Fuck Fate! The Fault in Our Stars Movie.

Yesterday I was able to go to an Advance Fan Screening of The Fault in Our Stars Movie with my sister. Afterwards I sat down and took time for me to put together what I really thought about the movie.

First off, the movie was incredible, Shailene Woodley is so talented and so truthful, I had no qualms about her as Hazel, I really cannot fault her at all. The reviewers are right when they say this adaptation is authentic and respectful to the book. That doesn't mean it is exactly the same it matched up to everythig perfectly in my head. But it felt the same. It felt like how I felt when I read the book. The biggest difference I would say, was Augustus...

Ansel Elgort did not play Book Augustus. I don't care how controversial that is because the girls in my cinema were getting very worked up. Gus in TFIOS is sexy and smouldering and mysterious and very out together. He hides his goofiness even though that's the part Hazel loves most about him. Ansel was all goof, but it worked. I think we can all agree Gus is pretentious, but when a serious, good looking boy s pretentious he can come across as a douchebag. But with Gus being kind of goofy, it allowed us to still like him in a visual medium. We know in the book he's awesome because it's written down, but the direction can't just put some writing at the beginning going

HEY BTW GUS AIN'T A DOUCHE!

That's not how films work, as you may have noticed. But the film was faithful and there were these incredible and beautiful sequences. The journey up the Anne Frank House was lovely and with the voice over you can see the moment Hazel isn't scared anymore. And the moment Gus tells her he's sick and the moment he's dying and the pre-funeral and egging the car. All the bits I wanted were there, all the quotes I'd spent so long wrapping myself in for comfort were there. This is not a movie for Hollywood, this is a movie for readers.

This then got me thinking about how TFIOS is currently the number 1 movie in America, and how for my 18th Birthday, I asked my Grandma to take me to New York so I could buy a Signed, American, First Edition of the book. I didn't know then, that this would turn out to be my favourite book. I didn't know that for the year I begged everyone I knew to read it that within a year after that I would be in a cinema surrounded by crowds of people who loved the story just as much as I did. I didn't realise that loving a book, a solitary act could expand and become something social and wider, something that brings people together not sets them apart. Nobody ever reads the same book, you take something different away with each individual and yet we were all there, together, celebrating what we all took from it.

When we all stood and clapped at the end. I started thinking about Norway. Don't worry this is relevant. Norway translated the poetic, Shakespeare reference title to literally "FUCK FATE". And as I stood in a place with so many people, shouting and whooping at a film I thought about how no one could see this coming. Who could have predicted this? Hollywood doesn't make films about sick people and let that not be the defining aspect of their characters, things like this don't happen. But TFIOS gives a great big, middle finger to fate and demands it will do what it wants.

They say that all films are destined to let the book down, but FUCK FATE! The book is still better, but I have not seen a more faithful and touching adaption than I did yesterday.