We went. We saw. We loved! By Leelo Book-to-Movie #1

It's not often that Lady J and I have the chance to experience together the 'book turned into a movie phenomenon' , as I like to call it. Past experience have lead us both, and I'm sure other book lovers out there would agree, to realize that watching the movie will never surpass the initial awesomeness derived from reading the book. Don't mess with an awesome thing I think. 

Leave well enough alone and don't anger the book lovers!!! 

We are fiercely loyal to our character imagery and, by far, prefer not to tarnish our imaginations and our memory with story-line hack jobs, plot cut-backs and character misrepresentations. 

Of the most recent 'book turned into a movie' phenoms is The Mortal Instruments-City of bones. Total hack-job. I for one detested the choices of actors. Firstly, the book was such a trial for me personally that I was eager for it to redeem itself with its movie version. Sadly, this was not to be so. I felt like it was a waste of  my time and despite my 3 Sugars-Teacup Rating, I was actually super excited to watch the movie......but no, Hollywood was Hollywood and I vowed to never again get my hopes up.

The proof is in the purchase!

Then! Divergent. 

Veronica Roth (the author) changed my mind. So yeah, intriguing story line and well developed characters and ingenious twists. The makings of something special, right. I was psyched to see what could possibly be done to absolutely destroy how much I loved this book. I was practically begging them to mess it up, to trash all the good memories of my time reading the book. With Lady J by my side I braved the cinema to gorge my eyes. We had counted the days, giddy with anticipation. I must say, I was wonderfully surprised. It was fast paced, well thought out in regard to the true gist of the story. There was action, romance, humor and, yes, the tear-jerker moments that I thought captured the essence of the book. No amount of trepidation could have held me back from catching glimpses of scenes and trailers over the months leading to the movie's release on March 21st 2014. I couldn't quite get my fill of all the buzz worthy news. Lady J, however, did not care for the choices of actors. I was already smitten with Theo James, after having seen him in the NBC series Golden Boy. He could have worn a grass skirt in the movie and I probably, most likely, definitely would have watched the movie.

                                                                             

Did you not see that tattoo????

And Shailene Woodley for Tris was a surprising choice to me. She was virtually unknown to me and I sort of  liked it, but stubbornly I reserved the right to not love what she brought to one of my favourite characters to date. Even though, I have to mention that what I envisioned Four and Tris to look like was nothing like Theo or Shailene. I agreed with Lady J there. Still, I held back my reservations. I allowed myself to get totally pumped to see the movie. And we loved it!
I understood that certain scenes from the book could not be included in the movie and in retrospect I agree that certain things that were left out could have been, for the sake of movie-time constraints and scene flow. I also enjoyed what Theo and Shailene brought to the characters in their emotions. I felt Tris' vulnerability and eventually her evolution as she saw her world changing. There was a hardness to Four in the initial part of the story that Theo captured beautifully without being totally unlikable and as he slowly came to realize his feelings for Tris, it was wonderful to watch it played out by Theo on screen.

I will allow myself one more Fangirl moment......

Good. Now that it's out of my system I can say:

"I adored the movie, so go read the book!"