sasha-tifton Reviews

The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones (2013)

Worse than Twilight, and I loathed Twilight.

[1/10 · 13 October 2013]

--- SPOILERS AHEAD ---

I watched this fim with a friend who has never read the book. I, on the other hand, read it years ago, but wasn't interested enough to continue with the series. However, I was willing to judge it as a film on its own merits, not as a book adaptation. By the end of the movie, we were left disappointed. It was rushed, choppy, unevenly paced, and made no effort to define the world it was set in. All the characters could have died and we would have felt nothing because the film did little to make us care them.

FLAWS IN THE FILM:

• The script was so atrocious that we began predicting what characters would say next during the cheesiest scenes. 95% of the time, we were right - word for word. When Jace said to Clary, "I told you I'd never met an angel…", I said, "Please, for the love of god, don't say: 'now I have'". He did. We died a little.

• There was zero character development. Clary had no personality. When we tried to describe her, we could not come up with a single adjective as we knew nothing about this girl. (Actually, that's a lie. When she pulled the mortal cup out of the card in front of the witch who was obviously a demon, and then again in front of Hodge, my friend yelled, "How are you so STUPID?".) Clary was presented as the protagonist even though we were given no reason to root for her or care about her. We. Knew. Zilch. About. Her. (Beyond being prone to dumb and reckless behavior). It didn't help that Lily Collins, while pretty, has no on-screen charisma. She was just a bland attractive girl. The other characters suffered equally. We could tell that Simon was nerdy, Isabelle liked slutty clothes and fighting, Valentine was evil, Hodge was sketchy, Luke was some kind of family friend (why, who knows?) and Jace was the standard romantic lead with a penchant for sappy lines and rescuing Clary. Beyond that, nothing.

• Words like 'the Clave', 'the accord', and others were thrown in without explanation.

• We were expected to believe that the mortal cup was some kind of holy grail even though the movie hardly explained how it functioned beyond a couple of statements about its necessity for making more shadow hunters. After all the build up with no clarification, my friend began to expect that the cup's powers would be demonstrated at the climax, making things clearer. Of course, this did not happen, and she was left unsatisfied. We cared about the mortal cup as much as we cared about the characters - which is to say, not at all.

• The Silent Brothers were never explained. They were just creepy dudes living under a graveyard.

• The weapons were ill-defined. They just did whatever the characters needed them to do at any given time - be it tattooing runes, slaying demons, or drilling magical peepholes through bookcases. They might as well have been Harry Potter wands.

• Clary inexplicably accuses Alec of being in love with Jace even though we saw no indication that he was even gay.

• The Clary and Jace romance felt forced. There was no build up. We were never shown why he would be attracted to her, or why she returned those feelings. When they finally kissed in the garden, it was uncomfortably awkward.

• In a seemingly random act, Valentine wanted Clary to drink his blood from the cup and no one knew why. Said my friend at this point: "Is he Jesus?"

• Loose ends. Simon is bitten by a vampire. At no point in the film does anybody bother to tell him this. Even when he storms out of the institute, Clary doesn't think to say, "By the way, a vampire bit you." We waited for the effects of the bite to manifest - to find out if he was a vampire or not. But in the end, we were forced to conclude that in the world of The Mortal Instruments, being bitten by vampires only improves your eyesight.

• The werewolves only existed to serve as expendable extras in fight scenes.

• Speaking of fight scenes, many went on for far too long. Time could have been better spent on character development so that we actually cared if anyone died in a fight.

• In the ultimate deus ex machina, Clary draws a rune that freezes all the demons. No one else has ever seen this rune. No one figures out how Clary knows how to draw it. It was like the screenwriters realized that their heroine had been useless and needed her to do something powerful to prove why she's the protagonist, since her talents thus far largely involved leading others into mortal peril.

• Why were they using fire to battle demons that looked as if they were made essentially out of fire? Do we spray water to stop a flood?

• The portal in the wall was supposed to take someone to the place they focused on or keep them in limbo. How did Valentine reach out of the portal to grab Clary after he gets shoved in?

• Clary draws a cleaning rune at the end of the movie and magically tidies her apartment. At that point, it just became ridiculous. Are there runes to trim cat toenails and enable WIFI as well?

I thought the whole Twilight franchise was awful but despite the dreadfulness of those movies, the plot was never unclear to even those with IQ deficiencies. I can't say the same about The Mortal Instruments.

X-Men: Evolution (2000–2003)

Condescending re-imagining of X-Men riddled with clichés and stereotypes.

[1/10 · 24 July 2013]

This series is awful and I can't believe how many good reviews it has gotten. Many on IMDb seem to assume that haters of X-Men Evo dislike it because it changed precious characters from their established canon personalities. Now, I have no problem with the re-imagining of characters for a fresh perspective. What bothers me to no end is HOW they were transformed and written.

These were complex, interesting, fleshed out characters in the comics and other mediums, and they have been reduced to the worst stereotypes possible in this animated series. This series was meant to appeal to a younger generation and introduce them to X-Men and the creators seem to think that the only way to do that is by dishing out shallow clichés. Do they honestly think that that is the only way they can relate to younger folk? Do they believe that the younger set cannot understand, empathize or develop interest in characters that aren't formulaic embodiments of every bad cliché associated with social groups like 'goth', 'prep', 'jock', 'the weird foreign students', 'valley girl', etc.? The choices made in developing this show and its characters are nothing short of patronizing to a younger generation who are clearly given less credit than they deserve. They have to endure these unimaginative, one dimensional characters that are an embarrassment to the X-Men franchise. One can only hope they will discover the true depth and richness of the X-Men universe through other mediums.

Not all the characters suffered this sorry fate (e.g. Professor X, who was fine for the most part). There were a few teenage characters who were also fun, though none of them were main characters. However, this characterization of Kitty Pryde was exceptionally annoying. Aside from the fact that the writers seem to have crafted her straight out of a 'How to be a Valley Girl' manual for dummies, her introductory episode was so grating that I nearly stopped watching the series immediately. Stupidly, I did not, and had to endure Rogue's introductory episode as well. The fact that she was a mall goth (a poor choice in itself) was not as bad as the fact that she wasn't even a proper goth (as anyone who has ever been around goth culture - even as a spectator - can attest). She was simply a cardboard cutout based on what most mainstream adults think teenage goths must be. I was never a goth myself but knew a few when I was growing up, and all of them would be embarrassed to have their sub-culture misrepresented in such a superficial and foolish way. It's like the creators decided they needed a token angsty, emo teenager, and so, by default, had to make her a goth, as that was the only bad teenage cliché that fit the bill. Now, if the creators were set on making a show to appeal to teens based on predefined stereotypes, why do they show two varsity jacket clad football jocks straight out of central casting chatting about how attractive Rogue is, and trying to hit on her in her introductory episode? In reality, such boys in high school would not be caught dead with anyone who looked like a freaky mall goth. They would be making fun of her, not discussing how hot she is. The show is insistent on perpetuating paper-thin stereotypes, and yet it fails to follow through logically on their behavior. And if anyone needs a strange foreign student who tries too hard to fit in, resulting in bizarre and often ridiculous behavior (because clearly, we don't have enough of that stereotype in films and television shows today), one need look no further than Nightcrawler.

Jean Grey wasn't too badly depicted but the creators also didn't stray very far from her established Little Miss Perfect, type A persona, so I can't really comment on the way they chose to re-imagine her.

The teenage X-Men weren't the only ones butchered. Characters like Mystique were reduced to one dimensional villains with no discernible deeper motive for half the evil deeds she does. We are just meant to accept that she is a bad guy, and therefore does bad things. No further explanation needed.

These characters are true 'cartoons' rather than well-developed animated versions (reworked or otherwise) of their comic book counterparts. Definitely the worst of any version of X-Men I have ever seen (and this includes The Last Stand movie, which is saying a lot). I kept waiting for the series to get better but I was obviously following a pipe dream.