How Long Until You Don't Want To Run Anymore?

For John Smith aka Number Four running has been his life since he and 8 other children from the planet LorienMogadorians. They destroyed Lorien and killed everyone on the planet – except for the 9 Garde (Loric people gifted with special powers) and their guardians who escaped in 2 ships that brought them here to Earth. For the past 15 years they have been running around the world trying to stay out of the spotlight so the Mogadorians don’t find them and destroy them. But they did. And they have killed 3 – Number One, Number Two and Number Three. Number Four, John is next and he knows it. And that is why he doesn’t want to stop running.

The movie starts off the exact same way the book does – with the death of Number Three in the jungles of South America. As he dies, we see John Smith – Number Four – have a strange brand/tattoo being carved on the side of his ankle. This is how the other 9 Garde know that one of them has died. Some of his friends saw this happening and John, along with his guardian Henri, leave their beautiful beach life and head to Paradise, Ohio to start a new one. What John doesn’t know is that Henri didn’t choose Paradise at random – there was a man who lived there once that knew about the Loriens and what they could do and Henri wants to find him. At the same time, John starts school and makes friends with the school outcast, Sam, who believes in aliens. He also has a strange attraction to Sarah Hart which angers her ex-boyfriend Mark James. His feelings for Sarah are unlike anything he has ever felt before. Soon after arriving in Paradise, John starts to emanate light from his hands. These are his legacies as Henri calls them and they are just the beginning.

I probably know what you are thinking – who made up this story and why would they what to make a movie out of it? Well, in today’s entertainment world, science fiction and fantasy are big sellers. And the book was a bestseller so when you put 2 different types of best sellers together you are supposed to get another best seller. Unfortunately that didn’t work out too well for this movie. Almost every critic in the world panned this movie and said it missed the mark by a light year. So of course, I really loved this movie. It was action packed, it was suspenseful, and it was fun. That to me is a good movie. I love supernatural and science fiction movies, books, television shows you name it. This movie had a good balance of drama and action that neither was too much or over the top. It stayed on track with the story from the book in a general sense and the movie kept my interest.

Spoilers ahead. Proceed at your own risk.

With that being said, there were some major differences and deletions that were shocking and not acceptable well as a viewer. The first one came when Henri died. In the book, he died during the final battle helping John and Number Six defeat the Mogadorians. In the movie, he died after John followed Henri to the house that was a trap. The death in the book is preferable because with Henri at the final battle, John comes more into his powers than ever before and it is Henri that helps him see that. That is a huge character building moment for John and the movie lacked that element at the end. The second came when they took out the house fire completely. There was a party where all of the school was at and John was trying to find Sarah. John had to use his powers to rescue Sarah from the burning house when Mark purposely starts the fire. This scene is incredibly significant because it describes the attraction and emotional feelings that John has for Sarah and builds up the conversation that Henri has with John about those feelings – that they aren’t just regular feelings, they are more because when a Lorien has those feelings, they have found the one.

The final change and this is the biggest, is they took out the chest almost in its entirety. In the book, the chest was how John learns about his planet, his parents, what happened that fateful day and why he has these powers that Henri doesn’t. The chest is a very key symbol to the story and the movie played it off as if it was just another artifact and nothing else. They showed Henri moving it under the grandfather clock and then it glowing. At the end of the movie, Mark steals it from the jail (his father is the sheriff) and gives it back to John. Those are the only times the viewer sees the chest and it is not explained at all, just mentioned in passing and shown. Maybe those are the reasons why the movie didn’t do so well – there were so many holes and plot lines left unanswered that the viewer couldn’t grasp the big picture.

Even with those items missing, I enjoyed this movie. It by no means will win any big awards (at least the good ones, maybe a Razzie) but as long as you are happy after watching a movie, that is good. Movies are meant to be enjoyable and fun. That is what I Am Number Four was.

My grade: A-