"The Mortal Instruments- City of Bones": Murdering a Fantastic Book with a less than Fantastic Movie

"City of Bones", book one in The Mortal Instruments Series, is a novel with plot twists so dramatic and genuinely surprising that it will leave you feeling as if you had just stepped off of a cliff, landed in a rollercoaster and then somehow ended up dangling from your ankles out of a tree. The first time I read through this book I had to close it multiple times and let what had just happened sink in. Cassandra Clare, the seriously brilliant and witty author of the series, has talent that surely cannot be understated. The Mortal Instruments still sits proudly on it's pedestal as one of my top three favorite series of all time, so it is blatantly obvious that this was a movie I had anticipated for years. The disappointment I felt throughout the film was a heavy blow to both myself and the massive part of my heart that is reserved for Jace and Clary. I understand time constraint is a pressing issue for movie adaptations, but the entire film felt rushed and so many beautiful details were completely ignored. Those details that were not ignored were altered in hideous ways, changing them from marvellously crafted pieces of art into boring background noise. One main destructive change was setting of the final fight scene, which was supposed to happen at Valentine's lair but for some unimaginable reason was set in the Institute. This threw the entire story off and, if there even is another movie made, it will pose challenges in connecting the rest of the books to that first awful movie. The book defined the theme of good and evil in a way that seemed palpable, yet the movie made the line between those extremes seem blurred and unclear. The novel also painted Clary as an ideal role model because of her strength, sense of equality and her moral belief system. However, the movie made these ideas hard to grasp by cutting out many of her heroic and selfless actions. Finally the biggest heart- crushing disappointment was the cavalier way that the most important plot twist of the book was revealed. It was almost as if mentioning that Jace and Clary were siblings was an uninteresting side note to the story. It did complete injustice to the incredible, jaw-dropping reveal that Cassandra Clare had so expertly devised in the novel. The film as a whole proved to be an injustice to the magnificent book that "City of Bones" is and it should have never been produced.