Last night I was at the movies far later than I should have been. Originally it was in order to chaperon my nieces as they went to camp/wait for the first showing of Twilight (because going with Mom or Dad isn’t cool) but their Mom went anyway that and I was still going with them.
After seeing Twilight last night I can say this about the movie, I liked it. It wasn’t great, based on the trailers I didn’t think it was going to be great, and I think if you haven’t read the books you will not like this movie.
It’s a pretty good adaptation of the book. It hits all the key points, trims down the unnecessary fluff, and pretty much gives you the story that you read.
I was surprised that the film even captures the one problem I had with the book… why do these two fall in love? Edward comes off as a conflicted and confused mood swinging madman that suddenly is hopelessly in love and we don’t really know why Bella falls in love (however if you want insight into how this happens for Edward you may consider reading this. It doesn’t completely shed the light on the how but it does help). Is she caught up in the mystique that vampires are supposed to give off to make humans easy pray, is she in love with the forbidden, or is she in love because Edward is so obsessed with her? As I said before, the film captures the story I read.
The only real issue that bothered me about the movie itself were the choices made by the director. During a pivotal scene in the film, the big admission by Bella to Edward that she knows what he is, suddenly we’re assaulted with bad 90’s video music camera angles and editing that does increase the tension of the scene but in a really distracting way. These kind of choices gave the movie a feel at times that I was watching a show on the CW rather than a feature film.
I, however, am not the intended audience for the movie. My nieces were. Two out of three nieces found it “corny” and one was just baffled by the music in the film. At least one admitted they were going to see it again.
Oh yeah, the trailer for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince gave me goosebumps.
-WW
