The Mortal
Instruments: City of Bones is running on one of my movie channels, so I
thought I’d take a peek. I heard lots of ‘meh’ things about it, so I was
curious. But not too curious.
Wow, this movie really has a lot that seems familiar
somehow. It’s got a teenage girl who is a slayer of evil (but she doesn’t know
it at first), guided by an elder advisor guy just like in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It’s got a big headquarters building
nobody can see like in The Shadow.
It’s got a special world of fantasy characters who live right in the midst of
an unsuspecting society of humans, and even a word for normal, non-magical
people starting with the letter “m” like in Harry
Potter (“mundanes” for this movie, “muggles” for Harry Potter). It’s got lots of fantasy-style bladed weapons and
cryptic, archaic languages like in The
Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. It’s got cheek-sucking catalog-model-looking actors with
British accents and pretentious behavior like in so many silly horrorish movies
lately (Twilight, etc.), and it’s got
lots of painfully mysterious characters dressed up as Goths and with symbolic
tattoos like in so many other silly horror movies lately. It’s got some stupid CGI
monster thingy (this time disguised as a Rottweiler, like from The Omen) that gets all icky and gooey
and transforms at will with appendages sticking out all over like in The Thing, and it walks on walls for
silly effect like in Underworld (and every
other silly CGI monster movie since). Also like Underworld, it has werewolves and vampires, fighting each other, and
a lead character whose parents kept the truth from them. And like Twilight, the werewolves are big and
fluffy like dogs. And it’s got Lena Headey in a brutal fight for her life, like in
lots of big genre movies over the past decade. Oh, and it’s got a round,
liquidy portal for transporting places, like in Stargate. And it’s also got an evil father character and his two
powerful children who didn’t know him growing up, and fight against him, like in Star Wars.
It’s almost like they made a list of movies they wanted
to rip off and just checked off the boxes as they went along down the list
copying stuff. But hey: at least there’s a pentagram made of swords, like from
the logo of the band Slayer. (Oh, and some of the werewolves are bikers, I
guess in a nod to the schlock horror classic: Werewolves on Wheels.)
There’s also a lot of other stuff I didn’t mention, and lots
of things I probably missed. You likely have to see this movie more than once
to see all the little things they copied from other movies, because it’s just
too much for one viewing.
So anyway, it’s basically a generic potpourri of horror and
fantasy tropes, but making very sure to have nothing whatsoever original in it
that someone might be surprised by. You never know what people aren’t going to
like, so it’s always best to just rip off other stuff that’s already
successful, don’t you think? It’s so much easier that way. Except that when you
do that too too much, you risk turning off your audience and making them think
you’re just cynical, and that’s the problem here.
I haven’t read the books this movie’s story comes from, so I
don’t know if they’re good or not. Someone must like them for this movie to have
been made, but somehow the movie just doesn’t seem to have enough original
anything to stand on its own. It really feels almost like a parody movie trying
to shoehorn all the horror and fantasy movie stereotypes into one movie for
comedic effect, except that the movie is so deadly serious that there isn’t
much fun to be had aside from recognizing what movies every little bit of plot
and all the characters and props originally came from. It’s a shame too,
because the production looks pretty snazzy, and all the actors give it their
all not to laugh or appear too bored throughout the proceedings (no mean feat
that is, I’ll bet).
I wonder if there will be a sequel, or if this will end up
being a Goth Golden Compass?
But Lily Collins is pretty, and she’s got thick eyebrows, so
hopefully she’ll influence girls to stop ripping out their eyebrows so much.
But probably not. If Audrey Hepburn couldn’t stop the trend, I’d guess nobody
can.
