Mortal Instruments: City of Bones

        Mortal Instruments: City of Bones is a young adult film of the best-selling novella Shadowhunter series by Cassandra Clare. This movie contains rich urban fiction with enticing romance and outwardly supernatural elements from an alternate world of fairy tales. The lore of the Shadowhunter series pertains to a realm that exists to the untrained eye, exploring the broadened world of urban fantasy, and enveloping this grand work of literature and originality.  

        The plot takes place in the modern world Brooklyn, New York and portrays the surroundings of the present day with this mystically hidden universe of supernatural hosts; featuring werewolves, vampires, nightcrawlers, warlocks and other downwardly creatures- as is mentioned in the movie, “All the stories are true”. The film kicks off with these fantastical characters who are seemingly thrown into the life of a human girl, Clary Fray, when her mother is kidnapped on her 18th birthday by a former Shadowhunter, Valentine Morgenstern, who threatens Clary’s mother’s life in exchange for one of the three ancient mortal instruments- an divine cup that will create a new bloodline of Nephilim once imbued with angelic power that will endanger the mundane world and the guardian angels sought to protect them. The film introduces this sudden new world by mentioning the suppression of Clary’s memories of her supernatural history.  

        The movie is a major motion picture film that inwardly represents these open elements with the aid of her supernatural friends that help Clary through her blocked memories to help save the world from downworlders and figure out why she can suddenly see the Shadow World. Through this journey, Clary discovers the true backstory of her birth, gradually recollecting her lost memories as a descendent from a line of Shadowhunters- an elite half-angel warriors’ organization that protects the mundane world and the Shadow World from ancient dark forces. The director, Harald Zwart steels this through emphasizing the motivation of the main characters and uses his skills to overcome the challenges of bringing an unimaginable multiverse to life by conveying the emotions he felt when apprehending and pulling apart Clary’s fascinating character. By building Clary’s relationships with her surroundings and her inner turmoil of accepting her status and history, Zwart layers the impact of the film’s effect on others by intensifying the emotions and message of the film through these directing choices. The filmmaking process was a challenging feat for Zwart as he had to envision the supernatural world and establish the complexity of the mystical and fantastical realm. He had to involve Cassandra Clare, the author of the series, to forward the tone of the movie into an endearing film that would be understandable to those who haven’t read the series and still be appealable to loving fans. In order to do this, the producer directed the endorsement of this film dusking into Clary’s journey and learned the mechanics of this mysterious adventure fantasy.

        Keeping the limitations of the film’s budget and length, many of the scenes were deleted from the first run of the movie. They were cut to avoid overexplanatory scripts and allow the audience to peer into the depth of the protagonist with the audience’s recollection of their personal thoughts, becoming more immersed in the storyline and begging for more of the storyline. This prevented the script from cramming unnecessary information that may have changed the movie’s duration for the worse. Thanks to these editing choices, the scenes in the film come to life effortlessly. The relationships between each character in the series are carefully planned through, resulting in a correlation with each other’s future from their past involvement. For example, the relationship between Morgenstern and Jocelyn, Clary’s mother, falls into a love-hate romance that elevated Valentine as the founder of the Circle, an organization sought to improve the world, that lead to the attempted misuse of the mortal cup. Every established relationship is a loyal subject, love-interest, friendship, or unrequited romance that reunites from an honoring “cult” and their children righting their ancestor’s wrongs. The co-stars Jamie Campbell Bower, Jace Wayland, and Lily Collins, Clary Fray- shed light on the attractive traits of the fictional characters and bring out the personalities that primarily focus on the angst-ridden romance between Jace and Clary. The casting reciprocated the similar features mentioned in the books as the actors fully fleshes out the nuances personalities that acquire a deep understanding of the characters and their character development that performs well in the interactive scenes. The acting is a critical point of the film as the acting can transform the reactions of the audience members and draw a watcher’s attention until they’re transported to the film’s universe, and that is crucial to a performance as this creates a deep connection the audience- interacting with them in a way that evokes emotion. 

        The main internal conflict of the journey is Clary as she struggles to accept the truth behind her ancestry as a Shadowhunter. With her building her relationships to the characters around her, being thrown into this glamoured realm, and her memories gradually becoming recovered, Clary is shown time and time again the truth of her lineage that she learns to adapt to as it sharpens her mind into her hidden origin. What was once a naive and sarcastic teenage girl steadily grows into a courageous and fierce warrior as it teases with the theme that differences do not make one better or worse than someone else regardless of the differences of two worlds colliding- Clary’s gradual acceptance of her identity showing that. With such a simplistic world turned upside down to the gates of a new existence, the originality of these fantasy worlds and their characters renouncing the uniqueness of this film as well defining this “it” factor through the movie’s cinematography as it shows just how difficult it is to put such a far-stretched story into a camera lens and a naked eye.  

        Music is a universal language, one that the Mortal Instruments film successfully obsesses over. Without the soundtrack’s score, the film would have lost its impact on the audience. The music composers, Atli Orvarsson and Gabriel Yared, unravel the beauty of each scene and capture the emotion shared by the characters interactions with each other. The sound and music convey a dark and ethereal message through choral and orchestral arrangements that engages the audiences in this ancient war and the legends of the Shadowhunters. Aesthetics are drivingly motivated by the shock of this introduction to an eerie world that is exiled from the human world’s knowledge. When unearthing a character’s background or the tension between two characters, you can’t help but feel the pain and desperation of the music that wretches at your heart. The score portrays the character’s feelings of the scene without even trying and brings a wonderful insight of the daylight of romance or the horrific terror of silence that makes your skin crawl, executing this euphoric world and the theatrical adventure that spreads justice for this mind-blowing drama. 

        Though this picture motion film has many of its good points, there are still plenty of plot points that die-hard fans can’t quite get past. Much of the resolution of the plot brought lifted eyebrows as the storyline strayed a bit too far from the end of the book. Some character’s traits, such as Valentine’s white hair, were not included in the casting and brought much dissatisfaction due to fans high expectations. And despite Zwart putting his all into this movie, the results ended in the cancellation of the sequel City of Ashes. Many fans were frustrated at the cringe-inducing dialogue and disliked the heavy focus on the teenage romance between Jace and Clary. After Mortal Instruments was released in theaters a year after the final movie of the Twilight series, many viewers bashed the movie and called City of Bones the knock-off plot of Bella and Edward. While the film does involve similar supernatural creatures, werewolves and vampires, it deserves to be acknowledged as its own piece of work. There is more than enough proof to show the difference between these two fandoms and their storylines. What was branded as a “bad spin-off of Twilight”, the bad ratings of the movie led to Shadowhunters, the drama adaptation of the novella series, which was later cancelled after season three due to financial reasons.  

        While my adoration stays strong with the movie, there are good points in the bad reviews of this movie. The movie fell apart at the end with the plot change and even spoiled the long-terms plot twists that are later revealed in the series. Despite this, the film holds a special place in my heart as the fiction is clearly adapted from a place of intrigue and careful consideration. Even with the declarations of war on the first movie, Zwart drove the addiction of this deranged world and the chemistry between characters in a perfect formula that kept the audience engaged underneath the ether of this sentimental and evidently urban fantasy performance. And while the film may not be perfect, or exact to the book series, it is an excellent representation of what it means to bring justice to a revolutionary work of art. 

Work Citations

Lynee, Frances. “The Ending of the Mortal Instruments: City of Bones Movie.” Frances and Lynne, 22 Apr. 2014, francesandlynne.wordpress.com/the-ending-of-the-mortal-instruments-city-of-bones/. 

“The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones – Movie Reviews.” Rotten Tomatoes, www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_mortal_instruments_city_of_bones/reviews#:~:text=The%20Mortal%20Instruments%3A%20City%20of%20Bones%20is%20a%20deft%20piece,and%20even%20a%20little%20scary. Accessed 11 Feb. 2024.