(Spoiler Warning, Because I may have to talk about specific examples)
(Also, all of this is simply my observation/opinion.)
So, having seen two films based on novels this past friday, I sort of wanted to express my thoughts on the whole thing, and cast a light on the current trend of making films based on young adult novels as well. But first, a little back story on how the young adult trend came to be.
In The Beginning...
Believe it or not, we actually don't have to go too far back when it comes to the young adult trend. Why? because it all started with Harry Potter.
When the first book came out in 1998 (1997 if you live in the U.K.) it became an instant smash hit. By the time the fourth book came out, work had already begun on the first movie, which also became a huge smash hit as well and lead to the rest of the books being turned into films as well. Every single one of them was a success both critically and financially. The lowest rated film (according to Rotten Tomatoes) is Harry Potter and the deathly hallows part 1 at 78%, but only because the first part ended on such a downer moment and that didn't resonate as well with some people (at least that's my theory. It did make me come back to see part 2 though, so it at least did that right.)
Now, just to clarify something, Harry Potter I'm pretty sure was meant to be a children's book nothing more nothing less. However the smart move J.K Rowling did was making a full series, thus allowing people who liked the series to grow up with it, hence why nowadays I wouldn't be surprised if the biggest age group who likes Harry Potter would be people either close to or now graduating college a.k.a young adults.
So, we had a successful series of books that became a successful series of movies, how did it go so wrong?
Well, around the time of the goblet of fire movie, a bunch of people in Hollywood decided that since Harry Potter was so popular, why not try making other books meant for the same age group into movies? Now this is a common thing in Hollywood, when one thing becomes popular everyone tries to find something similar to turn into the next big thing. The most modern example I can think of this is the current trend of superhero movies. So, when the time came to choose the next big franchise, what could they settle on?
The thinking went like this. Harry Potter is a boy, so why not find a series with a female lead instead? we can expand the YA audience and have what they considered a female counterpart to what they considered a male oriented series (this is Hollywood they tend to think in black and white mostly.) So they decided to turn the big female lead series into a movie franchise as well. What series was this you might ask?
The Downward Spiral....
It was......Twilight.
Yep, the disco ball with vampire teeth, Twilight.
For those of you living under a rock and having just emerged, Twilight is a series of books written by Stephanie Meyer, about a young girl named Bella Swan who falls in love with a "vampire" named Edward Cullen and the problems that ensue because of that. In the first sequel they introduced a werewolf named Jacob as the second love interest to try and bring in a love triangle aspect to it (Now being used in the hunger games series, but we'll get to that in a moment).
So, they had a potential gold mine on their hands. A modern romance story with supernatural elements that could appeal to both young girls and boys, what could possibly go wrong?
There are a lot of things that lead to Twilight being the mostly flop film series that it's now considered to be, I'll try and cover them all as best I can. The best way would be in list form so...
- The book series (at least from both personal experience and from what I read, saw, and heard) were basically only popular with women. But not just young adult women, fully grown women. You ever hear of twilight moms? Yeah, that's a thing, and it's mostly creepy as all hell. And while there are films out there that cater only cater to women, there's a reason that it's mostly romantic movies that do so. Twilight easily fits into that category, but since the book series wasn't popular with young males (which is Hollywood favorite target audience by the way) the films had to rely entirely on the fanbase in order to succeed, and because of that....
- The films were mostly just fan service. Harry Potter in both book and film managed to appeal to everyone, including people who didn't read the books. There are entire sections of the Harry Potter fanbase who've only seen the movies, and while that's also true for twilight, it didn't happen in as big of a capacity (again at least from my point of view.) I think it was Moviebob from the escapist magazine webstie that said you can turn anything into a good movie, but you might have to rip out it's guts to do so. Twilight was only popular to a certain demographic, so they made the films to cater to the fans, thus anyone who wasn't sold on the book but decided to gamble on the movie would most likely walk away dissapointed and wouldn't return for the sequels.
- Although reviews of the books were mostly positive at first, later on I started hearing criticisms of it being poorly written and stephanie meyer not being such a great author. Now, I haven't read the books myself, they don't interest me, but I knew a lot of girls in high school who were fans and most of them (if not all of them) said that they knew the books were bad, but it was more of a guilty pleasure and just trashy fun. Trashy fun romance novels, usually don't transfer well, that's why the only Nicholas Sparks movie people seem to remember is The Notebook. And since they just basically catered to the fans, the only people who saw the movies and liked them were the fans (for the most part.)
- It also didn't help that reviews for the movies were awful. On Rotten tomatoes, the first, third, and fifth (part 2) films are sitting at 49% good reviews. They're basically slightly below average and while a lot of people don't usually go by reviews, anyone who already hated twilight probably convinced fence sitters not to bother. Also, it didn't help that Robert Pattinson has done nothing but trash the movies and Stephanie Meyer.
- This is the part that'll lead me to the next part of the YA film story. The Twilight movies, despite the problems, were financially successful, mostly due to the love story element that Harry Potter didn't really focus on too much. So Hollywood once again thought, we could make more of these, but instead we can focus on the supernatural and love story elements, and this is were we move onto the mext part of the story.
The Twilight Fallout
One series I haven't mentioned that actually started before Twilight, but after Harry Potter, were The Chronicles of Narnia series. The first one came out in 2005 to good reviews, mostly because I think it was a good match to run along side Harry Potter. The second one came out in 2008 to mostly good reviews, but twilight did better financially, so by the time the third one came out to mostly mixed reviews, Harry Potter and Twilight were both dominating the market and so the rest of the series was cancelled.
There was also Eragon in 2006, but that was bad entirely on it's own merits and they never bothered to make another book in the series since.
There were two other movies that came out in 2008 as well both considered to be YA. Inkheart and City of Ember. I haven't even heard of the second one until I started doing research for this.
But after Twilight like I said most of the films that they intended for the YA audience had to have elements of the supernatural as well as a romantic subplot. Any other YA novels that didn't have those elements were re worked to appeal to larger audiences (Example: 2009's The Lovely Bones. Was not marketed in the same manner as other YA films.)
The first one of these was Percy Jackson: The Lightning Thief. It got mixed reviews, but they did make a sequel three years later that got even worse reviews. Last I heard they're not continuing the series.
There was I Am Number Four in 2011, but again mostly negative reviews. in fact let's just list the rest of these out shall we?
The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones 12% 2013, no word of a sequel.
Beautiful Creatures 46% 2013 no word of a sequel
Divergent 41% 2014 a sequel is in the works.
Vampire Academy 9% 2014 no word of a sequel.
And most recently The Maze Runner 63% 2014 a sequel is in the works.
Twilight also inspired 50 Shades of Grey which is actually coming out on Valentine's Day next year (after being heavily pushed back from it's original release which would've put it up against Guardians of The Galaxy. Also, fun fact, the first three to four months at the beginning of every new year movie wise is considered the time when Hollywood dumps out the shittiest films of the year, so it'll probably suck. Also, they won't make a sequel, mostly because those did so poorly that even wikipedia doesn't have articles on them.)
And just like The Lovely Bones, any other YA novel without those elements were reworked and marketed for larger audiences (another example: Ender's Game was marketed as a sci fi thriller.)
The only series to be successful both critically and financially out of all of them were The Hunger Games in 2012 (currently sitting certified fresh at 84%.) Even it's sequel Catching Fire did even better currently sitting at 89% certified fresh. I personally don't understand why as I thought the first one was awful, but mostly because I'd already seen a better version of the main part of the story in Battle Royale, a 2001 Japanese movie which the Hunger Games was actually accused of ripping off.
But getting back to the main point of this, what basically happened is that Twilight was made cheaply (cheaper than Harry Potter at least), catered only to the fans, and was still successful, so with basically any other YA adaptation similar to it, they decided just to do the same thing with those. Made cheaply, catered to fans, but most of them haven't been successful.
The Hunger Games I think decided to go with the Harry Potter route (I know this because friends have told me that classic line "The books are better than the films" with both Harry Potter and Hunger Games) and basically decided not to cater directly to the fans. I don't think I've ever heard that argument as much (if at all) from twilight fans or any of the other flop franchises after that.
It's like what I said in The Maze Runner review: The books do not matter. Moviebob is right that in order to make a good film based off of a pre existing property it will have to be at least reworked if not gutted completely. I think that's why the films for Harry Potter and Hunger Games did so well, while others are lucky to be average.
I'm sure the sequel to Divergent will be awful (and I think it's only being made because Shailene Woodley is supposed to be in Amazing Spiderman 3 and that got bumped back because number 2 was considered the worst spiderman film to date.) I think the Maze Runner has potential to succeed if they capitalise on what made the first one good in the eyes of so many (As of now, I'd have no interest in seeing it, but who knows maybe it'll get fantastic reviews and I'll end up going) but for now the only series of these YA movies that seems to be working is the hunger games, which is going the Harry Potter route once again dividing the last book into two films.
What'll happen after that?
Honestly, I expect that if the Divergent and Maze Runner sequels fall flat, that after the Hunger Games
that we might see the end of the YA movie adaptation all together unless they find something else. There's always the Harry Potter spinoff film Fantastic Beasts, but I doubt they'd market that as a YA film. I imagine there are a few YA books out there still to be adapted, but unless they get another smash success, I think the genre might be killed off for a while by the Superhero genre.
Final Thoughts
I saw most of the Harry Potter Movies and I liked them at the time, but I have no desire to see them again anytime soon personally. I also hated the first Hunger Games movie and will also not be seeing the sequels. Basically I just don't like YA movies, and I'll be glad when they finally stop making them for good.
So if you made it this far I thank you. I don't do these very often mostly cause while it's a fun brain workout for me, they are also exhausting mentally. Also, I'm not sure how popular articles like this are, but if there's enough requests I might be able to do one from time to time. But in the mean time I'll mostly be doing reviews, although I am currently unemployed and job hunting so the new movie reviews might have to be few and far between, but I can try to make up for it with DVD, Netflix, and Movies I Watch Online reviews if Netflix doesn't have what I'm looking for. I said streaming, not downloading.
Anyways, I hope you enjoyed the think piece, and until next time, I'll see you folks at the movies.
