Twilight Review... Revisited

Alright, it seems as if I've made a few people a bit upset with my harsh review of the teen Vampire melodrama "Twilight" so I wanted to make a few more points here.

First, my initial review still stands. Period. The reason it stands is because I am basing my review on the movie, not the books, which I have not read. I can, and will, take a leap of faith and believe the book was far better than the movie.

Second, and what I deem most is important, I now know the movie was based only on the first book, and not the entire series. Unfortunately this doesn't improve my impression of the movie, it worsens it. I can be a bit more understanding if a screenplay writer and director need to compress a series of books into a two hour spot, it is difficult to do, but when they are dealing with only the first book in a series, come on, lets see a bit more effort. They (the screenwriter and director) assumed I knew everything about the characters, their background, their feelings and the reasoning behind their actions. I didn't, and unless I had read the entire book, could not have had a clue. The movie jumped right into the action with no caution for development and understanding. I was never able to get attached to the characters and understand their motives. There wasn't enough meat to make me believe those things could actually be happening in a Forks, Washington high school. Speaking of, what is with the high school stereotypes? Don't movie makers know that those stereotypes are outdated and far too obvious?

Third, I've been made vividly aware that this was a low budget film. Now, I understand a low budget film means you generally end up with cheesy visual effects and scenery but this film did reasonably well in that regard. While spending $37 million, a low figure but not debilitatingly low, they should have thrown a little more towards the screenwriter and received a better adaptation from the book--that would have made things infinitely better. I believe the actors have talent and that their talent is limited by the supporting writing and directing in a movie so I can't fault them too much, yet. Since there were basically two filming locations (Arizona and Forks) with minimal special effects I would say that $37 million should have bought me a lot more entertainment and satisfaction. None of this is really surprising considering their marketing budget was at least as much as the film budget, if not more.

Finally, sometimes bold statements need to be made when jaded people make unreasonable claims about something. I am not knocking on the books because I know vampire stories tend to tread on the campy side as a part of their basic nature. I am simply stating that from a non-devout Twilight book fan the movie was really awful. Hopefully, with a bigger budget, a better adaptive screenwriter, and possibly a new director, the second movie will be far better. I will keep and open mind since I now have a minimal understanding of the characters.

- Mitch G