This past summer, I revisited my favorite childhood book series, The School for Good and Evil by Soman Chainani. I met Soman when I was in fourth grade, he visited my elementary school as a part of his book tour. At the end of his presentation and storytelling session, I received a signed copy from him. In all honesty, I don’t even remember asking for a signed copy, I think my mom just ordered one with the rest of the forms that came home with me every Friday evening. Once I got the book, I put it in my bookshelf, and I didn’t touch it for almost a few months. 

Later that year, I was moving rooms in my house. As I was packing up my stuff, I noticed the amount of books on my shelf that I never bothered to pick up to read. I pulled The School for Good and Evil off my shelf, and once I started reading, I immediately fell in love. The plot for the book is as follows:

Two girls, Sophie and Agatha, are kidnapped from their small village and taken to a magical world. This world is a realm of fairy tales, the world that Cinderella, Peter Pan, King Arthur, The Evil Queen, etc.. live in. Now, how did these fairytales even come into fruition? All of these fairytale characters, from the heroes to the villains, had to go to the School for Good and Evil, and their class ranking when they graduated determined the role they take in the fairytale world. Currently, the children of these fairytale characters such as King Arthur’s son and the Great Witch’s daughter are first years in the school. Sophia and Agatha live in the “real world”, in the woods beyond this realm. Every four years, two children get kidnapped from the village, one good child and one evil child. Sophia is the poster child for good, she looks like a princess and is known for her high maintenance beauty routine and her surface level good-deeds. Agatha lives in a graveyard with her mother and her black cat. Pretty self-explanatory, right? Despite their unusual circumstances, they are both best friends. When they are the chosen ones and this said mysterious force takes them away from their homes, Agatha is dropped off at the School for Good and Sophie is dropped off at the School for Evil. The rest of the book (along with the rest of the series) takes us on the most unexpected journey regarding love, war, good, and evil. Each book is around 600 pages long, which might give you a sense of the complexity of the plot, characters, and just the mere amount of twists and turns each book holds. It is actually mind-blowing how much Chainani develops the storyline and how far the last book has strayed from the first. He famously said “Truth and lies and good and evil — they mix in the world, both sides claim to be good, both sides claim to be telling the truth. The power of a lie that feels true and drives people’s behavior is at the heart of the book — a theme that feels very now”. Each book he navigates adapts the storyline to address the nuance between good vs evil in the first book, boys vs girls in the second book, young vs old in the third book, and the truth vs the lie in the fourth book.

This summer when I reread the series, it was literally all that was on my mind. On a car ride to Michigan, I ignored Ivy for four hours, my eyes not glancing up from the page once. I fell in love all over again, and it was a nice escape from my everyday life – I was surrounded in a world filled with characters I have come to love. So, when I saw the movie a few days ago… I died a little bit inside. The movie was so bad. It was a Netflix original (I already knew it was doomed). The casting was absolutely awful. Chainani had already painted the how the characters look on his beautiful covers along with black and white sketches throughout the book. His drawings captured his description of the characters perfectly – and played a key role in how I envisioned this fantasy world . None of the characters matched the covers and description, which completely ruinred the visual aspect of the book for me. Also, they directed the movie like only 5th graders were going to watch it. It was comical, satirical, and way too whimsical. It lacked the sophistication and maturity that I expected.

It was basically a children’s movie (but I guess it was a children’s book so I am trying not to be too upset). It is kind of like the Percy Jackson or Harry Potter movies, but just worse. It took me twice as long to watch the movie because every five minutes I had to stop and text Izzy everything wrong with the scene I just had viewed. Oh my eyes. Overall, it was very disappointing. Chainani has these book trailers he released before every novel (they were animated and teased the plot), and even those two minute videos were better than the entirety of the movie. Overall, the movie lacked the sophistication and depth that could have been drawn from the books. I was distressed to say the least.

Never watch the movie of your favorite book. It ruins it.

Here is a compilation of the book trailers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDgqX3PAcuQ

Here is the movie trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aftysDQ4hpI