frenzy. Casting speculations were everywhere, fans were writing their own fan fiction and teenagers and young adults alike were praying that the movie turned into a success. Unfortunately writing mistakes were too much to overcome and the fans were not impressed.
City of Bones movie starts out just as the book does: Clary Fray is a 16-year-old girl living in New York learns there is a world full of monsters, demons, and vampires with Shadowhunters protecting the mundane world from all of them. All without being seen. Clary meets Jace, a shadowhunter who she saw kill a demon at a club. When he comes looking for her the next morning she confronts him only to be interrupted by her mother calling her telling her to go to Luke’s (friend of the family) and to tell him Valentine is back. She races home to find the apartment torn apart and her mother missing. She is thrown into the world of shadowhunters in the blink of an eye, navigating her way through her own blocked memories and the pull of her blood to become a shadowhunter.
Sounds promising right? Even with Cassandra Clare (the author of the series) as part of the screenplay writing crew, the movie could not touch the book and even made the storyline worse.
There was no explanation to almost any big plot point in the movie; it just happened and the viewer was supposed to figure out why. For example, Valentine telling Jace that he was his father was half hearted and there was no explanation for it beyond he came back for him (which was obviously a lie).
Another example is when Clary draws the rune on her hand at the end that isn’t in the Gray Book. There is no explanation as to why or how she can do that. It looks like Luke knows but that is all we get a look, nothing more. Frustrating when if the plan was the make more movies, the writers didn’t talk about it more. The movie made such a big deal about this scene too. They didn’t explain about the mortal instruments either - what they are, what they mean, what they could do. They just talked about the mortal cup.
Clary and Jace’s love for each other is the largest plot point in the entire book and series. In the movie, there were only a few glances, a beautiful kiss, and some longing looks between Clary and Jace but you didn’t fully understand or grasp the feelings they have towards each other. This relationship is the foundation of the entire series and the movie swept it under the rug. Some of the best parts of the movie came between Clary and Luke especially after Luke saved her from a demon child (he was a former shadowhunter, now werewolf).
The worst part of the movie was when Hodge told Valentine to lie to Jace and Clary by telling them that they were brother and sister. Really? The true story line from the book was so much better and it boggles my mind why they didn’t use that one, especially if the intention was the make more movies. By using this version instead, they subsequently killed the sequels because they changed the whole forbidden love portion for Clary and Jace. The writers also squandered Jace’s entire history of who he is, how he came to be the person that he is and his relationship with Sebastian. The writers set the movie up for disaster by implementing aspects from other books in the series.
However, despite all of the inconsistencies between the book and the movie, it was still entertaining only because I had already read the book. I knew the feelings between Clary and Jace. I knew what really happened to Simon when he was taken by the vampires. I knew what happened between Magnus and Alec. Knowing all of that made the movie better because I was able to imagine the book the way it should have been with all the feelings and underlying messages that the movie wasn’t able to convey to the audience. The movie gave me actors and faces to put to names as I was reading all the other books. It helped to visualize everything that was going on into a movie in my own head.
The actors who played the main characters were exactly who I had pictured - especially Jace, played by Jamie Campbell Bower. He transformed himself not just in looks but in every aspect of who he was (speech, demeanor). He was mesmerizing on screen and I keep watching it over and over again just to see him play this character. It has made me want to watch more movies with him in it and see his career progress.
In the end, the movie was enjoyable but the writers and producers completely botched the story and made it impossible to keep going with sequels. If they had stayed true to the story, perhaps there would be more Mortal Instrument movies. At least for this Mortal Instrument fan I only have to wait until 2016 to see the TV show based off the books, Shadowhunters on ABC Family. Let’s hope they keep the main story points in tact otherwise we will have another problem on our hands.
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