During the 2000’s there was a vampire craze going around. After ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ ended people wanted more vampire-based entertainment. Cue in the ‘Twilight’ saga by Stephenie Meyer. The first book was an immediate success upon release and there were soon words of an impending film.
Surprisingly, despite me liking the supernatural genre as well as vampires in general I had little to no interest in it. Neither did most people my age when the books and films came out (despite what the media was trying to say otherwise).
However, I decided to revisit them a full decade later because of how bland modern entertainment has become due to woke nonsense being pushed down my throat and I was also revisiting other forms of entertainment that I had missed out due to lack of interest at the time of release.
The film was a success amongst mainly pre-teens and teenagers in general although there were a few that had- like me- little to no interest in it.
The story starts off with seventeen year old Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) leaving Phoenix, Arizona, to spend some time with her dad Charlie (Billy Burke) in Forks, a city in Washington. When Bella first arrives in Forks she is unimpressed by it; it is very wet and miserable in comparison to sunny Phoenix.
However, Charlie surprises her with a gift; a red pick-up truck that he has brought from his best friend Billy Black (Gil Birmingham). Billy’s son Jacob (Taylor Lautner) was a childhood friend of Bella’s and she’s glad that she knows that she has at least one friend in Forks to go to school with. That is until Billy reminds Bella that he is a Quileute Indian and that he goes to a different school.
Bella is disappointed but she is soon befriended by Eric Yorkie (Justin Chon) on her first day of school who introduces her to the other kids. Everything seems to be going well for Bella…that is until in her science class she meets Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson). For some reason, he clearly doesn’t like Bella; Edward spends all lesson scowling at her.
Edward is even less pleased when Bella becomes his lab partner. After what seems to be a very long lesson for Bella, the bell rings to signal the end of the lesson…and he immediately bolts for the class door.
Upon its release, 'Twilight' was met with a huge amount of praise from its target audience of teenage girls.
As I said, I didn't watch it until a full decade or so later. In my opinion? This is one of the very few occasions in which I say that the book was better than the film.
A bit slow at first but things don't start getting interesting until partway through during the baseball game. One of the biggest things that I did frown at was the whole "sparkly vampire" thing. It was corny on the book but on the film it was laughable. Even as a teen I would've been laughing at that scene in which Edward is sparkling in the sunlight. And the scene in which he's flying through the forest with Bella on his back? And I thought the flying sequence on 'Superman 4' looked bad!
However, I didn't think some of it was that bad; I admit that I liked the idea of vampires coming out in the daytime (as long as it wasn't too sunny or they'd end up all sparkly) and not just at night.
This film is most certainly for the pre-teens and teens only. It will be interesting to see how 'New Moon' turns out in comparison film-wise as I'm enjoying the second book more than the first.
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