DATE REVIEWED: 4/16/24
TITLE: The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones
BOX OFFICE RATED: PG-13 (This is not suitable for GOD’s children.)
PRODUCTION YEAR: 2013 Screen Gems / Constantin Film International GmbH (Germany) / Unique Features (TMI) Inc. / Sony Pictures Home Entertainment / Entertainment One (Canada) / Don Carmody Productions
RATING [1 LEAST FAVORITE TO 5 HIGHLY RECOMMENDED]: 1
REASON: This movie takes place in New York, where Jocelyn Fray, a British artist, noticed that her teenage daughter Clary (whose dad died when she was two) had unconsciously and repeatedly had drawn a strange symbol. It was Clary’s birthday and she decided she wanted to attend a poetry reading in the big city with her friend, Simon. However, the poetry was perverted and spoke about disease so they left. Clary spotted the queer symbol again on a sign outside of a punk club that she wanted to go to so stopped to find out what it meant. Simon and the security guard couldn’t see the symbol, but a guy told the guard to let Clary in because he knew the teen girl could see it. A group of three people then restrained that guy with snakes and their leader, Jace Wayland, stabbed him with a sword to kill him. Clary was horrified and was the only person who saw anything. The next morning, Clary woke up to find her hands dirty and dozens of papers around her room with the strange symbol that she must have done, but didn’t remember. Jocelyn tried to tell Clary that Simon wanted more from her than brotherly love, and Clary retorted that Jocelyn was stringing along both Luke Garroway and the one mysterious buyer of all of her paintings. Clary explained everything to Simon at a cafe, but then she freaked out when Jace appeared in front of her. She went out back to talk to Jace and find out why she was drawing the symbol.Meanwhile, two scary Australian blocks with a Rottweiler knocked the door off Jocelyn’s apartment and demanded to know where the Mortal Cup was. The hired thugs attacked Jocelyn, and she beat one up with a frying pan and shut his head in the fridge. Jocelyn was able to get away for a moment and called Clary (Clary didn’t answer her cell phone call from her mom the first time because she was too distracted with the new boy). Jocelyn told her daughter not to return home because it was no longer safe, but to tell Luke that Valentine Morgenstern was alive and found Jocelyn. The dangerous men reached Jocelyn again so he drank a questionable substance from a vial that made her appear dead and then she was taken captive. Clary ran home to the trashed apartment and knocked over and injured a bicyclist along the way and she nearly got run over by cars as the teen carelessly ran across the street in front of traffic. The Rottweiler dog turned into a monstrous demon and went after Clary, so the teen girl made and set off a bomb using the microwave in the kitchen and the devil dog blew up with it. But, the demon creature soon put itself back together until Jace appeared and stabbed it to death. Jace explained that the dog was a demon and so was the guy at the club who Jace killed, and demons could take any form such as animal or human. Jace told Clary not to trust anyone because demons could be anything. Clary went to her neighbor, Madame Dorothea who owned a psychic business out of her apartment, for help, and she could see Jace too because Jace said Dorothea was a witch. They consulted the tarot cards that were painted by Jocelyn. The one that Clary was picked was the Ace of Cups, and Jace explained that it was the Mortal Cup, one of the three holy Mortal Instruments of his people, the British Shadowhunters, who Jocelyn was one of. Dorothea tried to read Clary’s mind but couldn’t because Jocelyn hired someone to protect Clary from her memories.Clary heard someone in her apartment next door so went after them with the fire extinguisher, but she only discovered it Simon after she hit him hard over the back of the head with it multiple times. Jace made himself visible to Simon, and then they found the vial in the trashed apartment that Jocelyn had drank from. Clary discovered that Simon didn’t answer Jocelyn when she called him on his cell phone for help, but Clary didn’t answer Jocelyn’s first call for help either. The trio went to Luke’s place and found him chained to a chair by Valentine’s two henchmen. Pangborn punched Luke in the face and demanded to know where the Cup was, and then he humped Luke’s leg like a dog and wanted him to change into his true werewolf self. Luke used reverse psychology to tell Pangborn that he never cared about Jocelyn and Clary and he wanted to turn Jocelyn over to Valentine, but Pangborn didn’t believe him. Clary didn’t want anything to happen to Luke so she begged Jace to help. Jace attacked Valentine’s minions and then stabbed and killed two NYPD police officers that arrived on scene, but Jace said the cops were actually demons. Clary had a breakdown in the street, but Jace reassured her that he would protect her. Jace took Clary and Simon to a hidden cathedral called the Institute, where Clary came down with the fever from a demon bite. Jace healed the wound using a rune, and it left a symbol tattoo on Clary’s arm like the tattoos the other Shadowhunters had. Clary didn’t die from the rune so they knew she had Shadowhunter blood. Jace explained that without the Mortal Cup the remaining Shadowhunters would die, and if someone wasn’t born a Shadowhunter they would become one by drinking from the Cup. Isabelle told Simon that Jace’s dad was murdered when he was a child. Werewolves, vampires and warlocks were not demons but they were Downworlders, and the Shadowhunters had a truce with werewolves. Hodge explained to Clary that the Crusaders summoned the angel Raziel, and he poured his blood into a Cup. Anyone who drank from it became a Shadowhunter, a half angel and half human being who fought to protect the world from evil and demons. Valentine Morgenstern enlisted the help of other Shadowhunters to steal the Cup from the Clave. Valentine experimented with the Cup and tried to evolve the Shadowhunters into something more powerful. He was able to summon demons and he injected himself with demon blood to control them. Jocelyn stole the Cup from Valentine to stop him. Hodge suggested that Jocelyn told Clary where the Cup was. Jace took Clary to the Silent Brothers’ lair in the graveyard. In the City of Bones, the Silent Brothers drew power from the bones and ashes of the Shadowhunters buried there. They put Clary in a trance and helped her remember bits and pieces of meeting Luke and her mom hiding her Shadowhunter self as Clary grew up. Clary wrote down the name Bane, and they realized that Magnus Bane, the High Warlock of Brooklyn, was the one who put the mind block on Clary. Isabelle gave teen Clary prostitute clothes to wear to Magnus’s party, where gay Magnus called Isabelle’s brother, Alec, hot. Magnus explained that Jocelyn wanted Clary to forget things as soon as she thought them, so she regularly took Clary to be treated by Magnus after Clary started drawing the angelic rune symbol. Magnus’s mind block was wearing off so Clary was able to remember things. Clary realized that Magnus was the one person that bought all of her mom’s paintings and Magnus explained that he knew that Jocelyn needed money to pay the bills. Clary recognized another painting that Jocelyn made of a soldier and Magnus told Clary that the man wasn’t her dad as Jocelyn had told her daughter he was, but the man was actually just a random soldier who died in Iraq. Magnus told Clary that if she found the Cup she would find Jocelyn, and that Jocelyn was running from the Shadowhunters. Vampires then poisoned Simon’s drink and kidnapped him, so Clary and the Shadowhunters went to a church to stock up on weapons hidden beneath the altar. Jace said that the Shadowhunters belonged to no religion but all religions helped his people. Alec didn’t like Clary and believed that she would get them killed because she grew up different than them, but Jace liked that Clary was different. The group went into the vampires’ lair at the hotel, where they found Simon hanging from the ceiling in chains. They rescued him but were then surrounded by vampires. They and the Shadowhunters battled, and teen Clary killed one vampire with a gun that Jace had earlier given her with a quick lesson on how to use it. The werewolves, led by Luke, then appeared and attacked the remaining vampires. Back at the Institute, Alec confronted Clary and told her to leave and stay away from Jace. She accused Alec of being in love with Jace and being jealous that he liked Clary and not Alec. Alec threatened to kill Clary if she ever said that again. Out of the blue, Simon realized that he no longer needed his glasses because his vision was now perfect. Jace played the piano and told Clary that Bach was a Shadowhunter and composed music that drove demons insane so they could be identified. Jace opened the Portal and told Clary that she needed training to learn to focus on what she was after in the Portal (her mom), otherwise she would get lost in her mind forever. Jace demonstrated and then took Clary to the garden to celebrate her birthday that he knew was that day because he researched her in order to find her. Jace said that when he was nine, his dad gave him a falcon and told him to tame it. Jace did, but then his dad broke the bird’s neck and scolded Jace for making the bird love him and not just teaching it to be obedient. The clock struck midnight, and Jace gave Clary a witchlight and then Jace and Clary made out kissing passionately. Simon found Clary’s notebook with a drawing of Jace. Simon spotted them kissing, and Simon and Jace were both confused and thought that Clary invited the other into bed. Simon told Clary that he was in love with her and had always been there for her, but now he realized she didn’t feel the same way about him and instead liked Jace, who he believed was just using her to get the Cup. Clary then found out that she had the ability to put objects into books and take them out again. Hodge appeared and told her that Jocelyn also had that ability. Clary convinced the Shadowhunters to go with her to Dorothea’s apartment to look at the tarot cards again. While there, Clary pulled the Mortal Cup out of the Ace of Cups card. Jace played the piano, and Dorothea was annoyed by it and told him to stop. The Madame psychic then turned into her demon self and attacked Clary, and the Shadowhunters went after demon Dorothea and she attacked them too. Simon came to the door looking for Clary, and he tried to fight Dorothea when Clary told him through the window that the psychic was a demon. Jace finished Dorothea off by stabbing her, and Alec was injured from the battle. The runes didn’t work on Alec, so Isabelle blamed Clary and Jace. Clary gave the Cup to Hodge, and then he turned out to be a traitor and summoned Valentine from the Portal. Valentine took the Cup and claimed that Clary was his daughter and that Jocelyn was hiding Clary and not the Cup. Valentine told Clary to drink from the Cup so she could join him. Instead, Clary put the Cup back in the card and jumped through the Portal because she believed that was where Jocelyn was being kept. Clary witnessed Luke, as his werewolf self, kill a young girl who was really a demon. Luke explained that he was on her side and only said he didn’t care about her and Jocelyn to protect them. Clary realized that Luke was the leader of the werewolves who helped the Shadowhunters fight the vampires at the hotel. Luke explained that Valentine was Clary’s dad and Valentine was afraid of being punished by the Clave for his wicked deeds, so he burned his house to the ground to make everyone think he was dead. In the ashes were the remains of Valentine and Jocelyn’s son, Jonathan Christopher Morgenstern. Hodge kept his side of the bargain to retrieve the cup for Valentine and demanded that he lift the curse the Clave put on Hodge to prevent him from ever leaving the Institute. Valentine refused and announced that the broken made the best followers and to love was to destroy. Hodge summoned the demons to invade the Institute. Magnus appeared and healed Alec. Valentine, desperate for control, told Jace that he was Valentine’s son and Clary’s sister (disgusting since the two already kissed passionately). Jace refused to believe it, so Valentine flipped Jace’s “W” ring upside down to an “M” for Morgenstern and not Wayland. Simon and Isabelle found Jocelyn’s unconscious body inside the Institute, so Simon called Clary to tell her. Luke called his werewolf buddies, and they went to the Institute in their human form so they wouldn’t be breaking the rules. Clary used a rune that wasn’t in the book to hold off the demons momentarily, and the werewolves had no power in human form when they tried to fight the demons. Luke’s friend Alaric was killed, and Luke was injured. Pangborn tried to kill Luke, but Luke killed Pangborn first by turning into a werewolf and attacking him. Valentine told Clary and Jace they were his children and his son was not dead because the remains found in the fire were those of a child killed by wolves. Jace and Valentine fought viciously as Isabelle kept the demon bats away with fire and Simon struggled to pull the lever and close the dome to keep the demons out. Hodge fought and killed Valentine’s other henchman and the demons so Simon and Isabelle could get away. Valentine was about to impale Jace on a sword, but then Clary threatened to drop the Cup in the Portal. She told Valentine that he wasn’t her dad and never would be because he didn’t care about her or know her. She gave him the Cup and kicked him into the Portal, but then he grabbed her and tried to pull her in. Jace was able to pull Clary out and the Portal was destroyed. Jocelyn was taken to the hospital, and Luke stayed by her side while they waited for her to wake up from her coma. Simon told Clary that he loved her even if she didn’t love him. Jace and Clary didn’t believe that they were siblings, and he told her that he needed her and so did the Shadowhunters. Clary left the mom behind that drugged herself and then rode off with her boyfriend Jace on his motorcycle.This movie had a budget of $60 million and grossed over $95 million at the box office. The movie cover art listed, Shawn Edwards, FOX-TV, “More exciting than The Hunger Games.”