The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones

I didn't read the book. I don't want to read the book. This movie has given me no desire to read the book. This movie is crap.

Let's start with the problem Harry Potter had later on - the title. "The Goblet of Fire," "The Order of the Phoenix," "The Half Blood Prince," "The Deathly Hallows." These titles are cool sounding, but in the end, the Goblet is only in the book for the very beginning, the Order is only a small plot point, you see my point. So why is this called City of Bones? It's simple. There's one scene in a place that is mentioned to be the City of Bones before the rest of the movie takes place elsewhere...

Problem number 2 - absolutely no originality. Why was this written? The story rips off of everything. Twilight, Harry Potter, Star Wars, Tithe, even bits of Eragon turned up in its story. It was so pointlessly, shamelessly written. Cinematically, it ripped off the same. Shots taken directly from Harry Potter really bothered me. If it wasn't ripping off shots, it wasn't doing anything at all. There was nothing interesting going on at any point. The special effects were so bland that there wasn't even joy from watching those. One part of the movie looked like it was shot, and then sped up. The frame rate looked like it jumped forward exponentially, and it looked really weird. Was the movement of characters too slow? You should have known that in time to reshoot!

Everyone in this movie had such a forced appearance. Nothing was natural. Lily Collins starts out looking generic before having her complete stylistic change. Get it? She's changed. The "Shadow Hunters" or whatever they're blandly called in this movie are emo looking brooding assholes. Because demons. The mother of course looks flawless. Because she's mom...? Werewolves are apparently all bikers...? For some reason vampires don't mask their appearance at all... And then there's a gay warlock. Why? Who knows! I'm all for homosexuality becoming a normalcy in film, but this felt more forced than the ending of ParaNorman. Which I loved. But it wasn't half heartedly trying to be both serious and a punchline. It didn't work.

The movie is so obvious, even to an uninitiate like myself. Of course we know where the cup is. Even if I didn't put two and two together about the nature of the spell, I knew very early on where it was. Of course the big "twist" was there. There was one line that completely gave it away. And then....well lets just say the movie becomes needlessly awkward. No drama. Just awkward. No care. Just shut up and move on you dumb teenagers. And of course, we're gonna see "team who-the-hell-cares" and "team obvious outcome" popup. But unlike Edward and Jacob, I think there's very little reason to care. Because this movie isn't doing well. No one knows or cares about this movie. No one is going to be picking fights that Twilight inspired. And because everyone in this movie is just awful. Just, terrible. Not arguably good, or even that attractive. Just AWFUL.

So, as someone who did not read the books, after seeing this awfully derivative story, painfully boring cinematography, piss poor acting, bland special effects, and stupid romance, I can say that I have no reason to remotely care about the book. I hope this doesn't break even. I don't want to see a sequel.

Rank - 0.5/5