I read The Fault In Our Stars about a year and a half ago. It was a good book, but it didn’t touch me as much as it did some people, and I wouldn’t run out and tell my friends about it, like Beautiful Ruins. (One of our book club selections.) I found some of the philosophy in the book too put-on, and I thought the leads, teenage cancer patients Hazel and August, talked and thought more like college professors than high schoolers. The overall story was a poignant one, but it lost something in the telling, I thought.
So honestly I haven’t really been following the news surrounding the movie, starring Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort, since it wasn’t one of my favorite books. Then I saw the new trailer, above, and I got very excited for this. It looks like they took the parts of the book which I found too cerebral and infused them with a teen love story that looks and feels authentic. It’s hard to tell from just a trailer, but I got a very good impression of the movie. I’m a sucker for outsider first love stories and this feels positively Hughes-ian.
E! has a little more about the film and stars:
Based on the acclaimed novel by John Green, the flick tells the story of two teens, played by Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort, who fall in love after meeting at a cancer support group.
After Hazel Grace Lancaster (Woodley) finds herself feeling defeated due to her diagnosis, she happens to meet Augustus Waters (Elgort), who helps restore her faith in the beauty of life as the film tells the tale of their love story.
“Gus, I’m a grenade, one day I’m going to blow up and I’m going to obliterate everything in my wake and I don’t want to hurt you,” Hazel says as the cancer-stricken beauty is shown being carried into a hospital room.“You don’t get to choose if you get hurt in this word, but you do get a say in who hurts you,” Elgort tells Hazel before he professes his love.
Nat Wolff, Laura Dern, Sam Trammell, Mike Birbiglia and Willem Dafoe also star in the Josh Boone-directed drama.
And for Woodley, landing the role was a dream come true. “I read the script a year ago and basically said that no matter what, I will do anything to be in this movie. Even if I auditioned for Hazel and they’d be like, ‘No, you’re not her!’ I’d just want to be an extra, because I’m so passionate about it,” the actress told MTV in July 2013. “So I read the book and I fought really hard for it. And finally when they cast the director, I auditioned for him. And I guess he liked what I did, because I got it!”
Woodley, 22, and Elgort, 20, also currently play the Prior siblings in the sci-fi flick Divergent and will also reprise their roles in the upcoming film, Insurgent.
I haven’t seen Divergent yet and I didn’t read the books so I didn’t even know that Woodley and Elgort played a brother and sister in that film. I wonder if that’s going to be hard for Divergent fans to get over, like if they’ll have a hard time seeing them play lovers. I love that Sam Trammel from True Blood is in this too.
I checked IMDB and the movie is directed by relative newcomer Josh Boone and has screenwriting credits to book author John Green and Michael H. Weber and Scott Neustadter. (Cowriters on 500 Days of Summer and The Spectacular Now.) Both 500 Days and The Spectacular Now were hits with critics, and I expect the same from TFIOS. The film is out June 6th. You know it’s going to be a tearjerker.
It’s just Lurlene McDaniels all dressed up, let’s not kid ourselves.
Lurlene McDaniels! That brings me back… Red haired female protagonists and good looking dark and handsome as the male love interests lol.
Shailene turns me off and I’m not interested in watching her movies. HOWEVER, I might watch for Sam Trammel.
NOOOOOOOOOOO
I would want to see this movie. Maybe not in the theater though. It seems like a great Saturday afternoon type of movie.
like that Lifetime Movie marathon we just can’t not watch? I agree.
Sounds very Lifetime tearjerker, do I might watch it at home with my girlfriends and boxes of tissues. Shailene Woodley is a good crier so I’m sure she has many crying moments.
I will just chime in and be the cynical miserable cranky beeyotch of the day. Friends raved about this book. Just raved. So I read it. And honestly it felt like the *most* emotionally manipulative, deliberately saccharine thing I have read in a long time.
Is anyone old enough (like me?) to recall the Scholastic book orders? And those terrible books where the heroine is bravely dying of cancer, or her sister is, or her boyfriend is? And everyone is sweet and brave and a wee bit feisty because of course?
Yeah. That was what this book felt like to me. Will not be seeing the movie at all.
(Now I am ducking and running for cover because I know everyone is going to be mad at me for this post! Sorry! 🙂
I should have read your comment first, because I feel the same way (I commented below). Cancer is a horrible thing for anyone to go through, and there are ways of telling the stories without resorting to this drivel.
Lindy – try the story I mention below. It’s gorgeous.
Same. It uses cancer as a plot device and is incredibly teen. I love some YA Fiction (“Boneshaker” comes to mind.) but this just felt like Baby’s First Nicholas Sparks.
Oh my god, “Baby’s First Nicholas Sparks” is making me snort-laugh. Seriously.
Lord, that cracked me up!
“Baby’s First Nicholas Sparks” – genius!
To be fair to Green: his prose is faultless (something that certainly can’t be said for most commercial authors for adults) and this is a YA book. In that market, emotions are fraught and intense and so the books need to reflect that. Sometimes, to adult readers, it verges on the purple prose, but much of the time it’s deliberate and appropriate for the audience. It’s why dystopian stuff is so popular amongst teenagers. Bless them: they’re living in an emotional dystopia half the time.
Agreed. I read this because my 13 year old son asked me to, he loved it. I had some quibbles with the story but I was just happy that he was reading realistic fiction of decent quality. I think we’ll see the movie together, if he’s not going to see it with friends. I’m sure I’ll cry. And he will be embarrassed. Good times!
Yes! Thank god I’m not the only one to think this.
I miss Scholastic book order! The day the books came in was always my favourite day (I used to stalk the office ladies every day at lunch asking if the order had come in yet).
I wasn’t really into this book either. I thought the characters were all pat and cutesy and nothing seemed all that genuine. I didn’t shed one tear and usually I’m a pretty easy target for sap.
I’m not shocked that the screenwriters for 500 Days of Summer and The Spectacular Now are behind the adaptation – I actually think they’re a perfect fit. They deal exclusively in pat and cutesy.
I get it! I also felt that way about Marley and Me.
Hate to burst everyone’s bubble but John Green wrote this book after meeting one of his fans, Esther Earl, who suffered from the same type of cancer Hazel suffers from. The book is dedicated to her, if I’m not wrong. He didn’t write it to play with anyone’s emotions or be cutesy about cancer. The book has such a huge following because of Esther Earl, and there’s a foundation dedicated to her, ‘This Star Won’t Go Out’. John was/is on set every day while making this book because of how important it is to some people.
The book orders like ones you get the magazines in school and order them. The popular one being Captain Underpants…? Because if that’s what you mean, I love you.
Oh no. Just reading this post and looking at the poster makes me tear up a little.
And I find Shailene insufferable. So that’s something.
I’ll see it but damnit I’ll probably cry..
Me too.
I cried at the trailer, so…
I cried at the trailer, too! I’m kind of excited about this movie, the casting seems spot on to me.
Wasn’t Angus an amputee? And wasn’t Isaac missing an eye?
All my friends told me to read the book, saying it was beautiful and inspiring. I must have a heart made of stone because frankly, I thought it was nonsense. Then again, I don’t appreciate manipulative Nicholas Sparks-esque stories, and I don’t relate to teenage love dramas.
Some parts of the book were cheesy and emotionally manipulative, IMHO. However, I still appreciated the book. But why on earth would I go see the movie, if the trailer is doing such a great job of basically showing the whole damn thing?!
Seriously, what’s up trailers these days. :/
It may seem like it but the trailer’s definitely not showing the whole thing.
John Green is a fabulous author. But these types of books don’t really make for good films. They made one of Before I Die by Jenny Downham, with Dakota Fanning, and I was SO disappointed. The films go all mawkish and saccharine, when the source material is moving, but um… pure.
+1 That’s been my worry about this movie the whole time. But it looks good and I’m still going to go see it.
Now all the same producers and screenwriters are doing Looking For Alaska and I have more of the same fear about that one.
Not LFA, Paper Towns.
I am a shallow jerk and like martial arts movies, comic book movies, and documentaries so no. Last time I voluntarily watched a movie to be sad was Marley and Me. Mistakes were made.
In short: MonicaQ is a heartless gobstopper and likes explosions. Godzilla, Captain America, Maleficent? Yes. But not TMNT or Transformers. Even I have standards.
Oh my god, Marley and Me WRECKED me. Turned me into a snotty ball of tears and gross. Never again. Also i read this book after everyone raved about it and was disappointed as well.
My friends and I read the novel when it first came out so we more or less feel like we can’t see it. I slightly hate the fact that Shailene and Ansel look like brother and sister though. Or maybe I just find them both annoying as actors.
Hate them both as actors and find Shailene insufferable. I was so angry when she was cast and then I found out about him. Expectations > reality. He’s so wrong for Gus.
I watched the preview last night and it is definitely a “skip it” for me. Looked depressing.
The book is at least partially based on the author’s real life friend Esther Earl. She was a vlogger. I read somewhere (wish I could remember where) that he wanted to give her the love story she didn’t actually get in life. His tumblr has lots more info on all that right from the horse’s mouth, as it were.
I point that out just to say that it’s almost the literary version of wish-fulfillment, so yeah, it’s pretty far- fetched and sometimes hard to swallow, but the truth is in there under the gilting.
Barring REALLY good reviews, I’ll be skipping it. Teen weeper romances don’t really speak to me, and Shailene is like nails on a chalkboard.
Funny how ill people in the movies are always beautiful. Almost sends the message that only glossy and manicured ones get lives worth telling and selling. When I have kids I will know which movies to teach them to boycott. Don’t be a mass-media victim.
Funny you say that because every time I see this chick I wonder how in the world someone so incredibly plain became some big movie star.
After I saw the trailer in the theatre, I felt like I saw the entire movie, except for maybe a tragic conclusion.
Nahhhhhhhh. I won’t see anything this girl is in. Do not like nor want. I thought this was a Lifetime or straight to DVD movie.
I can’t get past Ansel. His smarmy irony makes him so…punchable.
I can’t emphasize enough how little I care about this movie. Everyone is making such a fuss over it, and call me heartless but I thought the book was pretty bad too. Shailene as an actress isn’t that impressive either.
Does Godzilla come out around the same time as this thing? I wanna see Godzilla…
I don’t like this girl. I say ‘this girl’ because I’m too lazy to even scroll up and find the correct spelling of her name. Not seeing the film.
Oh God. It’s just A Walk To Remember rip off except they cast the most boring actors. Her meh face alone makes me already hate it