New trailer and posters for The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones looks like Buffy The Demon Slayer

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

A few days ago I thumbed through one of the books in THE MORTAL INSTRUMENTS series at the grocery store and couldn’t get past a lot of the dialogue.  It just wasn’t for me and obviously so, as the series is a new staple in the Young Adults genre, which has seen the biggest boost in its existence with the TWILIGHT books.  Since the massive success of that series, Hollywood has been snatching up the rights to every YA series in existence that’s sold more than a million copies and put them on the fast track to franchiseville. 

One of those just happens to be director Harald Zwart‘s THE MORTAL INSTRUMENTS: CITY OF BONES, the first entry in the demon-hunting teenagers series from author Cassandra Clare, which is into it’s fifth novel with a sixth on the way.  We saw the first trailer a while back and now we have a much longer one that comes off as Buffy The Demon Slayer meets, yup, TWILIGHT.  Thankfully, the lovey-dovey shit is downplayed with a bigger focus on action, which works out pretty well until the werewolves show up. 

Take a look:

Here’s the synopsis:

When fifteen-year-old Clary Fray heads out to the Pandemonium Club in New York City, she hardly expects to witness a murder—much less a murder committed by three teenagers covered with strange tattoos and brandishing bizarre weapons. Then the body disappears into thin air. It’s hard to call the police when the murderers are invisible to everyone else and when there is nothing—not even a smear of blood—to show that a boy has died. Or was he a boy?

This is Clary’s first meeting with the Shadowhunters, warriors dedicated to ridding the earth of demons. It’s also her first encounter with Jace, a Shadowhunter who looks a little like an angel and acts a lot like a jerk. Within twenty-four hours Clary is pulled into Jace’s world with a vengeance, when her mother disappears and Clary herself is attacked by a demon. But why would demons be interested in ordinary mundanes like Clary and her mother? And how did Clary suddenly get the Sight? The Shadowhunters would like to know…

Overall, this feels like it has some promise, but its really got a lot going on and looks like they tossed everything from HARRY POTTER to TWILIGHT to Buffy to BLADE in a blender, sprinkled some PG-13 in the mix, and hit puree. 

Starring Lily Collins, Lena Headey, Robert Sheehan, Jamie Campbell Bower, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Kevin Zegers, Kevin Durand, Jared Harris and CCH Pounder, THE MORTAL INSTRUMENTS: CITY OF BONES hits theaters on August 23, 2013.