Vampire Academy

I read this book series about a year ago and just loved it. The concept for the series is unique, which is a difficult feat to accomplish with so many authors overloading the market with vampire books. The characters are entertaining and relatable, as well as believable. The world building on Richelle Mead's part is done fairly well, with details about people in other countries or professions and a very good look into this world's government and political system.

In early May this year, the Vampire Academy movie was released, and I was so excited for this movie, I downloaded it from iTunes a week early so I could watch it on a plane ride. I personally enjoyed the movie on its own, but as a book to movie adaptation it fell short.

There were a few things about this movie that didn't meet my expectations as an avid lover of the book series. First, I think it's important to take into account that this movie had a very low budget. For a comparison of graphics, the recent film Guardians of the Galaxy had a budget of $170 million, and just from commercials I've picked up that they have some pretty awesome graphics. Vampire Academy had a budget of only $30 million. That being said, the low budget of the film definitely showed. A lot of the action scenes were unrealistic, the movie was not publicized much at all, and the film was cut quite a bit shorter than it could have been.

Aside from the budget, the actors were not exactly who I would have pictured for a number of reasons. Zoey Deutch is the actress who plays Rose Hathaway, the main character of the story.

I expected someone a bit "curvier" to play Rose because she's described as not only having certain female assets but also being to kick some serious butt in the book. This actress does not look like she could kill a hoard of vampire murderers. Also, Rose has a very sarcastic sense of humor and can truly be a brat, but I love her because you get to watch her grow through the book. In this movie, she showed no growth or better sense of the world, she was the same bratty child she appears to be in the beginning of the book. Not to mention, most of the humor in the movie was almost making fun of how bad the movie was in graphics, jokes, and general put-together of the film. Her immaturity in the movie is also what make the love interest somewhat awkward. Which leads me to the next set of problems...

Dimitri is played by Danila Kozlovsky, which was an interesting choice for the character. His facial features and accent did fit, but the way he delivered was a bit off. It seemed strained and awkward, which was reflected back in the love interest. Zoey and Danila have very little chemistry, not to mention he seems so much older than Rose in the movie that it seems almost gross that they have a scene getting a bit less clothed together.

Lissa Dragomir, Rose's best friend, was played by Lucy Fry. Lucy was a generally good choice for the role, but the way her lines were written is the strangest thing. They gave her these lines that were very old timey, and it just came off as confusing. I understand that they did it to show the disconnect of the vampire world to the human, but it just seemed strange and out of place, seeing as no one else spoke like this in the movie. She is from Australia and has an accent, but it didn't fit Lissa's character, who grew up in the States.

Overall, not the worst book to movie adaptation I've ever seen, but definitely could have been done to infinitely higher standards. I think that a lot of us fans were really hoping for more out of the film, and it kind of just fell flat on its face. There were huge chunks of story line that did not make sense unless you read the book. The love interest was incredibly rushed and random in the movie, and it was inorganic and painfully awkward. I enjoyed watching the movie, if only because I was so excited for it to come out, but I think that in comparison to the book series, it just did not do justice to Richelle Mead's world or characters.

A little additional information, the movie is based only off of the first book. They did try to make a second movie, but they did not receive the funds for it. I'm almost grateful for that, because it would have turned into the Twilight series movies.

Well, that's all for this post! Thanks for reading!

- Savanna