{"id":25698,"date":"2013-08-26T14:09:24","date_gmt":"2013-08-26T18:09:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/?p=25698"},"modified":"2013-08-26T14:09:24","modified_gmt":"2013-08-26T18:09:24","slug":"the-mortal-instruments-city-of-bones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/2013\/08\/the-mortal-instruments-city-of-bones\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cThe Mortal Instruments: City of Bones\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Bob Garver<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cThe Mortal Instruments: City of Bones\u201d gets off on the wrong foot with its terrible title. It\u2019s bad enough when sequels have that annoying colon, but \u201cThe Mortal Instruments\u201d is not yet a series, so there\u2019s no need for this film to differentiate itself from other films. It would be like presumptively putting a \u201c1\u201d at the end of the title; it might make sense down the line if the film spawns sequels, but we don\u2019t know that yet. What if this film bombs and they don\u2019t make any sequels? Then you\u2019re just left with an awkward title with a superfluous subhead. After \u201cCity of Bones,\u201d I\u2019m certainly not wishing to see any more of \u201cThe Mortal Instruments.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0 Clary Fray (Lily Collins) is an average teenager who lives with her mildly overprotective mother (Lena Headey). One day Clary unwittingly draws a mysterious symbol and strange things start happening. She sees more of the symbol, she gets into a club that shouldn\u2019t admit her, and she thinks she sees a murder. Soon her mother goes missing and she has to fight off a demonic dog. She\u2019s desperate for answers, so she asks the nice young man who committed the murder. His name is Jace (Jamie Campbell Bower) and he tells her that she, like him, is a Shadowhunter: a mostly immortal race bred to fight demons.<\/p>\n

Other Shadowhunters include Alec (Kevin Zegers), who doesn\u2019t like Clary, Isabelle (Jemima West), who is fairly supportive, and Hodge (Jared Harris), the wizened mentor who for centuries has been protecting a secret that he reveals in his second scene. We get hit with a lot of details about the history and practices of Shadowhunters, but so little of it matters. What really matters is whether Clary will hook up with dangerous stranger Jace or if she\u2019ll stay with her safe friend Simon (Robert Sheehan) who wants to be more than friends. She makes an impulsive choice that results in an overblown make-out scene followed by a ridiculous turn of demeanor that makes no sense and only serves to create conflict. After some chasing, fighting, and other Shadowhunter shenanigans, one of the suitors is disqualified so the decision is pretty much made for her.<\/p>\n

I understand that \u201cThe Mortal Instruments\u201d is a series of books, which probably explains (but does not excuse) the film\u2019s convoluted title. Because the main character is a teenage girl in a love triangle, the film is sure to be labeled a \u201cTwilight\u201d knockoff. But to do so is to ignore the fact that the film is also a \u201cHarry Potter\u201d knockoff. I\u2019m not just talking about the way the main character suddenly finds out she has magic in her blood or that the magical characters have a word for non-magical people (they say \u201cMundanes\u201d but we all know they mean Muggles). I mean that the movie touches on a lot of characters and details that fans of the books probably demanded, but don\u2019t translate well to film. For example, for the climactic battle, the characters get help from werewolves. Maybe in the book the werewolves are richly detailed or they prove crucial to the story, but when I see them onscreen, all I\u2019m thinking is, \u201cOkay, now we have werewolves. I thought this movie didn\u2019t want us thinking of it as a \u201cTwilight\u201d knockoff.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard to watch \u201cThe Mortal Instruments: City of Bones\u201d and not think about how it\u2019s trying to start a franchise. We\u2019re meeting characters that we\u2019re supposed to befriend and follow for who knows how many more films. These characters are so charmless that even \u201cTwilight\u2019s\u201d biggest detractors will be wishing for Bella, Edward and Jacob. As the film opened in third place this weekend below two holdovers (\u201cLee Daniels\u2019 The Butler\u201d and \u201cWe\u2019re the Millers\u201d), I don\u2019t see \u201cThe Mortal Instruments\u201d going beyond \u201cCity of Bones.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

One and a Half Stars out of Five.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cThe Mortal Instruments: City of Bones\u201d is rated PG-13 for intense sequences of fantasy and action, and some suggestive content. Its running time is 130 minutes.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Contact Bob Garver at rrg251@nyu.edu<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Bob Garver   \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cThe Mortal Instruments: City of Bones\u201d gets off on the wrong foot with its terrible title. It\u2019s bad enough when sequels have that annoying colon,… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[108],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25698"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25698"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25698\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}