The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones

I liked the book, but was quite disappointed with this adaptation.

First of all they just changed so much about it. Secondly, they added in lots of cheesy lines. And the whole film ended up with this twilight-esque vibe about it. I just found myself rolling my eyes or snorting a number of times throughout the film. Magnus Bane who is so cool in the book, ends being really watered down and uninteresting. I don't know if it was the direction, the actor or a combination of both, but he came off really flat. Also Lily Collins is not really much of an actress. She's not terrible, but she needs help. I also felt like they glossed over details. I wanted them to take a bit more time explaining things better.

I still like the overall story and plot. And Robert Sheehan is fantastic. I definitely want to see more of his work. I also enjoyed the action scenes and the special effects.

So even though there were flaws, I still managed to enjoy myself. It was decent, but far from amazing.

I enjoyed this film although I'm in no ways its target audience. It's a teen film, primarily for chicks, but I'm having a cold and my wife isn't home, so perhaps I'm a little more sentimental than usual.

It starts off like any other coming of age yarn. Clary, our protagonist, is littering the house with drawings of her womb, a clear sign that she's on the verge of Growing Up. Luckily, she runs into the right people first, and they teach her what she needs to know about tattoos and black outfits with buckled boots, and all that other stuff that makes you cool and adult. A romance story is fired up right away as well, between Clary and this guy Jonathan with the cool sticky hair and silky British voice, and the two seem a little naive in that they don't pick up on each other's signals, but I guess that takes some life experience.

The story is very simple, utilizing all the expected elements of the genre, but does manage to keep them fairly fresh, and the plot has sufficient twists to stay interesting, although most of them have only minor impact on later turns of events. At some points it meanders a little and several scenes could have been cut out without affecting the plot at all. It would have suited the film to be a little bit shorter.

The characters are all exceptionally pretty people, and most of them have no character flaws either, yet it didn't become annoying like it very easily does in such cases. Clary is sympathetic enough for one to care about her, and it helps keeping you involved in the story despite the often predictable setup.

All in all, it had good entertainment value, and I think I only zoned out briefly a couple of times. Worth a watch, just don't expect anything from the Deep End of the pool.

This movie was not bad. I never read the books so I can't compare, but I saw the TV series "Shadowhunters" first. I feel the TV series did more for the story than the movie. Especially when they were able to fit the whole book into seasons. The movie was rushed and so much left unclear.

Yes the they hit the bullet points, but I still felt lost. I think they left out major characters, they left out major storylines, they didn't work with the characters properly, and they changed the importance of many charters.

Another thing I'm not sure of, but noticed. It seemed they mixed various parts of the other books and put them in this movie. Not sure if they ever planned on doing the entire series of the books.

I do recommend watching the series "Shadowhunters", its well worth it.

In the tradition of Harry Potter, Percy Jackson etc. the Canadians have started a series of films based on Mortal Instruments. This first in the series, City Of Bones has a strong resemblance to the quest for the Holy Grail in modern times.

Young Lily Collins when her mother disappears she discovers that she's a belongs to a group of demon hunters and these demons seem to be everywhere. Among the great unwashed of Mundanes which is what these kids call the vast rest of us here on earth.

These demon hunters led by the leather clad Jamie Campbell Bower search in and among us Mundanes for demons. Lily makes their acquaintance when after going to a Goth type club she sees a murder no one else sees. It's Bower and he's done in a demon. After that mom disappears and Lily joins Bower and his crew searching for the Cup of Immortality which mom very skillfully hid.

I see already another film is in the works for this series. City Of Bones was nicely done with an attractive cast. But it will have to go some to reach the popularity of Harry Potter or Twilight.

Movie was fine and entertaining.

I'm not going to give lots of details about what happened in the movie but just wanted to comment about what a lot of other people had said about it.

It feels like much of the hate must be from people trying to just buck the trend or with some emotional spur of the moment thing going on lol. Some people gave it 1 star which... according to them... makes it one of the worst movies ever made (worse than Battlefield Earth, or Killing Spree?? lol), but there are a lot of 10 star ratings... (So it was as good as The Godfather, Shawshank Redemption, Pulp Fiction etc??)... too which always makes you think they were people involved with the movie but then again maybe people rate them in on their expectations of the movie compared to what they actually get, rather than rating in comparison to other movies?

It had a budget of $60 million and box office was around $76 million most likely way down on what they though it would be but not exactly a big flop, yeah there was probably millions spent on promoting but they probably made up for that and more with DVD and BR sales and rentals, and looking through various sites, the critics reviews seem to be around average or just below and cinema goers reviews seem to be average to above average. At the time of typing this it has a 6.1 rating on IMDb which shows that most here think it is at least better than average.

This movie is about getting to know the characters, an intro into the series if you like, there will be loose ends because there will be at least one sequel. The next movie will be much the same plus developing the characters with a big finale or if there is a 3rd and final movie the big finale will be there, that is usually how it works. There will always be similarities and comparisons... (Twighlight, Harry Potter, Stargate, Underworld... whatever!)... to other movies when especially when they are in the same genre, it would be almost impossible to make the movie 100% unique.

As for always comparing movies with books people will nearly always prefer the 1st version of something they read, see, hear etc which most often than not is the original, whether it be a book, movie, TV series or music. Its pointless reading the book and then moaning that it is not as the same. Making it exactly the same... which is hard anyway across the two completely different formats... would be also pointless as once you have read or seen one then there would be no point reading or seeing the other and people would still moan because its the same.

I agree it was a little too long and also agree with someone who mentioned the film score, it does seem somewhat out of place, like it was taken from another movie plus a lot of scenes were too dark, not much point spending money on filming a scene that no-one can see, but over all it was fine and entertaining. :)

BTW Took me a while to recognise Robert Sheehan, he was funny in Misfits TV series. :)