Fanfiction and the Movies

The big screen adaptation of "Mortal Instruments: City of Bones" hit the screens last weekend, and has not been well received, but has lead to some interesting discussions about fanfiction and film. Many reviewers have latched on to the factoid that "Mortal Instruments" had its origins in "Harry Potter" fanfiction, back when author Cassandra Clare went by Cassandra Claire, and made Draco Malfoy the hero of her fanfiction stories. Well, whether they were entirely her stories is debatable, but let's save that for another time.

In "Mortal Instruments" Draco became Jace and Hermione became Clary, much in the same way that "Twilight" heroine Bella became Ana and Edward became Christian in "Fifty Shades of Gray." The new characters are distinct, but the echoes of their origins are hard to escape. I've seen some writers use the video game term "expy" to describe them, short for exported character, where the template of a previous character is used in a new scenario with only superficial changes to create a new one, often filling the same role in the new story. Officers Stephens and Ramirez in "The Dark Knight," for example, are slightly altered versions of Batman universe mainstays, Bullock and Montoya. While expys can become full-fledged, independent characters with a little effort, the term is often used negatively, applied to those characters who are easily recognizable as being a rip-off or a reworking of someone familiar. You'll see the more blatant ones used as cameos or homages, which is when they seem to work best.

No surprise that critics are decrying "Mortal Instruments" for being derivative, many taking the time to tie the film's weaknesses to the fact that its source material was fanfiction, and pointing out all the elements that came from "Harry Potter." I find this unfair for a couple of reasons. First, Hollywood movies have long been guilty of turning out derivative films full of derivative characters. Think of the dependence on certain big name actors who keep playing the same roles over and over again. Tom Cruise and Denzel Washington play minor variations on their most usual movie personas in most of their action movies, only breaking out the real acting chops for Oscar season. Think of all the rom-coms with interchangeable plot complications. Think of all the "Twilight" and "Potter" clones that weren't based on fanfiction. The familiarity was probably a big factor in getting the "Mortal Instruments" movie made in the first place. Studio executives love being able to boil down concepts into references to earlier hits, so "Mortal Instruments" being "Harry Potter" crossed with "Twilight" was almost certainly a selling point. And when they get their hands on more off-the-beaten-path source material, like "The Dark is Rising" or "The Golden Compass," they tend to dumb them down do everything possible to make them look more generic and familiar.

Fanfiction and Hollywood would seem to be a match made in heaven, except that's a misunderstanding of what fanfiction is for. Sure, fanfiction is derivative in that it depends on existing characters and concepts for effectiveness, but it's transformative of these elements rather than slavishly repetitive. The whole idea is that fan stories use the existing characters in ways that the original authors can't or won't. The best fanfiction is often the wildest stuff - deconstructions, subversions. parodies, crossovers, alternate universes, genre experiments, and metatextual commentary. Part of the reason romance fanfiction is so prevalent is because many popular characters come from media that isn't inclined to provide much romance to an audience that can't get enough of it. While "Mortal Instruments" may have its roots in fanfiction, it's not fanfiction. It shed the concept of turning a recognizably villainous character into a hero when it became original fiction, and stopped engaging with the original "Harry Potter" text. Instead, "Mortal Instruments" is better described as yet another in a long line of "Potter" clones.

Mainstream movies, dominated by endless franchises that only allow stories to move forward at an incremental pace, that keep remaking the same properties over and over with only minimal differences, are antithetical to the anarchic creative urges responsible for the best fanfiction. Occasionally Hollywood makes movies that do qualify as fanfiction - "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter," "Oz the Great and Powerful" - but it's only rarely that you find one that really gets the point, like "Inglorious Basterds" or "Cabin in the Woods." A proper "Harry Potter" fanfiction movie would follow the "Potter" kids twenty years in the future trying to deal with middle age problems, or retell events from Luna Lovegood's point of view as a musical satire, or reveal the secret affair that was going on the whole time between Professor McGonagall and Professor Trelawny, or at the very least add a few sex scenes. If "Mortal Instruments" is to be counted as "Harry Potter" fanfiction, it's the worst kind - a boring, uncreative, unchallenging retread of terribly familiar ground.

And with a Mary Sue heroine too. Tsk, tsk.
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