Adaptation Month - The Darkest Minds

The Darkest Minds is the first of a trilogy aimed at Young Adults. Try and contain your shock at that prospect. Unlike successes like the Hunger Games this film adaptation bombed critically and commercially. Is that because of the adaptation? Let’s take a look

The Darkest Minds was written by Alexandra Bracken, handling the adaptation is Chad Hodge, who has worked on adapting a stage play from a musical but this is his first foray into movies, as he’d mostly worked on TV. Jenifer Yuh Nelson is in the director’s chair, and she’s got a decent record, but mostly in animation being responsible for directing the Kung Fu Panda sequels.

I know they really wanted to hype the Stranger Things connection in the trailers but in truth, Sean Levy is one of the producers, he has a decent track record including Arrival, but there’s a limit to what producers actually do for film, other than secure funding and arrange schedules, which is why I generally don’t mention them.

The Book

The Darkest Minds is quite long but unlike the Divergent books it never felt like it was dragging. That said, I do have a particular issue. It’s not that the story is depressing, although it is, it’s that I find it hard to truly connect with a character like Ruby who spends 95% of the time in a state of self-loathing

The Film

I found this movie incredibly unremarkable, a series of YA tropes and clichés that I’d seen a hundred times already. I think its choice of music is at odds with its tone and the acting is generally subpar. Is this the fault of a bad adaptation, or is it just the product they put to film? Let’s take a look

What the kept

In the not too distant future, humanity is hit with a disease called IAAN, on the onset of puberty most kids die and those that survive gain special abilities (+10), our lead Ruby White (+10)  accidentally removes memories of herself from her parents so they don’t recognise her (+10) that they have no photos of her or any other evidence that could prove her claim is also true to the book.

She’s taken to one of the “rehabilitation camps”  (+10) where children are tested to see what power they have, and divided into colour groups accordingly (+10) Green being enhanced intelligence, Blue being telekinesis, gold being electro-kinesis, orange being telepathy and red being pyrokinesis (+10) Ruby being tested orange but using her powers to convince the Doctor she was green (+10)

6 years passing and her being forced to work on shoes and being berated for doing it incorrectly (+5), a white noise having a profound impact on Ruby and knocking her out (+10) her being secretly told by a Doctor named Cate that the institute know she’s orange and plan to kill her (+10) them escaping, finding out Cate is part of a Children’s league and meeting up with a colleague of hers named Robert (+10)

Ruby getting a glimpse of Roberts showing him doing something unsavoury and deciding they can’t be trusted (+10) her seeing a small girl and following her into a mini-van (+10) finding out her name is Zu and being soon joined by Tubs, and Liam (+10) the chase involving Rob and Cate in one car, and a bounty hunter named Lady Jane in another (+10) against the van. Ruby having to drive so Liam can use telekinesis to escape (+10) and identifying herself as Green (+10 = 165).

Them seeking refuge in a motel where Liam gives Ruby some socks (+10) her accidentally touching Zu and seeing memories of her and Liam escaping a similar encampment along with several others, but a lot dying (+10) the van crew heading to the ‘East River’ an encampment for kids run by the mysterious Slip Kid (+10) them heading into a shopping centre and encounter some other runaways (+10) who give them a clue to the ‘East River’s’ location which they manage to decode (+10).

Liam and Ruby coming back to find Lady Jane has captured Tubs and Zu with Ruby outing herself as orange to save them (+10) falling unconscious afterwards and waking up to hear Tubs and Liam arguing over getting rid of ‘her’ only to find they were talking about the van (+10) them making it to the east river and discovering the Slip Kid is in fact Clancy Gray, son of the president and thought cured (+10) he’s also an orange; Ruby taking private lessons with him to help her control her powers (+10)

Tubs getting fed up and comparing the East River to the other encampments (+10), him also wanting to contact his family, Ruby convincing Gray to let him do so in exchange for helping him work out how to erase someone’s memories (+10) Grey overstepping his bounds with Ruby, causing her to flee back to Liam, and him being super p*ssed about it (+10). The camp soon being seiged by the government (+10)

Zu leaving on her own, whilst Tubs is badly injured causing Ruby to use a tracking device given to her by the League to get him help (+10) Liam, despite negative history with the League (+10) electing to stay. Ruby agreeing to help the League if they let Liam go (+10) and erasing his memories of her to convince him to leave (+10)

Some other details the film got include the gang naming the crew naming the van Betsy (+5) and the Red Dress Zu gives to Ruby (+5), although we’ll swing back to that momentarily, and the code Chubs uses to contact his parents via book reports (+5)

Not a bad haul at all, 350 adaptation points, but here’s where the negatives start to come in as we look at

What they changed

Orange seems to be ranked higher than red in the film (-5) small change I know but something

The film seems to add several action scenes including a more difficult escape from the camp, a scuffle with the other clan in the mall (-5) and we actually see the full carnage of the final fight, including several reds throwing fire everywhere (-5), in the book, the fights are a brief show down between Ruby and Gray and that’s about it. At no point does any red ever show up in this book.

They really double down on the brutality of the camps, making the Captain a minor antagonist throughout the film rather than just the beginning and having him kill the Doctor who mistook Ruby’s class (-5) they also changed it so the white noise targeting specific colours was their idea, when in the book it’s later revealed to be Children’s League trying to find and siphon out powerful kids (-5) since it was the Captain who did that in the film, I don’t understand why she ended up in the hospital as opposed to just being killed there and then

Ruby doesn’t see Rob just grab a guy when she accesses his memories, she sees him shoot two people dead (-5)

Chubs is a green in the film, he was a Blue like Liam in the book, this stems from a character they cut out who I’ll come back to later on. (-5) incidentally in the book it was Ruby who worked out the cypher, apparently living in a dorm full of greens rubbed off on her (-5)

At the hotel Ruby and Zu slept on opposite sides of the beds, minimising the risk of them touching, they do anyway but at least book Ruby took precautions (-5) It’s inside the mall that Zu gives Ruby the red dress (-5).

The subplot of Ruby trying to find her parents only to realise she’d already lost them in a complete plot cul-de-sac is film only (-5) in the book, Liam begins to air some truths about himself and what he wants to Ruby away from the group and it’s then that Lady Jane strikes

With the telepathy training going on inside her head, it’s difficult to visualise it translating to film, which is why they added the addition of the farm scene where Ruby helps chubs convince a fellow farmer to let the peppers ripen (-5) During the battle, Gray mentions about taking away Ruby’s painful memories, in the book he had not yet mastered this ability (-5), nor had Ruby been capable of influencing someone’s mind without physical contact (-5)

Gray did have influence over his father for a time in the book after being pronounced cured, but he had since recovered but couldn’t say anything less confidence in the idea of a cure ruined him politically, which is why Gray was allowed to roam free. (-5) Gray still had some influence and began a project to turn reds into his private army (-10). Its was them he was summoning when the trackers arrived and began capturing everyone.

And whilst the ending with Ruby embracing the children’s league is book accurate, her becoming its poster-child and getting everyone to raise their hand isn’t (-5)

95 adaptation points lost here, leading to a score of 255, but we also need to talk about

What they left out

What happened to Ruby’s parents isn’t exactly explained till much later in the book (-5) but an interesting detail is that they got into an argument about discussing death with Ruby (-5)

Inside the camp, the character of Sam is basically glanced over, we do see Ruby being chastised for allegedly tying shoes wrong (+5) but Sam sticks up for her. In the book, they’re pretty close friends for a while, but Ruby being still scared of herself, refuses to stick up for Sam or herself resulting on Sam getting punished. Wanting to quell Sam’s anger, Ruby ends up removing all memories of her from Sam’s memory (-10)

Martin is the next character of note, in the film it’s said Ruby and Gray are the only oranges, this is not the case in the book, Martin is another orange, he survived by getting others to take his place whenever he was found out (-10), this immediately makes Ruby uncomfortable and is one of the first signs that the Children’s League is not wholly out for the good of everyone (-10)

The character of Jack is also left out entirely (-10). In the book, Jack is the main reason Liam, Tubs and Zu want to see the Slip Kid, to send a letter Jack had written to his family. Jack was among the casualties during the breakout attempt. Each of them had written a letter (-10) and occasionally Tubs would war this over Liam, when he disagrees with his leadership, it’s later revealed his letter is blank (-10)

After the battle, Tubs tries to deliver the letter to Jack’s family only to be shot upon by the person opening the door, it’s for this reason that Ruby is forced to call in the League, as opposed to the burns he got in the film (-10)

Zu leaves with a group of old friends much earlier in the book, and it’s after this that Gray clamps down on anyone leaving the camp (-5). Speaking of Gray, we skip out a few of his telepathic lessons (-10), that he assigned Liam to night guard duty to keep him and Ruby apart (-10), tries to tell her that only they could be together because they’re orange (-10) and it is my interpretation of the scene that followed Ruby’s trip to the night her parents were memory wiped that Gray sexually assaults her (-10) can’t imagine why they took that out.

A further 120 point loss brings the adaptation score to 135, a decent score.

The Darkest Minds failings are not entirely in adaptation, they did make changes, but few of them significant enough to derail the plot on their own. But the failings come in the disjointed tone not helped with its choice of upbeat pop songs, pace and its adherence to YA clichés which had gotten a bit old by this point. Perhaps timing did have something to do with it.