Friday, June 6, 2014

Discussion: The Night Before Our Stars

It seems that now that the three college kids over here are off from school, we've just been going to various book-related events and tonight was no exception. Kiersten, Marlon, and I went to see The Night Before Our Stars, the premiere of The Fault in Our Stars, followed by a special livecast. This special screening was being shown in 650 theaters across the United States and the three of us (along with a few other, non-blogging but equally TFIOS-loving friends) were naturally there. Amrutha, unfortunately, needed to catch up on beauty sleep before prom or something and decided she was too cool for us.

Anyway, the movie theater was full of people when we got there (about an hour early) and a lot of them had TFIOS related shirts on, but a lot of others had other Nerdfighteria related shirts on, which made me very happy because wow, look how far Nerdfighteria has reached and how much the Green brothers and those affiliated with them have accomplished and this whole theater was literally full of these people who were wearing shirts that referenced jokes spanning years, which is something that I really loved about the premiere. There's nothing wrong with seeing a movie because it's hyped up or liking a book when it becomes popular, in fact that's how I heard about many of my interests, but it's nice to see people who harbor this deeper connection with the material all getting together to see it unveil for the first time. The atmosphere was just very exciting and that definitely contributed to the experience. Also, apologies to those who had to hear me repeatedly say "I own that shirt!" or "I own that shirt in poster form!" every single time I saw someone with something I also owned. That was probably annoying but I am kindof like a small puppy with a short attention span, so I didn't realize it at the time. 

Anyway, on to the movie itself! I honestly think it was very well done and well executed. I'm so happy with the directing decisions and I feel like this type of movie could have gone very well or very poorly and it definitely did very well. Shailene Woodley KILLED IT in this role. I just saw her in Divergent on the night of that premiere and I think her acting in this movie is definitely improved from that, although a lot of that might be due to better writing in this movie. Her on screen chemistry with Ansel Elgort was phenomenal. Also, can we talk about how perfect he is? Like, his acting was on point and his face never failed to make my heart melt. The two of them worked so well together. Also, Isaac's character was portrayed quite well by Nat Wolff. He really captured the essence of Isaac and who he was in the book and I'm really glad they didn't put him completely on the back burner in favor of playing up the romance part of the movie because in my opinion, he was an important friend to Hazel. Most of the lines in the movie, they kept from the book. They changed a few around and while some of them I wish they had kept the way they were, such as the last few words being slightly different, I don't see it as being a big deal because it didn't take away from anything and I think it was playing more to the appeal of the audience who hasn't read the books, which I understand is a choice they need to make as filmmakers. None of these changes were really big deals to me, it was really just a word or two here or there, so I wouldn't say that's a negative. I also wish they hadn't cut out out my favorite line, as cliche of a favorite as it may be: my thoughts are stars I can't fathom into constellations. I just personally resonate with that and I love it a lot, so I was hoping it would be in there. However, I get that movies can't have every little detail and it's literally just the one line so I'm not going to get upset over it. They managed to include most of the really big/popular lines and they weaved the movie together very well. Overall, I'm very happy with it and I'm glad it did the book justice!

The livecast afterwords was also very entertaining! First, we had a performance by Birdy, who was beautiful not just in her haunting voice but also her appearance. There was then a Q&A with John Green, Josh Boone, Shailene, Ansel, and Nat answering some questions. Some of them were taken from the live studio audience that was there and some were taken from Twitter. I liked seeing them answer the questions because it was really sweet seeing the dynamic they all had and how they seemed so close-knit. A lot of the questions were very interesting and thought-provoking and definitely gave a lot of insight into the movie. I wish they had taken more questions from Twitter and less from the live audience because the ratio seemed off but most of the questions asked were intriguing ones so I'm not too hung up about that. Some of them were ones I had heard them answer before but there were some new and refreshing ones thrown in there. I really liked Ansel's story about egging the car and accidentally getting it inside the house, especially since he has a very charming way of speaking. There was also performances by Nat and Alex Wolff and I thought they were great too and I definitely want to hear more of their music in the future! One of the last things they showed us was the deleted scene they films with John Green making a cameo as a dad in the airport that was cut for "time, not quality." It was a cute scene, but I can see why it didn't end up in the final cut...Anyway, tonight was just an overall great experience, and also an extremely emotionally overwhelming one. I think I cried for three straight hours. My eyes actually burn from all the tears I shed, but what else can you expect, right?

- Noor

Have you seen the movie yet? What did you think?
Let us know in the comments!

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