I’m gonna start this post off by saying that I’m a HUGE James Patterson fan. I love the Alex Cross series and have been reading those and other writings by Patterson for what seems like ever! I loved the first two Alex Cross movies, ‘Along came a spider’ and ‘Kiss the girls’. I wasn’t particularly on board with Morgan Freeman portraying Alex, I pictured him more as Denzel, but that’s neither here nor there. This movie didn’t disappoint as far as the storyline went, it was fast paced and made you think.
If you haven’t seen the movie and want to, I suggest you stop reading now.
I warned you.
There were a few things that didn’t sit too well with me in this movie though. I want to know why they killed off Maria before she had little Ali. He plays an active role in the books, all of the kids did. Also, they had the ages backwards on the other two children. Damon was supposed to be the oldest and Janine was the middle child. Maybe Damon hadn’t gone through puberty yet, but he definitely looked younger than his sister in the movie. I know it shouldn’t bug me because of “creative liberties”, but Alex’s relationship with his kids and Nana Mama play a big part of the series.
Another relationship that keeps the books together is Alex’s with Sampson. There was no Sampson in this movie!! I was pretty sure that he was in the other two movies, but when I went and checked IMDB I soon found out that he wasn’t in those either. Sampson kept Alex grounded, gave a fresh prospective on things when Alex was stuck, and at the very least was there to call Alex “Sugar” to lighten the mood in an emotional part of the books.
Creative liberty my behind!!
I don’t know about y’all, but I can only take so much when they turn a book into a movie. I don’t expect it to be exactly the same, I know that that’s not always possible within budgets and that there are time restraints, but if you can keeps something consistent to the book, do it!
And you want to hear the best part? They’ve already gotten the greenlight for the sequel and are going to jump books ahead to ‘Double Cross’. I want to see how this is done without Ali & Sampson.
How do y’all feel about books to movies?