Upon joining the shadow-hunters after the disappearance of her mother, Clary and her companions must find and protect an ancient cup that holds the key to her mother's future.
If you can overlook the lack of originality, the film actually makes a good fist of making something fresh and appealing from its second-hand ingredients.
The character development and story beats are quite predictable and that's the irony of Zwart's film: he's made a mundane movie for an audience of mundanes.
Awful, expensive, over-long, unremittingly dull attempt to start a Twilight-like franchise... plans were already underway for the sequel before this was released. They might just want to wait to see if anybody's interested first.
Hollywood has more than enough high-caliber young adult lit to mine. Filmmakers should tap into richer human stories. We mere mortals would dearly appreciate it.
'Author' Cassandra Clare assumes that you have never seen a film or read a book in your entire life. She steals plot details from Star Wars, Harry Potter and Twilight and assumes that no one will notice. I did.
It didn't help that the execution of the complex storyline was so messy and confusing that it was difficult to understand why the villain was doing what he was doing.
Every fantasy creature except zombies get a workout in this overstuffed spectacle about a teenage girl who discovers she has angelic blood in her veins.
