Shadowhunters on TV:

Is it TMI?

The Mortal Instruments by Cassandra Clare is possibly one of my favorite book series. I’ve been obsessed with it for 4 years and have read the series about a dozen times. I have laughed and cried and cursed the author for killing characters, as lots of us fans probably have at some point or another. She has a way of writing that keeps you hooked until the early hours of the morning. When I heard the first book was being made into a movie I lost my mind. My favorite series was being turned into a movie! I knew it wouldn’t be spot on, with only 2 hours how could it?

I followed the casting of my favorite characters, the director choice, the costumes, and the previews. I was disappointed with the casting but, I figured if they stayed close to the book, it’d be fine, right? Wrong. So wrong. The casting was already bad, our villain went from a platinum blonde with straight hair to a brunette with dreads. Our heroine went from a short, fiery, redhead with green eyes to a brunette with big brown eyes. The entire plot line was changed, added fight scenes, added powers. It was, overall, extremely disappointing. It tanked in box offices and fans rejected it. We ranted in blogs and forums, in comment sections of social media, on all social media. It was even brought up to the author herself at Comic-Con this year.

Now we are given a line. A TV SHOW! The first book is being turned into a season of a show.
It premiered on January 12th on FreeForm. I followed this even more closely. Casting was great, for the most part, awesome director, great costumes. Watching the first episode was… an interesting experience. I have a love-hate relationship with the first episode. On one hand, the casting is great and I love the chemistry between our leading couple. On the other there are a lot of mistakes, added characters that don’t exist in the book, added action scenes and we aren’t even past the first episode. I am reserving full judgment until I’ve seen more episodes but, my hopes are high for the remaining season. It’s going to be available on Netflix , for those of us who don’t have time to watch the same day or can’t stand commercials.

My reaction is better than the movie but, still different. The movie would have been good had it not been based off of a book. The season has only just started so fingers crossed for a good show.