Vampire Academy: trailer vs book analysis | Chapters 6-10

 

Teaser trailer contains very little footage from chapters 6-10 but I sure have some ideas as for which book scenes will look yummy on the big screen, as well as some assumptions which I’d like to believe are true.

If you missed my recap of chapters 1-5, you can catch up here (in Russian and in English – they are slightly different ‘cause when writing the English version I got some new ideas but was too lazy to go back and add them into the Russian one. Sorry, guys!)

Besides, if you have a twitter account and would like to be the first to know when the recap of a new set of chapters is up or how much longer you have to wait to read it, be sure to follow me on twitter – that’s the first place I share the link to a new blog post. I will also send links to each part of the analysis to Richelle via twitter, but we all know what a crazy place it is, so she might not notice it. So if I were you I wouldn’t rely on her account for giving you the link to the next post, though I sure hope she will share it (okay, I seem so vain right now… promise, I’m not. I just want to clarify this whole trailer/book thing to as many people as possible). 

Now, enough with the rambling. Off we go.

 Before plunging into today’s set of chapters I’d like to share 2 more things about first 5 chapters about which I totally forgot yesterday.

Thing #1.

Let’s talk about the time in which the action of the book/movie is set. In the 1^st chapter it’s said that the autumn in Portland is rather warm. In Kirova’s office Dimitri says classes have just started. In Ch 6, a week after the girls’ return to the school, it’s mentioned that it’s the beginning of October and it has just snowed. So basically Dimka found Lissa and Rose in Portland during the last week or so of September. 

Now take a look at the banner behind the DJ.

Assuming the Equinox part relates to the actual natural phenomenon, the dance has to take place at the end of September or March (autumnal equinox is around 20^th of September, vernal equinox – around the 20^th of March). Based on the fact that Lissa is kidnapped in the green dress she wears to the dance, and Nataly fights Rose in her blue dress, it’s safe to say the dance happens really close to the end and is one of the final points of the movie. 

The book indicates that all the events happen within approximately 4 to 6 weeks, so to have the final dance around 20^th of September the girls have to be back at school around the end of August, or (if the dance is around the 20^th of March) sometime in the second half of February. 

Now, this sweet picture below.

See the green leaves on the tree, blooming flowers and Rose’s sportswear? I’m not a native to Montana state, but I rather doubt that in February they have flowers blooming outdoors. Which leaves us with autumnal equinox and the events of the movie starting in the second half of August. Well, works for me))

Thing #2.

The other day I watched some fan videos on Youtube and got a crazy idea.

Look closely at Rose’s right shoulder (it means the left side of the picture):

 

See the color and slight gleaming of the jacket material? You remember the school uniform – the fabric of the uniform jacket doesn’t have the same gleaming effect to it, right? Now look at the picture below. See how light reflects off the jacket? And then its color. 

It makes me think that’s the same jacket in both pics. Which brought me to the conclusion that Kirova showing teeth and the one posted above might be the scene in headmistress’ office upon the girls’ arrival at the academy. Why are teeth involved? Well, see for yourselves.

"Where are you going to send me? To my mom in Nepal? Did she even know I was gone? Or maybe you'll send me off to my father?"
Her eyes narrowed at the bite in that last word. When I spoke again, my voice was so cold, I barely recognized it.
"Or maybe you're going to try to send me off to be a blood whore. Try that, and we'll be gone by the end of the day."
"Miss Hathaway," she hissed, "you are out of line."

Kirova seems rather pissed-off to me. In the movie her reaction might be a little more intense for visuals sake, hence the fangs. 

 

If that’s true, we might have established another sequence of teaser fragments. After Rose-fighting-guardians-with-a-motorcycle-thingie and the whole coming back to school we’ll have this scene in Kirova’s office.

And now we can talk about Ch 6.

Rose gets Kirova’s permission to attend church.

"You said that whenever I'm not in class or practice, I have to stay in the dorm. But what about church on Sundays? I don't think it's really fair to keep me away from my religious… ­um, needs."

The part with asking permission probably won’t be in the movie but the episode with Rose attending Sunday service has to be. There are multiple reasons for that.

1. They’ve cast a priest.

2.  In his sermon the priest tells about St Vladimir and shadow-kissed Anna. And this story is a really important part of the series.

3. The priest gives Rose a book about St.Vlad after the sermon.

After the service Rose learns about Badica guardian running off with another guardian. That’s the part where we are told that romantically involved dhampirs can’t have children and a lot of other stuff about who marries who and how dhampirs are born. It would be really great if they included this kind of explanation (adding info about strigoi and how a dhampir or a moroi can become one) into the movie. I imagine they could do that as a part of some class, maybe even a lecture to younger morois and dhampirs involving Lissa and/or Rose (I don’t know, they seem to get into detention quite often, so why not let them tell the details about moroi/strigoi/dhampir history to the kid morois/dhampirs as a punishment?) Well, a girl can dream, right? :) Besides, this kind of explanation would really help the viewers who haven’t read the book to understand all the peculiarities of the three “races” (species or whatever you call them).

We also learn about Rose’s dedication to being a guardian:

Some dhampir women, like my mother, still felt it was their duty to become guardians - even if it meant not raising their own kids. After I'd been born, she'd handed me over to be raised by Moroi. Moroi and dhampirs start school pretty young, and the Academy had essentially taken over as my parent by the time I was four.  Between her example and my life at the Academy, I believed wholeheartedly that it was a dhampir's job to protect Moroi. It was part of our heritage, and it was the only way we'd keep going.

After that we witness the snow accident, meet Ralf Sarcozy (aka Ray in the movie played by Chris Mason) and see Rose confronting Mia. 

This fragment has a great movie potential. Look at this particular quote:

"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Nothing to me. But Ms. Kirova will probably have something to say when she finds out you used magic against another student."
"That wasn't an attack," she scoffed. "And it wasn't me. It was an act of God."
A few others laughed, much to her delight. In my imagination, I responded with, So is this, and then slammed her into the side of the church. In real life, Lissa simply nudged me and said, "Let's go."

Now let’s stop for a moment and remember some things. Firstly, who’s the director? Mark Waters, correct. What’s his famous movie Richelle refers to a lot? You are right again, Mean girls. Reading this scene I couldn’t but picture this part of the Mean girls:

That’s Cady attacking Rachel during lunch. Which actually happened only in Cady’s head. Now re-read the quote about slamming Mia into the wall. Pretty similar concepts, right? And conforms to the idea of giving a lot of thought to visuals. 

In the dorm Mason tells Rose about Mia’s parents (“Her dad cuts grass, and her mom's a maid”) for the Drozdov family. Funny fact – as of Ch 10 Aaron’s last name isn’t mentioned, but in the movie his last name is Drozdov.

I really admire that Rose has this idea that any kind of work deserves respect and she dislikes Mia not because of her parents’ occupations but because of Mia’s arrogance and hypocrisy, her pretending to be someone she is obviously not.

In the book we’ve got a 1^st person narration (Rose herself tells us the story) which actually can be present in the movie. Remember the voiceover moment in the teaser, “I don’t know about you, but my school can get a little intense…” and so on (okay, should I worry that I know by heart and can freely quote the whole teaser?). I have a suspicion that Mark might have done the same thing he did in Mean girls – and sometimes we’ll get a voiceover by the narrator, i.e. Rose, telling us things. So the bits about hating Mia’s arrogance might be mentioned as a part of such a voiceover moment.

By the end of Ch 6 Rose and Mason look through the book the priest gave Rose and find some info about Anna. It occurs to Rose (though it isn’t mentioned explicitly) that she and Lissa have the same bond Vladimir had with Anna.

In Ch 7 Rose says she enjoys hanging out with Natalie.

Natalie's rambling still made me want to beat my head against a wall sometimes, but she was really nice - nicer than almost any of the other royals - and I enjoyed hanging around her most of the time.

Here’s the thing. Remember how some early articles (I guess they popped up when it was announced that Sarah got the part of Natalie) referred to Natalie as Lissa and Rose’s friend and lots of people were indignant about that “friend” part. Now let’s put ourselves in filmmakers shoes. Rose and Lissa mention that Natalie is okay a couple of times throughout the book, they hang out with her. She is the closest thing to a girl friend Rose and Lissa have after their return. It’s easier to says that Natalie is just a friend than explain their complicated relations, “Natalie is Lissa’s cousin, though not by blood as Lissa is the only living Dragomir. Nat is Viktor’s daughter who is like an uncle to Lissa because he was a friend of her family. Lissa chooses to be part of Natalie’s group, is nice to her ‘cousin’ but you can’t exactly see them exchanging friendship charms. Rose simply chooses to tolerate Natalie.” That’s a rather long description, don’t you agree?

Later in the chapter we see a Romitri scene. Dimka is reading and listening to Prince – When Doves Cry. I’m sure you know it by heart, but still – you can listen to it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7Diudbhut4

"Whoa, Dimitri, I realize this is actually a current hit in Eastern Europe right now, but do you think we could maybe listen to something that wasn't recorded before I was born?"

Add Zoey’s face expression, maybe even some eye-rolling… it made you smile, right?

Funny fact: in Russian we have an additional line somewhere around here. It says something about Rose being now on a first name basis with Dimitri. Well, not exactly but the idea is the same. It might seem weird to some of you, guys, if your native language doesn’t have two second person singular pronouns: one to refer to a person you don’t know or highly respect or who’s considerably older and the other - to address a person you know very well. (If you know German, for instance, that’s pronouns “du” and “Sie”, or in Russian “ты” and “Вы”.) Basically, it’s like if she was addressing him as Guardian (Mr) Belikov at first and then started calling him simply Dimitri to his face.

Here Dimitri explains why Rose has to run so much. He asks what she would do if she met a strigoi at a mall. I think later on in the series, when adult guardians stage mock strigoi attacks to test future graduates, Rose and Lissa (my friend says it’s not Lissa but Christian, but whatever) are ambushed in the mall. Well, the correct answer to Dimka’s question is run.

And in this chapter Dimitri and Rose train (well, run) together for the first time. Yay!)

We’ve also got the scene when Lissa found a dead fox on her bed. I think moviewise a flashback would be in order. In Ch 10 Rose tells us than once 2 years ago she and Lissa go to the woods to drink some schnapps (alcohol is evil, you guys! Don’t drink and drive – well, you get the idea))) and are busted by Sonya. She escorts them back but on their way they see a dead bird and Lissa brings it back to life. Ms Karp freaks out, makes the girls promise her they won’t tell anyone about it and never do anything like this ever again. If you picture it in your mind, you’ll get a rather creepy scene. Now imagine it on the big screen in a dark movie theatre. Chills. right?

On their way back to the dorm Rose begs Dimka to teach her how to fight.

Ch 8 revolves around the dead fox and musing who’s responsible for this cruel joke. Rose makes plans to meet Jesse in the dorm, during class Ralf/Ray makes an allegation that it was Rose who put the fox into Lissa’s room to make Kirova expel them, and says something about her not being too picky about who to get naked with.

And Christian sets him on fire. Great move, Christian!

He’s sent to Kirova, and Rose talks to Lissa about the guy. Later Rose tries to purposefully sneak into Lissa’s mind and succeeds in the attempt. Lissa and Christian are in the attic, discussing attack spells and the times when moroi fought alongside the guardians.

I think during Richelle’s recent twitter chat someone asked her how the sneaking-into-Lissa’s-mind part of the movie will look. I’ve got an idea. Rose might be visually present in the scene which she sees through Lissa’s mind, but nobody sees her except us viewers; she might move and talk – and we are the only ones who can hear her. In this particular attic scene I can picture Rose standing by rolling her eyes at the sight of Lissa and Christian flirting. I hope you get what I mean.

Lissa isn’t the only one getting boy’s attention. We witness some serious making out session between Rose and Jesse during which he understands Rose’s been giving blood to Lissa while they were on the run. The two are interrupted by Dimitri. Imagine the look on his face as he sees Rose, half-naked, kissing Jesse. Oh, these feels!

Now appreciate these quotes.

"So don't you have any respect? Think about Lissa. You make yourself look cheap. You live up to what a lot of people already think about dhampir girls, and it reflects back on her. And me."
"Oh, I see. Is that what this is about? Am I hurting your big, bad male pride? Are you afraid I'll ruin your reputation?"
"My reputation is already made, Rose. I set my standards and lived up to them long ago. What you do with yours remains to be seen."

And this one, being a crucial part of Romitri relations as we know them.

Ouch. I wanted to yell back that it was none of his business what I did with my body, but something about the anger and disappointment on his face made me falter. I didn't know what it was. "Disappointing" someone like Kirova was a non-event, but Dimitri? ­I remembered how proud I'd felt when he praised me the last few times in our practices. Seeing that disappear from him -- ­well, it suddenly made me feel as cheap as he'd implied I was.

And later on:

Again, I felt like crying under that gaze, under the seriousness of what he asked. I didn't get how he could have such a powerful effect on me. I'd never cared so much about what one person thought.

Dimka agrees to train Rose, which is a huge moment.

As for Ch 10, we get a classroom scene where the teacher reads out the note Lissa and Rose are exchanging. There’s a part in the note which reveals that Dimka threw Jesse out of the room as if Jesse were a puppy.  Then goes the raven flashback. By the way, Sonya took the liquor from the girls – she might be well aware that it temporarily gives spirit users some relief (thanks, Adrian, for clearing this up for us – no one can call you an alcoholic now). 

At the end we have a conversation between Rose and Mason when she realizes he likes her.

"And why do you even care? Jealous I'm not doing it with you?"
His flush grew, going all the way to the roots of his red hair.

and

"I really am sorry about what I said. I was just - "
Jealous, I realized. I could see it in his eyes. How had I never noticed this before? He was crazy about me. I guess I really was oblivious.
"It's all right, Mase. Forget about it." I smiled. "And thanks for looking that stuff up."
He smiled back, and I went inside, sad that I didn't feel the same way about him.

That’s right, Rose, crush poor boy’s dreams. As if he doesn’t have enough on his plate((

Well, that’s it for today. Thanks for hanging out with me! Hope you enjoyed!

See you soon.

xo

Oksana

P.S. If you post a comment here, don't freak out if you don't see it appear immediately. I've got pre-moderation of all comments to filter spam. Sorry for inconvenience!

Read Ch 11-15