Every Tuesday and Thursday, part of my morning routine is to watch the latest video from Cinema Sins on Youtube. If you haven't checked it out, they gather all the 'sins' from famous movies and comment on them, which can be pretty funny. This week, Mockingjay Part 1 and 2 were up for scrutiny, which was hard to watch because we all know how deep my obsession with The Hunger Games goes. I laughed it off, but they said something that was obviously going to bother me.
"I am so done with these types of movies."
Five years ago, things were a lot different in the world of YA movie adaptations. Harry Potter held the crown as the most iconic and beloved YA franchise, wrapping up an eight-film powerhouse that would leave an eternal legacy for its loyal fans. Twilight was still dragging out the insufferable vampire/werewolf/human love story as Bella and Edward (ugh) conceived their hybrid CGI baby. The Hunger Games was cruising into production with a promising cast and powerful, gruesome subject matter to live up to. These franchises made up a trinity of YA film sagas, lining the fandoms up at the movie theater to experience their favorite books brought to life.
Since then, quite a few things have changed. The trinity brought in a ton of money with each release, and Hollywood caught on pretty quickly that YA novels equal cash cows in the movie business. The story's already there, wrapped with a bow and a loyal following. All you need is a young, doe-eyed actress, a few brooding love interests, and a green screen. Today, it feels like a new YA film is coming out every other month. Some novels are thrown in to pre-production before the first book is even published. Trilogies, teenage warfare and futuristic settings are bombarding the new releases, and it can almost get hard to separate one from the other.
Now, you know I love YA, and you know I've been on board with a lot of these movies. Many of them have turned out really, really well. YA is what I read. It's what I write. The stories it tells are important, timely, and highly entertaining. The problems start to occur when these stories are transferred onto the screen in the wrong way.
Hollywood is tricky. It always has been. You have people who dedicate their time and effort into bringing the audience the movie they've longed for. It's a lot of pressure to present each scene to people who already have a clear picture of it in their heads. No matter how good or bad the film turns out to be, everyone is going to have their own feelings about it. Some people were enraged that Peeta didn't lose his leg in the first HG movie, while others thought is was a necessary omission. They can't please everyone, but they do their best.
On another side of filmmaking, you have the people whose main goal is that weekly box office. Say what you will about art or entertainment, but money is the ultimate name of the game. This can lead to all sorts of messes that can really ruin the YA movie experience. A perfect example of this would be the recent release of the adaptation of Lois Lowry's The Giver. Most everyone who's been through the education system in the last twenty years has probably read this book, and anyone who has knows that there is nothing typical about it. However, the movie we got in 2014 really seemed to alter whatever it could to make it fit what the producer's thought would rope us in. The main character, Jonas, is only twelve years old in the book. In the movie, he is sixteen, played by an actor in his twenties. This allowed for the writers to put much more emphasis on a romance. A YA movie has to have romance, right? They turned Meryl Streep's character into a cookie cutter 'big bad,' because we all love that President Snow. We want a tyrant, someone to hate. That's what they figured, so that's what we got. They tried to pander to the audience without honoring what made this book famous in the first place. The important themes and ideas got lost in a maze of Hollywood intervention. Needless to say, many people were disappointed.
Here's a question for you: What about The 5th Wave?
That book, written by Rick Yancey, was incredible. The writing displayed otherworldly talent and the characters were crafted beautifully. It was the kind of book that gave you chills and left you thinking about it long after the last page. This last January, the film adaptation hit theaters.
It bombed.
The critics were unimpressed and the viewers seemed just entirely uninterested. This book is on my top shelf, and I didn't even bother to get a ticket. I live for this kind of stuff, but there just wasn't anything drawing me in. I don't even know if it was good or bad. I just know that no one really cared.
Why? Is it because we've all already given too much to the existing franchises? I mean, The Hunger Games had just wrapped up and The Maze Runner and Divergent had taken their spots as big deals in YA movies, so were we just burnt out? Was it because previous adaptations, such as The Giver, had diminished our faith in these types of movies? Maybe it just wasn't fun anymore. When The Hunger Games came out in 2012, it brought on a very special kind of excitement. Mall tours swept the country and the Mockingjay symbol became an icon. People filled the movie theater and then cried in the parking lot when it was over, completely committed to the developing franchise. Everyone knew about it, because there was nothing to really counter it at the time. Now, how do you even keep track? The 5th Wave, a haunting, powerful story about family, loss, and chaos, slipped through the cracks. It didn't even feel like anyone was fighting for it. Hollywood just kicked it out from their template and left us underwhelmed by the very idea of heading to the theater. It's kind of sad to think about other amazing novels that this has and will happen to.
Because that's the core issue here. These movies and the way they are made are draining the magic out of YA. They take it and turn it into a pandering display of what those people think we want. With a constant strain of YA films being produced, people are fed up with hearing about young heroines and revolutions. Ideas that are so empowering to readers are mocked by critics and looked down on by those who don't understand why these stories matter. Not that we should care what they think, but it's never enjoyable to see something that you love belittled because someone else slaps a negative label on it. They recognize Hollywood's formula and just assume that they're all the same, that if you've seen one YA film, you've seen them all. We know how far this is from the truth, but it has come to turn many people away. These days, you hear people lamenting about a new YA film more than people getting excited about it. It scares me, because that's so damaging and disheartening.
If only we could storm the gates of Hollywood with our Katniss braids and Dauntless hearts and demand better. Be true to the stories and let them live up to their full potential, right? We're not just targets for box office success, and we're not foolish because we believe in these young characters. We don't want to be pandered to and we want to get excited about YA movies again.
But Hollywood tends to have deaf ears when it comes to that kind of thing, so we just have to continue to cherish our books and hope for the best out of our movies. You never know when a game changer is going to come along.
