7 Reasons Films Based On Young Adult Novels Normally Suck

What is it about the tagline "Based on the Young Adult Bestseller" that sends chills down our spines?

Vampire Academy What is it about the tagline "Based on the Young Adult Bestseller" that sends chills down my spine? Young Adult bestsellers (especially fantasy and science fiction ones) are responsible for some very successful and well-made films. Harry Potter and The Hunger Games have proven to the moviegoing world that literature aimed at young adults can be a source of compelling stories. However, for every Harry Potter, there is six or seven Eragons. And for every Hunger Games, there are several films like The Host. And then there's Twilight - the crowning achievement in overdrawn cliche right down to the bland color palette and boring characters. We just saw several new additions to the genre, Mortal Instruments: City of Bones and Vampire Academy to name a few, and more often then not they get released onto the public to critical derision and public indifference. With the impending release of Divergent, a post apocalyptic young adult oriented blockbuster promising not to be as good as the Hunger Games, I've assembled a list of reasons why films based on young adult novels tend to be really awful, despite their occasional tenacity at the box office. Read on, and enjoy! What do you think? Will Divergent break the mold and become a success like The Hunger Games? Or will it become an unwatchable failure like The Host? Speak your mind in the comments!
 
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Self-evidently a man who writes for the Internet, Robert also writes films, plays, teleplays, and short stories when he's not working on a movie set somewhere. He lives somewhere behind the Hollywood sign.