And perhaps that’s the problem right there. Hollywood is notorious for trying to copycat its monster successes (no pun intended), but what started out as copycatting has turned into a glut. It’s not as if the hero’s journey is something new to Hollywood—on the contrary, it’s been a staple of the film industry since that industry came into being. But rarely have so many supernaturally themed permutations of it been force-fed to so narrow a demographic in so short a space of time.

It doesn’t help that this formula calls for movie characters to be perpetually astonished at developments that have come to feel stale to the viewing audience. Pop-culture blogger Cleolinda calls this “the People in Dracula Don’t Know They’re in Dracula problem.” She defines it thus:

. . . In a story, the characters don't know [what we know]. "Why would you go to the dark scary castle of a guy named Dracula?!" Well, because "Dracula" doesn't mean anything to those fictional people—not the way it does to us. So, as a reader/viewer, you sometimes have to fight this impatient disbelief that the characters do not realize they are talking to a household name of horror.

Similarly, young superpowered heroes and heroines don’t know what we know about them, so we have to watch them making the same kinds of discoveries and facing the same kinds of quests over and over.

Blockbuster superhero films that appeal to general audiences can still get away with this, because general audiences tend to get more variety in their movies. But when it’s assumed to be pretty nearly the only thing that teens want to see, and it’s therefore given to them again and again, it’s not surprising that some teens might be starting to get bored. It’s been a while since I was a teenager myself, but as a frequent reviewer of Young Adult movies and books, I know I’m getting bored.

The Mortal Instruments is particularly disadvantaged because it tries to include just about every teen fantasy trope there is. It’s Harry Potter (the chosen one who’s secretly descended from a supernatural race) plus Twilight (romance with a brooding stranger) plus The Hunger Games (adventurous young heroine fighting for her life) with some jarringly distracting pop songs thrown in. So many explanations and definitions are required as Clary discovers the secret and highly complicated world of the Shadowhunters, that nobody has time for any sort of normal, character-developing conversation or reflection.

And that’s a pity, because the one thing the Mortal Instruments books really had going for them was their snappy dialogue. In the books, Jace, Clary’s primary love interest, was constantly exchanging witty banter with all and sundry. In the film, when he and the others aren’t busy fighting demons, Jace (Jamie Campbell Bower) mostly stands around looking like a model waiting for a photo shoot to break out. With that sort of change, the franchise has lost what might have set it apart.