“I Feel Like a Part of Me Just Died:” How Fans Describe Their (Dis)satisfaction with Shadowhunters

Abstract

Remakes have been a staple of Hollywood for decades, and yet little research has been done into the way fans respond to a source text’s second adaptation. This poster analyzes how fans express their satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the television show remake of 2013’s City of Bones movie, Shadowhunters, with both adaptations based on the 2007 novel Mortal Instruments: City of Bones. I also studied if having seen the film adaptation affected the way fans viewed the second incarnation of the property. I completed a qualitative analysis using NVivo of comments from articles about Shadowhunters on TMISource, a fansite for the books, as well as comments in Reddit threads on r/Shadowhunters. Fans most common complaints about Shadowhunters revolved around its lack of fidelity to the text, especially its plot and characters, and the oversexualization of female characters. Fans satisfaction was often expressed in terms of liking changes made to the book, or at least feeling like changes were necessary. Fans also tended to change their opinion, positive or negative, episode by episode, hoping it would get better along the way. I found that the movie adaptation has had two major affects on fan response to the show. First, the movie being ‘bad’ appears to have made fans more willing to accept changes to the book because they are desperate for a good adaptation. Although, secondly, it also appears to have made them more pessimistic about other pieces of the show, because they have an obvious touchstone for what a ‘bad’ adaptation of the books looks like and many appear to have spent time analyzing why the film is bad. Therefore, when fans see these same elements in the show, they already have the language to describe why they don’t like it, making it easier to criticize.