TheEvilBunny

On Google Play this week The Mortal Instruments: City Of Bones is now number 94 in top selling and number 3 on Action and Adventure.

2 weeks ago it was ranked number 2 in Top Selling movies on Google Play and number 1 in Action and Adventure. I only know this because I distinctly remember the feeling of WTF when I saw it the last time I was on Google Play Movies.

Seeing it there made me think about something . . .

I watched the first 2 episodes of Shadowhunters (the new TV series based on Cassandra Clare’s Mortal Instruments books). And two episodes was all it took for me to give up on it all together. (I would have given up on one episode but I wanted to give it a fair chance and by episode 2 I realised that it’s not even good as a TV show)

Both the 2013 film and the 2016 TV series were done by the same studio (Constantin Film). Before the release of Shadowhunters all sorts of promises that were made. Such as stating that they’d learned from the mistakes that were made with the film and had listened to what the fans wanted. And the TV show was going to follow more closely the plotline of the books (which was the main grievance people had with the Film . . . that it pissed all over the book’s story by changing things such as making Clary a complete DID (Damsel in Distress) and not using any art or skill in the actual story telling by stating—loudly—all of the things you’d want to hint at and dropping major plot points as passing comments. As well as the cast which people just were not happy with (except for Robert Sheehan as Simon, which was just awesome)

They did say that they were going to tell the same story (same start and end) but take it there a slightly different way. Which is the definition of not sticking to the plotline. Damn that pesky middle section and all of its plot that takes the story to places with things that make sense! Because that’s the part you need to get rid of. <-sarcasm.

This TV adaptation is even more artless than the film. Everything is just . . . I mean there aren’t even any words to help me describe my utter disappointment with this adaptation. They have gone so far from the plot of the books that it’s annoying. Because they keep enough that you can’t see it as something new, yet change enough that you’re annoyed by the fact that it’s different.

The actors don’t bother me much in this one, I like them for their respective parts. However, the script! OH MY GODS the script! Whoever wrote this should be fired and banned from writing any more scripts.

They have an entire TV show to build a relationship between Clary and Jace and yet the TV show has, from 15 minutes into episode 1 created the most instant instalove in the history of YA media. WHY? They had the opportunity to tell all of the little bits that couldn’t be expressed in a film, they had the time and apparently the budget (because they had the funds to make the Shadowhunters all high-tech *rolls eyes and sighs heavily at the sheer stupidity of that*). But instead they took all of the charm from the story and butchered it . . . AGAIN! Hence why I gave up on the show lest they take my viewing number into account when calculating the show’s ‘success’. (I don’t want to encourage them to keep up with this crap)

But here’s where the conspiracy happens.

Now, as I mentioned earlier, I’ve been on Google Play lately. And usually, The Mortal Instruments film is nowhere in sight. Yet, two weeks ago it was ranked number two in Top Selling movies.

And it had me thinking . . .

The studio had originally scrapped the second film because they didn’t make the profits they’d imagined they would with this YA film franchise in the making. They had mostly bad and mixed reviews and because of this, they didn’t want to continue with the films (blaming the failure on the fact that they advertised to the wrong audience). They should really go back to the drawing board on that theory, but I’ll save the formula for making a good book to film adaptation for a different week.

But alas! Through comparing the TV show with the Film people have starting saying that the Film was better (simply because, although they stemmed WAY off from the books, they stuck more closely than the TV show in comparison)

So people are now watching the film because it is the better of the two evils (personally I wouldn’t encourage either)

So, the big conspiracy is . . . what if the TV show is so bad on purpose to trick people into liking the movie so that the studio can pick up where they left off and make the second film?

It’s the only reason I can think of why they wouldn’t listen to the fans the first time around, and Google Play backs up the theory.

So, I for one will continue to not encourage the studio at all and continue to not watch the TV show and resist the urge to give in to the reverse psychology that’s trying to make me watch the film.

. . . must . . . resist . . . temptation!