When Will Bellarke be Canon? Never? Ok

MAJOR SPOILERS TO FOLLOW

This is a recap of KoA, for everyone who doesn’t want to read this book, but still needs closure. Because I get it. I needed closure, as a former fan who’s still angry every time she thinks about what this series could have been.

Fair warning: This is long. It is, after all, a 900+ page book.

Also, this won’t be a complimentary recap, so if you’re a stan, I suggest you turn back now.

This is probably the most difficult review I’ve done yet… That reason being that I LOVED the books, they are still one of my favorite series to this day.  However, I saw the movie on Sunday night, and I can’t not post a review of it.  So, I’m sorry Darkest Minds fans, myself included, because we aren’t getting a sequel.  They did not do a good job.

Let me rephrase what I just said, because I have two opinions on this movie.  Whenever there is a book to movie adaptation of something I’ve read, I take my roommate with me to watch, because he offers a “non-reader” standpoint. 

So, as we were leaving the theater, I was on cloud 9.  He was sitting in the car next to me, being very quiet. I knew he didn’t like it and was afraid to say anything so he didn’t hurt my feelings, but I got him to budge and tell me his problems.  So that is why I like the movie, and I hate it.

I like it because this movie was made for me.  I hate it because…this movie was made for me.  The Darkest Minds fans love it because it is so accurate to the books! Is it, though?

The first half hour or so are so insanely accurate that I thought my head was going to explode.  Actually, as far as what we are seeing, the physical scenes, the entire movie was wildly accurate.  But it’s when we start to pay attention to what is actually happening that it starts falling apart. 

So Ruby is in a camp, it’s basically a concentration camp, and she’s hiding as a green.  Okay, but how did that happen?  Well, the doctor that examined her found out that she was an orange, and then Ruby made him change the test.  Yeah…but why is he able to do that?  Why does the computer allow him to manually change the results?  Does the machine sometimes not work? That’s the biggest ex-machina I’ve ever seen! Moving forward, she’s at this camp to be “reformed.”  Clancy was reformed, so she can be too!  Yeah, but 1 kid was reformed, are you telling me that parents across the US actually believe this? Millions of kids in camp, yet 1 was healed.  Wow, what a miracle! Take my kid!

The next problem is the camps themselves.  There was a specific line of narration or something that said “There is no economy.”  That line ruined the movie.  There’s no economy?  How is anything functioning?  The skip tracers, how are the bounties that they collect paid for?  How are the guards paid?  Where does the money that keeps these camps running come from?  If there’s no economy, how does the government pay for all of these camps, the guards, doctors, skip tracers, etc? Speaking of the camps, how are any of them still functioning?  You’re telling me that blues, who can move and control anything, are just…walking around?  Yellows are not restrained?  Blues are not restrained?  As if, those kids outnumber you 100 to 1, the camps would be taken over in a day.  Even in Caledonia, all it took was 1 blue to break the fence, then they are all home free! You’re telling me that it took years for someone to go, “Guys, we should break the fence!” The security is dumb enough to let the kids walk around unrestrained?  There’s no way in hell that any of those camps would have lasted more than a year. 

Also, what are other countries doing right now?  Since there is NO ECONOMY! If the US collapsed, the rest of the world is coming down with us, considering that we have ¼ of the world’s GDP.  Yeah, no, the world is screwed if America just suddenly decided to shut down. 

But okay, okay, let’s say it doesn’t.  Let’s say by some miracle, the rest of the world is fine.  They would still send resources?  And by resources, I mean people, of course.  They would want to help.  What happens when they come to help, realize that the camps are holding kids against their will and are torturing them?  The UN would immediately step in and stop every single camp.  I’m pretty sure it took the US 3 years to learn about Nazi concentration camps, and that was before the internet!  All it takes is one kid, guard, parent, etc. to find out and post something online, then it would be viral, and the world would be in uproar!  No way these camps last SIX YEARS!

Also this bothered me in the books too.  Why are the guards mean?  Like all of them?  They torture and beat these kids regularly.  Whether they’re scared or not, there is no way every single guard would be totally okay with beating kids, powers or no.  They’re still human, unless they only hire sociopaths to be PSF’s?

Okay, so I have more to say about the lack of world building, but y’all get my point.  Thanks for the socks scene Fox, but that ain’t gonna cut it.  I. Need. Exposition.  We. Want. Exposition!

Now let’s talk about the things they added in that were not in the books. 

Ruby not being white, who cares? Amandla stole the show.  Chubs being green?  Fits his personality better anyways.  The eye color thing?  It’s kind of dumb, because I’m pretty sure that the colors originally came from the defcon color severity system, which is the exact same way as it is in the movies (green meaning good, orange meaning bad).  So were the colors named after the defcon system, or the eyes?  If it was the eyes, then the defcon system just magically matched up perfectly?  I guess…

Anyways, I don’t really care about those changes.. I care about those two scenes, you know the two, that they added in that is just absolute garbage. 

The first scene being when Ruby goes back home after escaping the camps.  It goes exactly how everyone expected, being that Ruby can’t go home because her parents don’t remember her.  Why did they make that scene?  What purpose did that serve?  We knew exactly what was going to happen.  What did SHE think would happen?  Did she forget what she did? Of course she didn’t! That scene was stupid and should not have been a part of the movie. 

The second scene being that…thing at the end with football field and all the kids with paint or whatever.  I talked about this with @itsgalaxy29 and we had similar opinions. What the HELL was that? Those are the kids from East River, I think? Well no, there were not that many kids in East River.  So they were the Children’s League kids? So, movie, you’re telling me that they took kids from their duties, their missions, to go into a football field, not say a word, put paint on their hands and foreheads, and just…stand there? No, I can’t think about that scene for than one more minute without wanting to laugh. 

Next, let’s talk about pacing.  The movie went FAST!  The run-time with credits is 1hr 45min, why did they rush everything then?  That movie could have been amazing if they spent time world building, taken out the dumb scenes, and had the main actors actually learn stuff about each other.  A 2hr 30min movie is pretty common these days, so it’s not like they thought that it was too long.  I did not shed a single tear when Ruby took Liam’s memories.  Why?  Because I didn’t really care about them as a couple yet.  In the books they spend, like, months together!  The movie took place in…. a few weeks?  Sorry Liam, you don’t love Ruby yet.  Actually, you barely know Ruby.  We get no information about Zu and Chubs at all.  Chubs’s only purpose being to say kinda funny jokes, I guess.  Zu is there to lead her to the van and then literally becomes pointless the rest of the movie. The main cast, other than Ruby, gets no exposition whatsoever, and by the end of the movie we are supposed to care about what happens to them, yet we don’t.  Why should we?  We don’t even know Chubs’s last name! 

And finally, because I have already made this review freakishly long: Clancy.  The worst character by far.  In the books he is a troubled bad guy.  He has some semblance of good in him, yet he doesn’t do the right thing.  He’s basically Magneto.  Correct me if I’m wrong, but in the books, it isn’t Clancy’s fault that the camp gets compromised.  In the movie, Clancy has no reason to be the bad guy.  He was tortured by the government and his father for years, and once they ‘cure’ him….he helps them? The movie wants me to believe that Clancy is helping those who tortured him for years.  No.  He is a villain just so the movie has a villain.  We are given no reason for him to be the bad guy.  Why would he compromise his own camp?  What the hell was that harvest thing?  Is this his first ‘harvest,’ or does he do this often?  If he has done it before, how is he able to restart the camp?  Do new kids show up to just Clancy by himself…and stay?  That’s not suspicious at all!  And okay this made me so mad, but Chubs wanted to leave because…they made him work.  Chubs, of course you have to work!  Nothing would get done if the kids didn’t have jobs!  You can’t just sit around all day and do nothing!  The camp couldn’t physically function!

The problem with this movie is that it shows you the ‘what’ and not the ‘why.’ Fans love this movie so much because they get to see their characters doing what they did in the books.  People that haven’t read the books need an explanation as to what is happening and why!  That’s why the reviews are so bad.  They are lost.  They are left wondering what was happening in the last scene, and by then the movie has moved on to the next.  A good movie needs exposition, as to which this movie offers slim to none.  I originally liked the movie so much because I got see Liam, Ruby, Chubs, and Zu doing shenanigans.  My roommate had so many questions as to what was happening that he couldn’t like it.  That’s why the movie was made for me, someone who has read the book.  I don’t need the exposition, I know it already.  That doesn’t make it a good movie. They need to accommodate it to people that haven’t read the book. Otherwise 90% of their audience will be lost, which is what happened.

The book DOES explain most of the stuff that I talked about above-the economy, salaries, camp functionality, etc. The shit we didn’t get in the movie. Now that I’ve rewatched the movie I have more complaints about it.

-Ruby isn’t even that bad at using her powers though? Literally there was the incident with her parents (they don’t show her do it Sam) and then the rest of the movie she basically has no problem controlling people at all and gives perfect commands when controlling people or looking at memories. She goes into Zu’s dream once but doesn’t do anything. Why focus on Ruby being so anal about not being able to control her powers and touch people, but then have her be perfect at her abilities the rest of the movie and show 0 instances of her fucking up?

-ZU IS AWOL! M.I.A.! WHERE IS SHE?? East River happens and then Chubs gets burned (ok) and Ruby and him are sitting by a random ass tree and Lee comes up and says “I got Zu to safety” and then she isn’t mentioned the rest of the movie! Zu could have been written out of this movie entirely. The only thing of worth that she does is lead Ruby to Betty. Holy fucking shit how did I not notice before?

-The dialogue is kinda weird I ain’t gonna lie. I hated the part where Chubs and Lee are talking to Ruby after they learn the truth and Lee goes, “Is that why you didn’t want to kiss me? Because you’re scared of touching people?” Ruby is probably thinking, “No, asshole. I don’t fucking know anything about you! I know your name is Liam, you broke out of a camp, and that you’re into me. THATS IT. Thanks for telling everyone I rejected you, dick.”

-I can’t stop thinking about the stupid ass eye glow thing. So their eyes glow when they use their powers? Ruby in one scene straight up looks at a group of boys and looks into one’s memories and no one fucking notices, it’s infuriating. Also so the Green one is weird to me. Chubs’s eyes light up when he is using his smarty pants ability, but like, how does that work? The ability kicks in when your brain decides: “no fucking way would this dumbass have figured out this puzzle without his ability, time to go green.” See what I mean? Chubs just has to think, everyone else is doing something. So it’s weird to see his eyes, idk maybe I’m just an idiot.

-The reds are horrid and part of me is glad there won’t be a second movie so they don’t make Cole look like a goddamn freak when he uses his ability.

THINGS THAT I LIKED:

-I applaud the efforts to remain close to the source material. Scarily close, like 80% of Chubs’s one liners are word-for-word in the book. The small things, like the socks, and Zu’s gloves, and the red dress, etc. They could have easily done something else but they didn’t. However, I’m taking off half a point because they didn’t put in the hand holding scene with Ruby and Liam in Betty, which is inarguably the best scene in the first book.

-Yo I love Harris Dickinson. Y'all can fight me but he made a great Liam. Only way to make him better was to give him a Southern drawl and a leather jacket.

-Patrick Gibson RULES. Plays Clancy so well. I’m biased because I knew him from the OA but holy fucking crap my guy, he is the goddamn best. Y'all better vibe check before you come at me with any other opinions about Pat.

-Costuming, SFX, acting, logistical etc. were great. I just think that it could have been longer, and simple exposition would have made everything better. So the script, basically. Fix the script. The directing wasn’t revolutionary or overly complicated or anything like that, but neither is every other YA movie adaptation ever made.

This is probably the most difficult review I’ve done yet… That reason being that I LOVED the books, they are still one of my favorite series to this day.  However, I saw the movie on Sunday night, and I can’t not post a review of it.  So, I’m sorry Darkest Minds fans, myself included, because we aren’t getting a sequel.  They did not do a good job.

Let me rephrase what I just said, because I have two opinions on this movie.  Whenever there is a book to movie adaptation of something I’ve read, I take my roommate with me to watch, because he offers a “non-reader” standpoint. 

So, as we were leaving the theater, I was on cloud 9.  He was sitting in the car next to me, being very quiet. I knew he didn’t like it and was afraid to say anything so he didn’t hurt my feelings, but I got him to budge and tell me his problems.  So that is why I like the movie, and I hate it.

I like it because this movie was made for me.  I hate it because…this movie was made for me.  The Darkest Minds fans love it because it is so accurate to the books! Is it, though?

The first half hour or so are so insanely accurate that I thought my head was going to explode.  Actually, as far as what we are seeing, the physical scenes, the entire movie was wildly accurate.  But it’s when we start to pay attention to what is actually happening that it starts falling apart. 

So Ruby is in a camp, it’s basically a concentration camp, and she’s hiding as a green.  Okay, but how did that happen?  Well, the doctor that examined her found out that she was an orange, and then Ruby made him change the test.  Yeah…but why is he able to do that?  Why does the computer allow him to manually change the results?  Does the machine sometimes not work? That’s the biggest ex-machina I’ve ever seen! Moving forward, she’s at this camp to be “reformed.”  Clancy was reformed, so she can be too!  Yeah, but 1 kid was reformed, are you telling me that parents across the US actually believe this? Millions of kids in camp, yet 1 was healed.  Wow, what a miracle! Take my kid!

The next problem is the camps themselves.  There was a specific line of narration or something that said “There is no economy.”  That line ruined the movie.  There’s no economy?  How is anything functioning?  The skip tracers, how are the bounties that they collect paid for?  How are the guards paid?  Where does the money that keeps these camps running come from?  If there’s no economy, how does the government pay for all of these camps, the guards, doctors, skip tracers, etc? Speaking of the camps, how are any of them still functioning?  You’re telling me that blues, who can move and control anything, are just…walking around?  Yellows are not restrained?  Blues are not restrained?  As if, those kids outnumber you 100 to 1, the camps would be taken over in a day.  Even in Caledonia, all it took was 1 blue to break the fence, then they are all home free! You’re telling me that it took years for someone to go, “Guys, we should break the fence!” The security is dumb enough to let the kids walk around unrestrained?  There’s no way in hell that any of those camps would have lasted more than a year. 

Also, what are other countries doing right now?  Since there is NO ECONOMY! If the US collapsed, the rest of the world is coming down with us, considering that we have ¼ of the world’s GDP.  Yeah, no, the world is screwed if America just suddenly decided to shut down. 

But okay, okay, let’s say it doesn’t.  Let’s say by some miracle, the rest of the world is fine.  They would still send resources?  And by resources, I mean people, of course.  They would want to help.  What happens when they come to help, realize that the camps are holding kids against their will and are torturing them?  The UN would immediately step in and stop every single camp.  I’m pretty sure it took the US 3 years to learn about Nazi concentration camps, and that was before the internet!  All it takes is one kid, guard, parent, etc. to find out and post something online, then it would be viral, and the world would be in uproar!  No way these camps last SIX YEARS!

Also this bothered me in the books too.  Why are the guards mean?  Like all of them?  They torture and beat these kids regularly.  Whether they’re scared or not, there is no way every single guard would be totally okay with beating kids, powers or no.  They’re still human, unless they only hire sociopaths to be PSF’s?

Okay, so I have more to say about the lack of world building, but y’all get my point.  Thanks for the socks scene Fox, but that ain’t gonna cut it.  I. Need. Exposition.  We. Want. Exposition!

Now let’s talk about the things they added in that were not in the books. 

Ruby not being white, who cares? Amandla stole the show.  Chubs being green?  Fits his personality better anyways.  The eye color thing?  It’s kind of dumb, because I’m pretty sure that the colors originally came from the defcon color severity system, which is the exact same way as it is in the movies (green meaning good, orange meaning bad).  So were the colors named after the defcon system, or the eyes?  If it was the eyes, then the defcon system just magically matched up perfectly?  I guess…

Anyways, I don’t really care about those changes.. I care about those two scenes, you know the two, that they added in that is just absolute garbage. 

The first scene being when Ruby goes back home after escaping the camps.  It goes exactly how everyone expected, being that Ruby can’t go home because her parents don’t remember her.  Why did they make that scene?  What purpose did that serve?  We knew exactly what was going to happen.  What did SHE think would happen?  Did she forget what she did? Of course she didn’t! That scene was stupid and should not have been a part of the movie. 

The second scene being that…thing at the end with football field and all the kids with paint or whatever.  I talked about this with @itsgalaxy29 and we had similar opinions. What the HELL was that? Those are the kids from East River, I think? Well no, there were not that many kids in East River.  So they were the Children’s League kids? So, movie, you’re telling me that they took kids from their duties, their missions, to go into a football field, not say a word, put paint on their hands and foreheads, and just…stand there? No, I can’t think about that scene for than one more minute without wanting to laugh. 

Next, let’s talk about pacing.  The movie went FAST!  The run-time with credits is 1hr 45min, why did they rush everything then?  That movie could have been amazing if they spent time world building, taken out the dumb scenes, and had the main actors actually learn stuff about each other.  A 2hr 30min movie is pretty common these days, so it’s not like they thought that it was too long.  I did not shed a single tear when Ruby took Liam’s memories.  Why?  Because I didn’t really care about them as a couple yet.  In the books they spend, like, months together!  The movie took place in…. a few weeks?  Sorry Liam, you don’t love Ruby yet.  Actually, you barely know Ruby.  We get no information about Zu and Chubs at all.  Chubs’s only purpose being to say kinda funny jokes, I guess.  Zu is there to lead her to the van and then literally becomes pointless the rest of the movie. The main cast, other than Ruby, gets no exposition whatsoever, and by the end of the movie we are supposed to care about what happens to them, yet we don’t.  Why should we?  We don’t even know Chubs’s last name! 

And finally, because I have already made this review freakishly long: Clancy.  The worst character by far.  In the books he is a troubled bad guy.  He has some semblance of good in him, yet he doesn’t do the right thing.  He’s basically Magneto.  Correct me if I’m wrong, but in the books, it isn’t Clancy’s fault that the camp gets compromised.  In the movie, Clancy has no reason to be the bad guy.  He was tortured by the government and his father for years, and once they ‘cure’ him….he helps them? The movie wants me to believe that Clancy is helping those who tortured him for years.  No.  He is a villain just so the movie has a villain.  We are given no reason for him to be the bad guy.  Why would he compromise his own camp?  What the hell was that harvest thing?  Is this his first ‘harvest,’ or does he do this often?  If he has done it before, how is he able to restart the camp?  Do new kids show up to just Clancy by himself…and stay?  That’s not suspicious at all!  And okay this made me so mad, but Chubs wanted to leave because…they made him work.  Chubs, of course you have to work!  Nothing would get done if the kids didn’t have jobs!  You can’t just sit around all day and do nothing!  The camp couldn’t physically function!

The problem with this movie is that it shows you the ‘what’ and not the ‘why.’ Fans love this movie so much because they get to see their characters doing what they did in the books.  People that haven’t read the books need an explanation as to what is happening and why!  That’s why the reviews are so bad.  They are lost.  They are left wondering what was happening in the last scene, and by then the movie has moved on to the next.  A good movie needs exposition, as to which this movie offers slim to none.  I originally liked the movie so much because I got see Liam, Ruby, Chubs, and Zu doing shenanigans.  My roommate had so many questions as to what was happening that he couldn’t like it.  That’s why the movie was made for me, someone who has read the book.  I don’t need the exposition, I know it already.  That doesn’t make it a good movie. They need to accommodate it to people that haven’t read the book. Otherwise 90% of their audience will be lost, which is what happened.

An old professor told me this, and Game of Thrones is a great example: foreshadowing is not character development.

Let me explain by talking about my absolute favorite character from Game of Thrones: Daenerys Targaryen. I’m going to go on a small rant after, but let me get my point across first. It has been argued that what Daenerys did in King’s Landing should not be surprising, because that’s what has been shown that that is what her character was going to do-become mad. I could not disagree more. Actually, her character’s theme was the exact opposite. Daenerys has always been fighting to prove and show the world that she is different. She stood for everything her family was not. She was the metaphorical and literal breaker of chains because she freed slaves and wanted to end the line of ruthless and greedy rulers. She wanted to show Westeros that a land can thrive and be at peace under the right rule. Now Daenerys isn’t dumb, and she knows it’s hard to be a ruler; heavy lies the crown. So, she surrounded herself with a council that she can trust to offer different points of view when she has to make hard decisions. Daenerys, and I cannot stress this enough, never showed any development toward being a mad queen. In fact, she constantly showed others that she is capable of being a ruler that will put her people first and make tough decisions that will be a step toward peace and happiness.

Arguments against this:

“Daenerys killing the Tarlys for not bending the knee.” I have heard many people say that this was a huge turning point for Dany because she did not show mercy and executed the Taryls without properly thinking of the consequences, aka being ruthless and unforgiving. Now, I’m not saying I agree with her, and that’s the whole point. Being a ruler is not easy. This show has showed countless times again and again of that fact, and sometimes a ruler has to execute someone to show power and fear so that more people don’t rise up to disagree with them. Rulers have to make hard decisions and sometimes that involves killing. You know who taught us that lesson in the very first episode? Ned Stark- arguably that most honorable person on the show. Who else has made the same decision? Jon Snow, who executed a child! Cersei Lannister. Cersei is also an interesting character because she would make very questionable decisions, but viewers could often understand why she did so. Why isn’t Daenerys given the same privilege?

“Dany had lost everything because of Cersei and her army, so it’s understandable that she would want to avenge those she had lost.” There are plenty of other people on the show who had lost everything and didn’t become insane. Arya, for one. Yes, she is a murderer, but so is everyone else on the show. She was still level-headed, sane, and made decisions after weighing the consequences. Sansa-she even gave a speech about how she was thankful for everything that happened to her because she wouldn’t be the same person that she grew up to be. Theon fucking Greyjoy! The only character in the last season that had a redemption arc and died a hero! Everyone had lost something, someone. And Dany was the one that went mad? Right as she had finally won? Right as she had gotten what she was destined to get, what she had worked for for a majority of her life? No. Dany said time and time again that she didn’t want to rule that way. She didn’t want to be the queen of ashes, she wanted her people to see that she cared about them and showed mercy. It makes zero sense for her to suddenly change her mind. She has been suffering and losing people she has loved since the first season, she knows how to bear the pain of those she has lost. She knew that had to be strong for the greater good of her people.

“It was in her blood. She was destined to go mad.” Two people come to mind when I think about how wrong this is. Jon and Rhaegar. I haven’t read much of the books so I only know what the show told of Rhaegar, but he was kind. Yes, lies were spread about him, but we knew that wasn’t him. He never showed any signs of going mad, in fact he loved Lyanna and died honorably in battle. Jon, obviously, comes from the same bloodline as Dany, and he absolutely did not agree with what Dany did. Yes, they were raised differently, and Dany was raised by Viserys, who was mad. But, did Dany ever actually agree with him? She was smart enough to know that her brother was mad and she never stood by what Viserys was trying to accomplish. So, no, I don’t think this argument is valid, either.

Okay, so I have shown that even if you think the show foreshadowed that Dany was going mad, you still have to show that. That’s what the writers didn’t do, and that’s why it felt so abrupt. The problem the writers faced is that if they were to show that Dany was going to go mad, we would have seen it, no matter how subtly they did so. So, instead of progressing her character normally and having her do this predictably, they wrote this plot point out of nowhere in an attempt to surprise the audience. That isn’t good writing. You can be surprising without being predictable. At the end of season 6 Cersei blew up the Red Keep. Did anyone predict that? No. Personally, I could understand why she did it even though I didn’t agree with it. It didn’t seem like an action her character wouldn’t have ever chosen, but it still surprised me. For both Cersei and Dany, instead of being given good character progression and reasonable decision making processes, they were shown to be irrational and too emotional to be good rulers.

me: