Lol. I can’t seem to stop thinking about the movie.
So I’ve been browsing around for reviews and such. And there are a lot of haters out there!
First category: Vampire lore enthusiasts. Or purists. They’ve been raving about how Stephenie Meyer is committing blaspheme against true vampire lore. Come on, it’s fiction. She has a right to create characters as she sees fit. So their skin sparkle like diamond when touched by sunlight. It’s an interesting idea, and actually contributes to their being ‘the world’s most dangerous predators’.
Second category: Book enthusiasts. They rave about how Rob Pattinson is wrong as Edward, how Kristen Stewart is not Bella, how they wrongly portray the characters and such. To me, Kristen got Bella spot-on, from her pale skin to her obsession with Edward, and her immediate trust. Rob…1st time I saw the movie, I didn’t think he’d make a convincing Edward (something about the hair maybe…just weird), but when I re-read New Moon, Edward’s face was Rob’s, and Bella’s face was Kristen’s, and as with other characters as well (maybe not Jacob, who’s supposed to be tall but thin, and later on fills up. And he was supposed to have his hair in a ponytail in the 1st book…but then again, I’m just nitpicking). Maybe with the exception of LotR (the book was just draggy and boring for me), movies usually cannot live up to the original book. Filmmakers have to sacrifice and alter parts to make a movie sell. They can’t be re-enacting the whole book from the first word to the end.
Second (point five) category: Those who compare Twilight with Harry Potter movies. Mind you, there are a lot of reviewers out there who compare these two movies. Maybe because Rob acted as Cedric Digory in The Goblet of Fire. Maybe. But these two movies are of different genres! HP is about magic and growing up (fantasy), and Twilight is about teenage love with vampire plot as a side dish (romance/thriller?/horror?). And even if you still want to compare these two, just look at HP: the Philosopher’s Stone. The kids were new at it, and budget wasn’t as big as subsequent movies. You could actually see the stiffness in acting, the insequrity. And as the books progressed, they got longer, but the movies had to sacrifice major and important parts to not make the movies long and boring. Plus, the actors themselves said they were experimenting on how to make the flying/speed to work. I’m guessing they did not have that big a budget to work with to make the movie. Give a chance for Twilight to make Box Office list. There are four books at the moment. If people love Twilight and support it, maybe New Moon can be way better than Twilight, just like HP movies.
Third category: People with overactive imagination (I’m among one of them, but I don’t hate this movie :P). They usually have a set image of how Edward and Bella are supposed to look and act like, and they experienced major disappointment when the movie came out. Maybe their perfect image of those characters were shattered. Hey, just go to www.deviantart.com and type in Edward Cullen or Bella Swan in the search engine. You’d be surprised how many self-portraits there are imagining themselves as the characters.
I don’t know about the rest, but the movie’s grown on me. Sure, it’s far from perfect, and sure some of the actors could’ve been better, but give it a chance. The movie is about teenage romance, that’s somehow mature enough that they wanted it to last forever. And it’s about abstinance, something not many teenagers know about anymore. Edward being a vampire is how Stephenie Meyer gave a different take on teen romance. And being an aspiring novelist myself (don’t know when I’m gonna make that happen), having one’s book turned into a movie and subsequently having a boost on book sales due to the movie is more than an author can dream for.
PS: Rob Pattinson sang 2 songs in the soundtrack, Never Think and Let Me Sign. I loved the songs when I heard them in the movie, and when I browsed for the soundrack, I saw Rob Pattinson as the singer. When I googled the name, look who’s face turned out? Edward’s! (I don’t actually keep track with actor names and such). I still can’t put the face with the singing voice together…Doesn’t seem to match. The songs are powerful, if you can understand what he’s singing. Kristen Stewart can sing as well, but it’s…well, youtube for it yourself and be the judge.
Entries (RSS)