7 Reasons Films Based On Young Adult Novels Normally Suck

2. Uninteresting Protagonists

Why hello, Bella. You knew you were getting a shout-out here, didn't you? Screenwriters must always be aware that if their protagonist is not contributing to the plot, audience members will start to ask questions like, "Why should I care about this story if the protagonist doesn't?", or just get bored with the whole thing and stop watching. However, novel writers have an easy way out - by using inner monologue, they can explain paralysis from the emotional perspective of the character, effectively distracting the reader from the fact that their character is not an active agent in their own story. Bella from Twilight is the textbook example - she never takes a single proactive action within her entire series, getting pushed from one plot point to another by supporting characters, all the while brooding like she's Batman minus the cape and legitimate emotional disorders. The main problem with characters like Bella is that they are written (both in their novels and in their adaptations) to be angst-ridden vessels for teenagers and young adults to empathize with, but not characters in their own right. Any single one of the bland (or occasionally more colorful, in the case of Beautiful Creatures) supporting characters would make a more effective protagonist, for they actually have an active role within the world of the story. The Hunger Games' Katniss Everdeen succeeds in saving her own film from being a dystopian Twilight because she takes action in order to overcome her problems, rather than letting the author solve them for her. Unfortunately, most young adult protagonists do nothing to earn empathy from the audience, and (in the case of Bella) when you make her inner monologue from the novels a pretentious voiceover, it only highlights how boring the character ultimately is on top of that.