The plot: 17 year old Bella moves from Phoenix to Fork, WA to live with her dad. At her new school she meets Edward, a vampire, and they fall in love. Bella is a klutz and is always getting hurt or in situations so Edward is there to save her, especially from the bad vampires. That’s all I can say without giving everything away, but if you’re reading this, you probably already know the whole plot due to all of the publicity.
I’m a huge fan of sci-fi and fantasy. I love X-Men, LOTR, and Harry Potter. I’m also a sucker for sappy movies. I saw the trailers for a vampire love-story a couple months ago and thought it looked great – fantasy and romance! Of course, the guys hadn’t heard of it, so I showed them the trailer. Once they realized that it was a vamp movie with love, they wanted nothing to do with it! Everybody’s talking about it, so Mom went out and bought the books, reading the whole series in just one week. She was curious to see how the book turned into a movie and we ended up forking the dough to see it… twice.
I couldn’t get the dang movie and everything out of my head, so I started reading. I finished Twilight and am working my way through New Moon. The book and the movie both had their advantages. The movie was very straight to the point, but also switched things around. The field trip scene isn’t in the book, the meadow scene does not take place during or near the school, character’s lines are swapped – one example: in the movie, James says, “You’ve brought a snack,” when in the book, it’s Laurent who says it.
The thing that did bother me about the movie was how they handled the jumping/running/climbing scenes. For as big as this whole Twilight thing is supposed to be, you think they could have budgeted a little more for special effects and made it look cooler and more realistic when Edward runs up a hill at lightning speed or climbs a tree. How about when Emmett, Alice, and Jasper descend on the ballet studio for the final battle scene – they might as well left the tethers in place for how slow they jumped! (I guess they’re immune to gravity too…lol) I guess I was a little disappointed with those scenes because the technology is out there, look at Harry Potter and Spider Man. Hopefully there will be special effects improvements in the coming movies.
I think the changes made for the movie were for the better as it made the plot more suspenseful. But, in the book, I enjoyed the surplus of sappiness – the descriptions of how they caress each other tenderly and all that mushy stuff.
I had to find out how the series ended to see if it was worth it to keep reading and I haven’t read many good reviews, so now I’m curious as to how everything plays out. I’m already on page 326 of 563 in New Moon (the 2nd book) and until now, it has been kind of a drag. I will comment more when I’m finished with it.