Rabid Reader Ramblings: Lets Talk About City of Bones: Book versus Movie Comparison

Okay, so if you have not read the book or seen the movie and you plan to, you really want to stop reading this now and go find something else to do.  Are you still here?  Really?  Okay, well consider yourself warned because this is going to contain many, many spoilers.  I just cannot help it.  It is what it is and there is no way to avoid spoilery in a post of this nature.

 

So, here is the thing.  I really liked the book.  And I did really enjoy the movie.  I think each had it’s merits.  I also understand that there is no way to cram a full length novel into a 2 hour or so block without some things getting cut, but really?  The first 150 pages-ish of the book made up the first 20 mins of the movie.  The big points of conflict between Clary and her mother in the book?  Totally left out of the movie.  The big fight about going to the farmhouse for the summer?  Completely cut out.  And to me, that was absolutely a critical portion of the story line.

And when the movie started, the poetry reading showed up before the club thing.  That totally screwed with me.  And when they were in the club, here I am sitting in my seat in the theater, looking for the “blue haired boy.”  He was not there and that whole seen, totally glanced over, condensed down, and downplayed big time.  I was not happy.

Some of the differences to some people, well they may have seemed subtle.  And if you hadn’t read the book yet, you wouldn’t notice any of the little things that just royally irritated me.

But I have talked with quite a few people who have felt the same way that I do.  I know people who have said that if you had not read the book, you would feel lost in the movie because there was just a lot of information missing.  And the whole thing with Valentine and Jace toward the end, well, that was just, well,not how I imagined it at all.’

I know, I know, I am ranting.  But you guys should know by now how I feel about my books, and when Hollywood comes along and messes with them, it gets my hackles up.

Now, there were a few things that I thought were done well.  Simon?  That is pretty much exactly how I pictured him.  And I loved the greenhouse birthday scene.  That was awesomely magical.  The little fit that Jace throws when he takes Clary back to her room and Simon is there?  That was done really well.

Jace is the type of character that is a total douchebag but he grows on you and you learn to love him.

I loved how they did Isabelle’s whip, as the snake bracelet thing?  That was awesome.  But seriously, am I the only person who was disappointed that the boy in the club did not have blue hair?

So let me have it.  I gave the book a 5 star review and I think the movie lands at a solid 3 and a half, in my book.  How far off base am I?  What did everyone else think?

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Rabid Reader Ramblings: Lets Talk About City of Bones: Book versus Movie Comparison is a post from: Just Another Rabid Reader