Movie Monday #17: Garroway Books

We are less than a year away from the theatrical release of The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones and the hype for the adaptation of the internationally best selling series by Cassandra Clare will only continue to grow as the release draws nearer.

I’ve banded together with other Mortal Instruments fansites (TMI Source, Mundie Moms,TMI Examiner and TMI News en Espanol) for a weekly feature called Movie Monday.

Each Monday leading up to the August 23, 2013, release of The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones, we will take a look at a scene, moment, detail, etc. and give our opinions on how we think it will be interpreted in the big screen adaptation.


This week I let Shannon take the helm to talk in more depth about the scene(s) that will be at Luke's bookstore. Here's what she had to say:


I think the scenes shot at Luke's store will be a big turning point in the movie. Clary has just been introduced to the Shadowhunter world and learned that her mother was more involved than she ever expected and Jace is about to see the two men that he thinks murdered his father. I think this scene will show a transition in character development and is when the adventure will truly begin.

So in City of Bones Clary has just ventured through the portal, her first portal ride, as she is still a complete novice to the ins and outs of the Shadowhunter world, and Jace has just gone in after her knowing the dangers of travelling through an unidentified portal. They arrive at Luke's and all seems harmless enough until they enter the store and walk through into Luke's home. They see manacles on the wall and Jace discovers various weapons which Clary always assumed were Luke's collectables. The store (though the name is not mentioned in the book, is indeed called 'Garroway Books and Curios') It wouldn't be out of the ordinary for Luke to have these kinds of objects in his possession. 

 

However, when Simon (who has been hiding out in Luke's bushes), Clary and Jace hear voices, they hide behind a room divider and watch as a banged up Luke arrives with two mysterious men in robes who begin to question him about Jocelyn and the child. This a big moment for Clary, she watches as Luke packed up his things and a great amount of weapons, she listens to him plead his innocence to these two men. She feels betrayed. For Jace it's an even bigger moment: he sees the two men he believes to have killed his father right before his eyes. 

What a traumatic experience! Tough-as-nails-Jace reverts back to that little boy who lost his father at a young age, left parentless in the world. Clary witnesses the only man she's ever thought of as a father figure deny her. 

There are no small, insignificant scenes in City of Bones and just the same, after being on set, I realize that there are no small, insignificant scenes in City of Bones the movie either. When reading the book this scenes may seem like a pass over section, a part that just bridges the next "big" event but in itself, this small scenes packs a hell of a lot of impact into the storyline. The crew spent 2 days building Luke's store on set and the studio spent an entire week filming there! That tells me that this scene is HUGE! I strongly believe they've built the scene up a bit more, maybe they've added in some sort of foreshadowing, other insight from one of the characters' POV. They filmed during the day and they filmed in the middle of the night so clearly there's more than one thing going on there or maybe it's a multitude of scenes! A inflated fall pad for stunts hung from a crane just below the roof of the building—someone's jumping off the roof! There was an old model fire truck on standby, whether it was part of the scene or was actually there for safety reasons, that's yet to be determined but either way the efforts put into this scene are ample example of magnitude of this part of the story both in the book and in the film. I cannot stress enough what a fabulous job I think the studio is doing in adapting this book into film. They are truly doing City of Bones justice and when I sit in that theatre and watch the ending credits roll I will applaud and give a standing ovation. 

 

You can read what the other TMI bloggers think by going to the Movie Monday post at TMISOURCE.com.