They say imitation is the sincerest form of
flattery. Since the success of the Harry Potter series, publishers and studios
alike have been searching for the next billion dollar franchise. Lighting did
strike again with Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series, but for every success like
that there is a lot more failures like “The Golden Compass” and “Beautiful
Creatures”. How do you know if you got a hit or miss? Well there are only two outcomes, a bomb and
you move on, or you can print your own money all the way to Gringott’s (Harry
Potter joke). The question arises, what will “The Mortal Instruments” be?
The
story is your usual young adult novel world. It evolves around a girl, a couple
boys fighting for her love, and of course supernatural beings. Clary (Lily
Collins) is pretty much your typical teenage girl. Her mother Jocelyn (Lena
Headley) is always trying to protect her like a good mother, but she is also
hiding something from her as well. Clary can see things that regular people
cannot, and not in the “I am crazy” way. Clary finds out that she is a shadowhunter,
or someone who fights demons. She can’t remember everything, because someone
cast a spell on her to help block her memories. Clary meets Jace (Jamie
Campbell Bower) who is also a shadowhunter as well, and who help explain to her
as well as the audience the world she is entering. Together, they must stop the
mortal cup from falling into the wrong hands.
Yep, there’s a mortal cup.
It has to
be a hard thing to follow success. Not because it can’t be duplicated, but
because too often it looks like you are just copying what came before you. Ever
since Harry Potter, everyone wanted to ne second in the success on the page and
the big screen. When “Twilight” hit, you had the all too familiar forbidden
love story, typical conflict if you know vampires and werewolves. With “The
Mortal Instruments” you are dealing with a lot of the same formula, even down
to the afore mentioned vampires and werewolves. I mean at least the main
characters are not the next Bella and Edward, but at times during the film I
was trying to figure out if I was on team Jacob or Edward, before I realized
“wrong movie”. In no way is “The Mortal Instruments” a rip off of “Twilight”,
it is just not much different, they take place in what seems like the same
world. I know I am the wrong audience for this film, I mean I am not an 8 to 16
year old girl. Everyone in this movie looks like they stepped out on the latest
issue of YM, and I don’t mean that in a good way. Fans of the book series may enjoy
this movie, as well as people who like to look at “pretty” people emote. For
the rest of us out there, this just isn't our cup of tea. This, in my mind,
will go down as another miss in the elusive search for that next franchise that
takes the movie world by storm, in other words, this franchise will probably
shuffle loose this ‘mortal’ coil long before they can reach the end of their
series on film.
Brian Taylor
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