This movie made me into something I've always feared to become.....
...one of the cry babies always yelling: "the books are better"
But frankly, they are. Everything about this movie is off, with the genre being one of the biggest problems. Where the books are more of a clever, slow horror, the movie was incredibly dumb. They turned what could have been such a good movie into your typical Hollywood action flick. I get that they were just using the books as a base for their movie and not actually making a movie based on the books, but this is just shameful.
The most annoying scene for me, had to to be the one where John Gregory BUYS Tom Ward (?!). This turn Gregory into some kind of slave monger. In the books it is Tom's mom who actually wishes for her son to one day become a Spook, and they(Tom's family) pay him (john Gregory) to train Tom into becoming a spook. It is even said in the books that Tom's mom married his father (who is a seventh son) exactly for that purpose; so that her child (Tom) could become a spook. But they turned this entire part upside down to create a dumb dramatic filler scene (to enforce this they even added a (cliche) object of seemingly great emotional value (In this case a pendant) which the protagonist may never lose).
besides that there's:
-Spooks being some kind of heroes instead of the kind of outcast's that they are in the books (making people uncomfortable everywhere they go (spooking them)).
-Mother Malkin being more of a dragon than a witch.
-Alice and Tom's filler love story. (in the book they don't kiss until like book 6 or something and their basically forbidden love is very nuanced and not that in-your-face at all)
-Gregory being an drunk cynical knee-slapper funny guy in the movies, while in the books, pretty much despising alcohol as it takes away from your edge and focus.
-Tom's age
All this, were things I concluded from the trailer and the first three quarters of the movie. After that my movie froze, I had to close VLC and didn't bother starting it again. Saying that it's a incredible waste of what could have been a good movie would be an understatement.