From Literary Perfection to Big Screen Disaster

Hello everyone!

Today we will be talking about one of my favorite young adult fiction book. Like many great books it got turned into a big screen project. I was very excited to see my favorite book in a movie. Sadly it didn’t even reached my lowest expectations.

Disappointment, that’s the first word that comes to mind every time I think about the Beautiful Creatures movie. From the first 50 seconds your expectations can start to fade sadly. Based on the book also called Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl.

Picture by Jacky Nguyen Licence CC

The novel is the first of the Casters Chronicles that includes a spin off series starting with Dangerous Creatures and with stories inside the story like Dream Dark and others.

This novel is the typical supernatural romance that tends to catch our eye. Just like the popular story of Twilight, Beautiful Creatures places us in a small Southern and almost unknown town called Gatlin with Ethan Wate and Lena Duchannes. In my opinion the scenes of them together in the film are very annoying and irritating since I don’t find the actors to fit the actual characters profile. This is the typical story where a loner/smart teenage guy falls for a mysterious newcomer who has powers beyond her own knowledge. This twist where the boy is human and the girl has magic powers, both dark and good, is what makes the fans mostly attracted to this film, instead of the burnt out theme of vampires, werewolves and zombies and such.

Picture by: Robin Leigh Licence CC

The movie starts with a dark scene of what it seems to be a dream that Ethan (the main character) has been having for months over and over. In the movie he is walking towards a girl in what seems to be a field of grass. “I can’t ever see her face, but I know her like I’ve known her all my life and it feels like something terrible it’s gonna happen when I reach her. But at the same time, I’m not scared at all. I want her, no matter what happens, but I never get to her and then I die.” With this words Ethan is hit by a lightning in his dream, nothing alike to the dream narrated in the book. I know normally directors change some parts of the book in the movie to make it more interesting and exciting for the audience but I believe that Richard LaGravenese (the director and writer) made some poor decisions in the changes he did. A prime example of which is the look of the actors, considering that Ethan Wate is described as a very tall guy with hair that covers his eyes and in the movie he is average height (that’s ok) but he has really short hair, I believe that could’ve been arranged.

But now, Lena the most important character is distorted in the most horrible way. Everything that had an important meaning in her and every essence you got from her by reading the book was corrupted in the movie.  Her green eyes are very important since it means that she is still good in a magical way. Later on she becomes half-light magic and half-dark magic and she should have one green and one golden and in the movie she has brown eyes throughout the movie up until the last scene. Lena is supposed to look more gothic than what she actually looks in the movie. She looks normal, typical,  no black nail polish, no hands covered in ink, no dark clothes and most importantly Lena carries with her a very noticeable necklace full of things that are important to her, things that other people would call “junk”  but in the movie she just has a necklace that you can barely see in the scenes. Also Lena is supposed to be very good looking and in my opinion Alice Englert (Lena) is not as expected also she is very aggressive with Ethan when they talk at first when actually she’s supposed to be very nice.

Another character that was changed was Ridley (Lena’s Dark caster cousin.) She is supposed to have long blonde hair; she’s missing a tattoo, a piercing, amongst other things. All of these changes are the ones what should’ve never been done. It changes too much the essence of the story. Well in the movie Lena can’t control very well her powers just yet and she lives in fear because she has to wait until her 16^th birthday to find out if she will be a dark caster or a light caster. But she doesn’t know she is the only caster that can decide whether she wants to be dark or good. If she decides to be good, all the dark casters of her family will die, even her beloved cousin Ridley and mother Sarafine who is the most powerful caster and the leader of all dark casters. If Lena chooses to be dark however, all the light casters will die.

Ethan soon becomes Lena’s boyfriend but he was dragged into her life way before they met since they had been dreaming about each other for months before they met. Ethan may seem like any other mortal but he is more than that, somehow it seems that the Wate and the Duchannes families had history together and the secret between them during the past is the curse that Ethan and Lena fight. During the movie there are a lot of scenes that I think that could’ve been better, like the scene when Lena confronts her dark caster cousin Ridley, who is shut out of the family for being dark. During that confrontation Lena learns about the curse haunting her life and Ethan was being controlled by Ridley and I find the whole scene pathetic, Lena uses her magic to make the floor move in circles and the whole scene looks stupid. Once Ethan and Lena learn everything from their past, they both do everything in their power to stop the curse and Lena slowly convinces herself that she will turn dark until she uncovers the only way to break the curse that is killing the one she loves. Lena decides to make Ethan forget everything about her and forget everything that happened between them, which is a big twist from the real story and from there on the film goes downhill. Starting with the poor interpretation of Macon’s death (Lena’s beloved uncle) and the fact that they skip Lena’s claiming, which is the whole point of the film, the way she fights her mother so easily and finally the way Ethan miraculously remembers everything in the last second. I do not recommend the movie unless you really like fantasy stories. For me this film was a sad excuse for a movie I would gladly recommend the book over the movie any day.

Picture by: Nova Licence CC

The Novel in the other hand is completely perfect, the story is captivating and addictive in so many levels. You start reading expecting one thing and you end up wanting this story for your whole life. There’s no words to describe this novel, it is the start of something great, there’s no way of denying it. Garcia and Stohl reach a whole new literary level on this story. Nothing i expected, you can never see absolutely anything coming.

This book obviously is rated  5 out of 5.

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Enjoy your reading!