Ruby and the Black Betty crew are on the road. The Darkest Minds, based on the best-selling series by Alexandra Bracken, premiered in theaters on August 3rd and it’s a roller coaster of mixed feelings. Good movie but not so good adaptation? Tale as old as time.
Alex Bracken is one of my all-time-favorite authors and The Darkest Minds will always have a special place in my heat. That’s why I was really really expecting to love this movie. Right since the beginning I was super on board with the project and excited because Ruby’s story deserved to have its movie version. So, my stakes were high – maybe too high, and that’s why I have a lot to say about it.
In TDM we follow the story of Ruby Daly, a sixteen year old girl that survived an epidemic when she was ten. But she’s not the only one. Like every child that survived the IAAN (Idiopathic Adolescent Acute Neurodegeneration) outbreak, she developed unnatural and dangerous powers and is sent to a rehabilitation camp where the Government claim they could cured her.
But the truth is that they are not curing them, not in Thurmond nor any other camp. The people in charge has no idea to what to do with the Psy-Kids so they have a more permanent solution. “The Government was never scared of the kids who might die, or the empty spaces they could leave behind. They were afraid of us – the ones who lived.”
The one that survived developed different abilities and were separated in 5 groups: Green for the ones with super intelligence – that were almost functional, Blue for the ones with telekenesis – not a problem if the behaved and do what they were told, Yellow, really useful because they have the power to control electricity. And finally there were the Red – Pyrokenesis – and Orange – mind control… for them the path was clear, they were killed on sight.
As an Orange, Ruby decided that she did not survived IAAN to be killed by te grown ups that were supposed to help her. So when her parents turn her to the authorities and she’s sent to Thurmond, she manages to pass as a Green and that’s how she lives until one day everything goes wrong.
Now Ruby is free and thrown into a world where the only way to survive is to embrace who she is. On the road she would discover that is okay to trust in people sometimes, like Liam, Chubs and Zu – other Psy-Kids that she encountered. But not everyone wants to help her and she must do whatever it takes to protect herself and the ones she’s learning to love.
I must admit that during the first hours after I watched the movie, I didn’t like it. In fact, I almost hated it. I was so excited to see it, I watched it on released day, and I wasn’t delivered what I wanted. Now, a few days later, my opinion has changed considerably. The movie was good, it as enjoyable and funny but it felt almost as a dystopian rom-com. If you haven’t read the books, maybe you would enjoy it a lot more than I did.
But I read the books and that was my biggest problem with the film. It was my fault because I couldn’t separate the fact that they’re two completely different things. The big problem was that the movie, for me, it didn’t do justice to the greatness and perfection of the book. Bracken created one of the most compelling and devastating stories ever, she has a way for words and crated complex characters that grow with every turn of the page.
In the end, I didn’t see that on the screen and the thing is, I’m afraid someone passed the chance to get to know this amazing story because the movie wasn’t enough. But the movie is good.
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The plot centers on Ruby and Liam’s love story and, even tho I love them and their relationship is really important for the story to develop, there is a lot more happening that didn’t make it to the final cut. Ruby’s journey through this first installment feels too rush and lost in all the cute scenes between them. Her personality – or lack of it – doesn’t strike me as the broken girl that has been tortured at Thurmond. Same with Liam, who is far from the positive kid despite everything that he’s been through that sometimes let the pain slide.
“The most important thing you ever did was learn how to survive. Do not let anyone make you feel like you shouldn’t have – like you deserved to be in that camp. You are important, and you matter. You matter to me, you matter to the League, and you matter to the future.”
The Children League and Thurmond are rally important for the plot because they built the nature of the main characters and by only showing a glimpse of them it feels as less of an impact on the kids. These children don’t trust in any adult – why would they?
They are hunted by the Government, who is trying to kill them; the Children League want to use them and the Bounty Hunters want to sell them. The crew is on the run, trying to find East River, a Paradise for the survivors run by some mysterious kid who has escaped from four camps. They don’t know in who could trust and not every Psy-Kid out there is good news… and yet the movie choose to center on Ruby and Liam and how they fell in love while traveling through the woods, until the end. And, for a movie that is based on a relationship, the lack of chemistry in the couple is too strong. They weren’t my Ruby and Liam… my heart was deeply invested in Book Ruby and Book Liam, I laughed, I cried and I felt all kind of emotions through the book because of those two… that didn’t happened during the movie.
They are broken by a system that was supposed to protect them. Book-Zu is so affraid that she doesn’t even speak! Did someone asked in the movie why she doesn’t talk? No, not even once Ruby ask about it. She jumps into Black Betty and is not intrigued by the fact that the little girl doesn’t say a word. Yes, she saw how Zu and Liam escaped from Caledonia, but that was it.
When the movie reach the point that they made it to East River it felt as forever. We find out that the leader of the camp, the man behind the safe heaven that is almost a Utopia, is no other than Clancy Gray. He’s the supposedly cured son of President Gray… and they burned the whole Clancy plot way too soon and not in the clever way Bracken did it in the book. It was clumsy and obvious and too careless.
He’s a bastard that uses the children the same way the adults did, only that he’s worst because he was used and studied because of his abilities – he’s an orange, like Ruby. Clancy is the most interesting character from the whole series. He’s so messed up by his parents experimenting on him that is the perfect example for the “Monsters are made” that I can think about. He’s intelligent, clever, cunning and smart and I didn’t see any of those things in the movie. If anything, he’s a faint shadow from the Clancy that needed to be.
Rant moment: one thing that really pissed me off was the fact that when they showed the flashes of Clancy’s procedure, they showed grown-up-Clancy and that is unacceptable. The whole point of this story was that IAAN affected only children around 10 or 11 years old, and Clancy was that age… Why did they have to show a teenage Clancy? It’s not some minor mistake or some change that didn’t affect the story. It just doesn’t make any sense.
Rant moment nº2: What was going on with the eyes?! Who was the genius behind the idea of those kid having the color of their power… in their eyes?! I get that its a way of representation and the fact that some Colors could hide their abilities, like the Greens… I know that unless you give them green eyes while using their power, you would never knew that they had powers. But it didn’t made sense. The Color Scale was set because of the danger they represented… not because they had those colors. I. JUST. CAN’T.
Rant over.
I know that by now I should know better about what to expect from a book-to-movie adaptation and that I have to separate the original story with what I see on the screen. That’s why I wanted to wait a few days and let all the stuff sink in. The movie is good and I recommend it, my brother didn’t read the books and he really enjoyed it!
Because I know that my judgement is clouded by my love for the books is only fair to point all the great parts of the film! So here they are.
First of all, shout out to 20th Century FOX for making it and for doing a really good job explaining how the events went, it mustn’t been easy.
I loved how they included the exact same lines from te book in the most crucial parts and even tho the essence of Ruby, Clancy and Liam weren’t that represented, Chubs was still Chubs and that made me so happy!
As I said before, the movie was good and you should go and see it because Alex Bracken deserve it. If they decide on continuing with the series – which I hope they do because every persona in the world has to know about this story – they have a pretty solid base to work with and improve.
The Darkest Minds is now on theaters.
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