Yes, I mean that Twilight. The movie based on the books by Stephenie Meyer. It’s been sitting in our Netflix queue for months now, always getting pushed back in favor of other more interesting things (like my ongoing re-watch of Star Trek: Deep Space 9). Somehow it made it to the top, though, and arrived in our mailbox. So, like it or not, we had to watch it.
I read the books – yes, all of them. What can I say? They brought out my inner teenage girl. But if you took out the overdramatic angst and the lame lines, you’d have a decent, unique vampire book series.
The movie, on the other hand, took everything the book did wrong and did it worse. Contrived plot? They contrived it further (and left out some crucial character development). Lame lines? They wrote even more lame lines. Overdramatic angst? Edward was practically bipolar in the movie, and they played up Bella’s angst so much that it was the only character development they gave her. As one-dimensional as she is in the books, she’s even more so in the movie.
The things the book did well, the movie took and did poorly as well. Edward is supposed to be an attractive young man (so to speak) with an inherently seductive voice who is good with people. They chose an unattractive kid with a boring voice and no acting skills. He’s like… an ugly Hayden Christiansen.
The vampire powers in the book are interesting. The special effects in the movie are cheesy and poorly done. The lighting is always wrong. The pale vampires in the book are supposed to be beautiful – in the movie the pale is ugly. The sparkly skin in the book was supposed to be amazing – in the movie it looks like a disease.
In the book, Bella knows very little about sports. In the movie, she acts like she knows nothing about sports, but when the Cullens ask her to umpire their baseball game, she appears to know the hand signals used by umpires to signal an “out”.
In the book, when Edward and Bella first meet in school, Edward can barely contain his desire to attack her. In the movie, it looks like he’s about to throw up instead – quite the opposite reaction.
Oh, and the music was lame and sometimes misplaced for the entire movie. It made me wonder why Linkin Park would agree to let them use Leave Out All the Rest as the ending credits song.
Blah. I could go on. Basically, the book was marginally passable as vampire fiction. The movie was awful in virtually every way, and disappointing even though I expected disappointment. Don’t watch it, if you liked the books, and if you didn’t, well, you should know better than to waste your time with this kind of movie 😉
I didn’t think the movie was THAT bad. I never read the books though. If you watch it from the perspective of a teenage girl, and get past the painfully awful dialogue and angst in certain scenes, similar to scenes with Padme and Ankin Skywalker, then it is… okay.
I have to agree about the Twilight movie, utter trash.
I watched it before I read the books, and it almost put me off picking up the first book. I’m glad I did though, despite the bad vampires (vampires should never, ever, sparkle) it’s actually a good series of (romance) books.
The problem, imo, is that the Twilight series is told through Bella. For the most part we’re in her head, living the events from a very specific point of view.
The movie couldn’t capture that same mindset, and as a result kinda isolated the viewer.
On second viewing (after I’d read the books), however, it made a lot more sense. Still a bad movie though, lol.