Here's everything that went wrong with the I Am Number Four movie adaptation. in 2008, Summit Entertainment inadvertently stumbled upon a goldmine when it released the first Twilight movie. The studio has modest hopes for the film going in: Stephanie Meyer's source material was popular, but they weren't expecting the story of teenager Bella Swan and her vampiric lover Edward Cullen to catch on with anyone beyond the 2005 novel's core fanbase. As Hollywood is wont to do (see Titanic for another infamous example), they underestimated the commercial viability of entertainment geared towards teenaged girls: Twilight went on to gross $407.1 million against a $37 million budget and usher in a wave of YA adaptations that would last several years before fading out.
Hoping to cash-in on the then-new YA craze, DreamWorks beat out J.J. Abrams to secure the film rights to Pittacus Lore's (the pseudonym used by writers James Frey and Jobie Hughes) novel I Am Number Four in June 2009, more than a year before it was published in August 2010. The first installment in a seven-part YA sci-fi series known as the Lorien Legacies, I Am Number Four revolves around Number Four, the member of the Loric alien species from the planet Lorien, who is so-named because he's one of nine members of a special group of young Lorics (known as the Garde) that posses unusual super-abilities. All nine are being hunted by the Lorics' enemy, the Mogadorians, but can only be killed in sequence (starting with Number One), which is why Number Four hides on earth from the others with only his guardian Henri to protect him until he comes of age.
Disney, which distributed the movie through its Touchstone Pictures label, went all out on promoting I Am Number Four to teenagers, including hosting a synergistic cast tour with Hot Topic in the build-up to its release in February 2011. However, things didn't work out in the end. The film was far from a bomb, but only took in $150 million (including, $55 million in the U.S.) on a $50 million budget, or not even half of what Twilight had done. Combined with the middling to negative reviews from critics, there clearly wasn't much interest in a franchise and plans to adapt the remainder of the Lorien Legacies were canceled. So, how did I Am Number Four veer off course?
I Am Number Four is Too Focused on Setting Up a Franchise
Verbal exposition, whether it's presented as spoken dialogue or delivered through voiceover narration, is something screenwriters are generally advised to avoid as much as possible since it inherently violates the 'Show, don't tell" rule of what makes for good visual storytelling in film. Unfortunately, I Am Number Four too often resorts to exposition dumps or ham-fisted expository conversations to explain Number Four's backstory and its mythology. A lot of it's unimportant to the story at hand and only really serves to lay the groundwork for potential sequels. In fact, much of what the audience needs to know for this movie (the Mogadorians are bad and hunting Number Four's kind) is quickly established by the wordless opening scene, which shows Number Three being caught and killed.
The film is similarly loaded with plot devices (like the fantastical other-worldly artifacts used by the Mogadorians and Lorics) that aren't fully explained or were seemingly included so they could play a more important role in the followups. There are also big subplots intentionally left dangling or unresolved by the end of I Am Number Four, most notably the one involving Sam, an outsider at the high school where Number Four hides in Paradise, Ohio, whose conspiracy theorist father disappeared while he was searching for evidence of extraterrestrial life on earth. For a movie that basically amounts to a cross between a teen romance and sci-fi action flick, I Am Number Four is needlessly complicated by all the table-setting it does for a franchise that was never guaranteed to happen.
I Am Number Four Tries (& Fails) To Cross Twilight With Michael Bay
Upon landing the right to I Am Number Four, DreamWorks began developing the film with an eye on having Michael Bay direct. Admittedly, it's a little bizarre to imagine the guy whose movies are known for being utterly bombastic helming a project that plays out as a fairly quiet boy-meets-girl story set in high school (with a sci-fi twist) for a significant part of its runtime. Then again, Bay had enjoyed modest success (creatively speaking) blending teen romance with sci-fi action a couple years before I Am Number Four entered development on the first live-action Transformers film, so one can more or less grasp what DreamWorks was thinking early on.
On paper, having Smallville creators Al Gough and Miles Millar write I Am Number Four, then recruiting Marti Noxon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) to make further contributions to the script, is even more sensible: all three know how to balance world-building with emotional stakes, and Noxon's experience writing fantasy coming of age allegories make her a natural fit for a story about a teen alien boy who's tired of living like a fugitive and begrudges the heavy responsibilities bestowed upon him. Sadly, anyone who's hoping for the interesting characters and sharp dialogue found in the writing team's previous output is bound to be disappointed by I Am Number Four's bland archetypes and listless recycling of elements from countless other YA titles.
Bringing in D.J. Caruso to direct I Am Number Four after Bay passed didn't work out either, but it's not fair to lay all the blame at Caruso's feet. He didn't even have a year to get through pre-production, wrap production, and finish editing the film between him signing on in early 2010 and the movie bowing theatrically in mid-February 2011, so it's no wonder both I Am Number Four's teen romance and action elements came out of the oven with so little flavor. Still, watching the film, there's a sense Caruso is much more comfortable channeling Bay with his direction during the super-powered alien fights (particularly, the explosive third act) than trying to imitate Twilight in the scenes focused on the romance between Number Four and a human teen named Sarah Hart. He'd lent his skills to genre movies featuring teenagers before with Disturbia, but with I Am Number Four Caruso may've simply been a little too far out of his comfort zone.
I Am Number Four's Characters & Acting Weren't Strong Enough
After breaking as a teenaged actor in British television and doing some modeling in the mid-late 2000s, actor Alex Pettyfer was positioned to become the next big thing in Hollywood thanks to his lead roles in I Am Number Four and Beastly, a modern-day YA re-imagining of Beauty and the Beast that opened in theaters just a couple weeks after the former. Thing is, he doesn't come across as angsty so much as bored in I Am Number Four. Not helping matters, Pettyfer lacks chemistry with costar Dianna Agron (then fresh off her breakout role as Quinn on Glee) as Sarah Hart, and neither of their performances are nearly as fascinatingly - and weirdly - lustful as Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart's in Twilight (a movie that hinted at their full talents before they reinvented themselves as character actors).
In their defense, few characters in I Am Number Four (Number Four and Sarah included) amount to much more than the stock types you expect to find in any high school movie, be they the bully with a chip on his shoulder or the nerd who struggles to fit in socially. Even Teresa Palmer as Number Six is more or less a generic badass, and a scene where she slow-mo walks away from an exploding beach house (using her super-powers to shield her from the fiery wreckage) to the tune of Adele's "Rolling in the Deep" is more likely to illicit unintended laughs than awe. Unsurprisingly, Timothy Olyphant is reliable as ever in his role as Number Four's grizzled, no-nonsense, protector Henri, but even the celebrated actor can only do so much to save I Am Number Four from being a misbegotten attempt to make "Twilight, but with aliens and more explosions".