Remember the good ole days, when movie theatres were open and books were being split in half to make two mediocre movies that we all loved and cried about? I think about those days fondly.
The early 2010s were rife with adaptations of teen books into kind-of-okay movies, and last week I fell down a BookTube hole and was reminded of some of them. Check out this list of book-to-movie adaptations that seem to have been forgotten, written by a person who has done no research at all to help her remember them.
Vampire Academy (book 2007, movie 2014)
A half-vampire high school student struggles to keep her codependent best friend from being killed, while also seducing her teacher. I’ll be honest, twelve-year-old Meghan loved these books, but on closer reflection, they contained a plethora of VERY problematic subjects, including student/teacher relationships, codependent relationships, magic roofies and more. The books also had an inconsistent tone, dealing with both serious threats and high school drama in an awkward balance that didn’t always work.
The movie decided to commit more to the high school drama, which was not quite the way to go, as that tends to be the least compelling thing about teen supernatural stories. A lot of the lore and character dynamics were watered down, eliminating a lot of the stuff that made teens forgive the problems with the books. While the film did have some fun scenes, it was definitely forgettable, and no sequels ever came of it.
Beautiful Creatures (book 2009, movie 2013)
Witches in a southern town choose either the light or the dark on their sixteenth birthday, but for some, they don’t have a choice. I honestly barely remember this book except that it had a pretty cover, but from what I do remember there was a rocky balance between romance, high school drama and the magic stuff, and the magic system was poorly explained.
The film is apparently better than the book?? I’m not sure I believe that. If I’m honest, I watched the movie first and hated it, but if I’m being even more honest, it’s because I’m allergic to bad southern accents, and this movie is full of them. It’s also full of some pretty incredible talent, which makes the accents even more upsetting.
Beastly (book 2007, movie 2011)
A man who’s beautiful on the outside but ugly on the inside gets Uno-reversed and uses Stockholm syndrome to find love. It’s a tale as old as time. This book kind of fell flat as a fairytale retelling, or even as a story in its own right. There were things added to the plot (like the love interest’s father being involved with crime or something??) which had no real impact on the plot and just felt unnecessary. And yet, where this modern adaptation could have challenged the issues with the source material, Beauty and the Beast, it didn’t!
The movie was pretty lackluster. Vanessa Hudgens was distracting, but not because she did anything wrong – I was just expecting her to break into song and it was upsetting when she didn’t. Also, they didn’t make Alex Pettyfer ugly enough! Like yeah, the metal and open face wounds and tattoos were kind of weird, but they could have gone WAY harder. They didn’t do enough to hide his Alex Pettyfer-ness, and so it was just unbelievable throughout the entire film that she didn’t recognize him. Luckily, unlike the other entries on this list, this book is a standalone (it’s part of a series of fairytale retellings connected by an Olsen-twin fairy, but this story ends here), which means this movie didn’t kill a franchise. It just kind of sucked independently.
Fallen (book 1998, movie 2016)
Two people who are horrible to each other are cursed to ruin each other’s lives for eternity. This book is terrible. I’m sorry to anyone who likes it, but I just remember hating the main character, hating the love interest, hating the side characters—no one in this book was a good person and it was really hard to get behind the flimsy love story that held the rest of the book together since I loathed both characters individually, and I disliked them together even more.
I’ll be honest. I didn’t watch this movie. It came out later than the others when the YA adaptation fad was already kind of dead (I think Divergent and Maze Runner were still finishing up, but the big money makers had already wrapped up at this point) and I feel like no one really knew about it? I don’t know, I hated the book way too much to ever subject myself to the movie, and from what I can tell, not a lot of people got around to watching it. Probably a good call.
Alright, that’s it. There were other movies I wanted to put on this list, but I couldn’t remember enough about the books or films to write about them, which, while on-topic, makes for poor writing, so I’ll leave it at this. Do you remember any of these books or their adaptations? Were there any you really liked or didn’t? Why or why not? I would love to know.
Unless it’s Fallen. I don’t want to talk about that one.