WORDSJONATHAN HATFULLFIGHT FOR
THE FUTURE
MOVIES. DIRECTOR JENNIFER YUH NELSON TELLS US WHY THE DARKEST MINDS IS PUTTING THE HEART BACK INTO YA
THIS STORY WAS PERFECT FOR HER LIVE ACTION DEBUT
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IT SEEMS FAIR TO SAY THAT A LOT
OF US ARE GOING TO SEE THE
BIG BLOCKBUSTERS FOR A LITTLE
ESCAPISM THESE DAYS. With the world
the way it is, it’s just nice to go and watch some
dinosaurs, some caped heroes, or some aliens
tearing about the place. But as much as these
fi lms can be a distraction from the news cycle,
that doesn’t mean that they aren’t refl ecting
what’s going on in the world outside the
multiplex, and YA adaptation The Darkest Minds
defi nitely feels like it’s tapping into something.
Based on the novel by Alexandra Bracken,
the story begins with an outbreak infecting the
world’s youth, either giving them incredible
and sometimes dangerous powers, or outright
killing them. There is no third alternative. In
a panic, America decides to ‘quarantine’ its
children in cages in prison camps (see the
relevance?). They’re sorted by their abilities, now
colour coded, with orange and red indicating
dangerous abilities and the need for immediate
execution. Our heroine Ruby (Amandla
Stenberg) has managed to conceal the fact that
she’s been an orange for years, but when she’s
fi nally discovered she manages to escape and
sets off on the run with three teenagers.
“The book was incredibly powerful,” director
Jennifer Yuh Nelson tells us. “The author
herself was so young when she wrote it and
that genuine voice of a young person growing
through a great deal of adversity but fi nding
herself was evident in the book itself. That’s
something we wanted to emulate very much in
t h e fi l m. ”
But more important than the adversity (which,
it should be noted, is not glossed over in the fi lm)
is the story’s warmth. Rather than wallowing in
the darkest possible timeline, The Darkest Minds
has a tone that we’re not always used to seeing
in our YA movies. There is a high threat level