Friday, November 21, 2008

Twi-LITE

My big girls and I attended the 12:01 showing of Twilight last night. We stood in line for 20 minutes, shivering, waiting for advance ticket holders to be let in. The mood in line was absolutely giddy! We sat in the theater munching on popcorn, discussing the Twilight series, and being threatened repeatedly about cell phone usage during the film. Finally, the previews began 45 minutes after we arrived.
You know, MTV didn't have to make a great movie for Twilight fans to be happy, they only had to make a mediocre film...unfortunately, they made a truly awful movie! The acting was so sub-par that we often found ourselves laughing during critical, supposedly intense scenes. Many of the lines were so canned as to be almost unbelievably bad. My favorite character was Jasper...he didn't say two words the whole movie!
The special effects were ridiculously bad as well. At one point, Edward is running through the forest with Bella on his back and we can see that though his legs are peddling furiously, his feet aren't actually touching the ground. The vampires are supposed to have luminescent skin that has a prismatic effect in direct sunlight. But when Edward showed Bella this phenomenon, it looked as if a make up person simply sprayed him with glitter spray.
The fight scenes were silly. When the coven of vampires assumes their fighting stance, they actually swayed back and forth like ghouls or something. It was embarrassing to watch. I was also appalled by the scene of Carlisle biting Edward's neck...I'd rather not comment further, that's how awful it was. But, possibly, the worst scene was Edward sucking the venom out of Bella's arm. He looked as if he was sucking a REALLY thick milk shake out of a straw and experiencing brain freeze at the same time.
The atmosphere leaving the theater was quite different than it had been when we entered. People were laughing as they recalled the worst parts of the movie and mimicking the badly delivered lines. Keep in mind that the audience wasn't full of film critics, but (mostly teenage) Twilight fans who LOVE the books. My advice? Skip the movie, but read the books!

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Oh how disappointing! My HS students were really looking forward to it! I'm so glad though that you read the books and didn't just 'ban' them on the premise of the topic! I haven't read them yet!

emmafudd said...

They are very well written. Honestly, I find the romantic aspect more troubling than the whole vampire thing. You will really notice the fight against the "sin nature" as a theme of the series!