Based on Cassandra Clare’s best-selling book series The Mortal Instruments and directed by Harald Zwart, the first movie City of Bones is a suspenseful, action-packed, and attention grabbing movie. With some big name actors like Lily Collins, Jamie Campbell Bower and Jonathan Rhys Meyers, to name a few, the book comes soaring to life on screen. With amazing graphics, stunts, and fight scenes The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones is definitely one of my top three favorite movies.
Set in modern day New York City, Clary Fray (Lily Collins) appears to be just your average teenager, creating drawings in her sketchbook and going to Java Jones with her best friend Simon (Robert Sheehan) all while living with her mother, Jocelyn, (Lena Headey) in Brooklyn. One day she discovers a peculiar world hidden within our own world, the Shadow World. The Shadow World contains werewolves, vampires, warlocks, various kinds of demons, and an array of other creatures. Here she meets a group of Shadowhunters (also known as Nephilim)-people who are half human and half angel created to protect the human world from the demons haunting it- who she joins forces with to battle a rouge Shadowhunter named Valentine (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) who has kidnapped her mother in search for one of the three mortal instruments of the Nephilim, The Mortal Cup; this is used by the Nephilim to create more of their kind. What seems to start out as a simple rescue mission for Clary ends up turning into a whirlwind of adventure.
A lot of popular page to screen movies will get bad reputations from the fans of the book because they didn’t like that the movie left out or changed things from the book. However, the two hour and ten minute City of Bones does its best to follow the four hundred and eighty five page book. When I first saw the movie I had not read the book; however after I saw the movie, read the book, and then watched the movie again I noticed what was changed and/or left out from the book. Now I do not condemn these changes because, to me, some of the scenes in the book might have been hard to portray in the movie, even with all the technology available for graphics in movies. Since the majority of movies are about two hours long it can be very challenging to fit every minute detail of a considerably long book into that short of a time slot. There are some things that I am disappointed didn’t make on screen, but overall I believe that the movie does justice in bringing Cassandra Clare’s Shadow World to life in a thrilling on screen adventure.
Overall, I give this movie a 5 out a 5 stars despite the slight changes and things left out from the book. The cast, songs, musical score, action, and story line blend so well together that I can never get tired of watching the movie. Every time I watch it I feel like I’m watching it for the first time. This movie is defiantly for those fascinated by fantasy and of a world beyond. The movie definitely makes me wish that the Shadow World was real.
The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones was released in theaters in August 2013 and is now is out on DVD and Blue Ray. The soundtrack is also out and available on iTunes and in stores near you.