City of Please-Make-Me-Forget-That-Horrible-Movie

As millions the world over, I am currently reading the finale to Cassandra Clare’s The Mortal Instruments series, City of Heavenly Fire.

I had been seeing the Mortal Instruments books around for a while, but for some reason or another avoided them for months until on a whim of fancy, I snagged book one in late 2012 and then proceeded to spend the remainder of winter ensconced in Clare’s world of Shadowhunters. I even brought my friend, Corey, along for the ride.

We devoured the five Mortal Instruments books and then turned our attention to Clare’s Infernal Devices trilogy, all to hold us over until the publication of Heavenly Fire.

(By the way, if you’re considering reading something of Clare’s, start with The Infernal Devices. It’s great. And you’ll love Jem. No, you’ll love Will. No, Jem. Maybe Will? No, Jem.)

(But I digress.)

Sadly, somewhere between March 2013 and May 2014, the powers that be released the movie version of The Mortal Instruments, starring a girl with enviable eye brows and one of those boys from Twilight. If I sound dismissive and disdainful of the enterprise, trust me, it’s purposeful.

I suppose here is where I should let the reader know that I’m incredibly visual. A crappy song can suddenly sound not-so-bad if it’s accompanied by a ground-breaking video. And vice-versa, a great song can be killed by a shitty video. They created MTV for freaks like me.

And books to movies? Almost always an epic failure. I could list examples, but why bother? You know them already. It’s the same list of the usual suspects, although given my druthers, I would add the Hunger Games simply based on the casting of Peeta.

All of this babbling leads me back to the fact that they made a movie of The Mortal Instruments and because I know books to movies usually suck and because the actors seemed rather deplorable in their interviews and because my friend, Priya, watched the movie and told me it was horrible, I avoided it.

Until about two weeks ago.

When it was on cable and I got sucked in for a total of maybe ten minutes before I had to turn the channel to prevent my eyes and ears from bleeding. It was horrible. It is horrible. And the Twilight boy who plays Jace is NOT Jace and the girl with the enviable eye brows makes Clary more insufferable than I already found her to be.

Ten minutes.

All it took was ten minutes to ruin an entire series for me.

Because as I read the finale, I fear that is what has happened. Jace is now the Jace of the movie with that horrible hair and that whiney voice that not even a British accent can save and that complete lack of sex appeal and Clary is…well, she’s Clary and I never really liked her anyway. But Izzy, kickass Izzy, balls-down-your-throat-whip-slashes-across-your-chest-before-you-know-what-hit-you Izzy, her movie version now appears in my head as I read Heavenly Fire. And her movie version sucks.

So if you’re like me and incredibly visual, stay away from that horrendous piece of film-making and just stick with the books and enjoy the ride.

Me?

I’m going to continue slogging through this thing, waiting for the Emma and Jules passages, the interjections from Clare’s new characters who as of yet, have not been bastardized by Hollywood.