Saturday, November 29th - Midnight Sun

So after waking up on the couch after a night of drinking, post-Thanksgiving and of course, dealing with a work issue that I slept through the call for, I decided that I was going to go to the movies. The Mean Girls have been talking for a while (just talking...not doing, mind you) about going to a movie, and since there were plenty out currently that I had a passing interest in, I decided to do something I hadn't done in a very long while - hop around theaters. Now, growing up in a small town, I never really had the opportunity to go to a big megaplex of theaters, which makes this practice imminently easy to do, and I can recall the absurd joy I got when I did it for the first time, a double feature of The Matrix and Analyze This. To add even more to the fact that I am going to hell, I did my first theatrical sin on Good Friday.

Anyway, back to today... I suppose I was feeling even more sinful, because instead of just making it a double feature, I mapped out the heretofore unattainable goal of a TRIPLE feature, and the fact that I did it with flying colors (and NO popcorn with "buttery" topping), makes me think that a quad-feature is not impossible. We shall see! I took in three very different movies: Role Models, Twilight, and Quantum of Solace. I am happy to say I enjoyed all of them for different reasons, and I'll do reviews of the rest in a later post. However, I want to focus on the current teen craze/popular culture zeitgeist of Twilight.

(While I hate people who spoil movies and I do not plan to reveal too much here, I will say if you have any plans to watch Twilight and want to remain untainted, you'll probably want to stop reading here.)

I like to consider myself pretty much on the cutting edge of pop culture. I keep up to speed on celebrity news/gossip, Billboard charts, subscription to Entertainment Weekly, etc, and even if I'm not well versed in stuff, I at least feel like I have a grasp on what is "big" out there. Well, the whole tsunami surrounding Stephanie Meyer's creation really completely flew under my radar. I do recall when the Twilight the book came out, because I read the review in EW calling it the next great teen series in the same vein (ha) as Harry Potter, inasmuch as there is plenty for adults to like about the series, but instead of running out and reading it then, I just swept it under my mental rug. It wasn't until this year and the unavoidable hype surrounding the (poorly received) 4th book, Breaking Dawn, and the movie adaptation of Twilight, that I began to get mildly interested. Of course, there was Harry Potter connection of Robert Pattinson, the dreamy Edward, having played the doomed Cedric Diggory in the Harry Potter & The Goblet of Fire. Even with that, the hype, and the pretty good reviews of the movie, I still have to say it wasn't something I felt necessarily compelled to go see in the theater, which all changed when I saw it fit well in my triple feature plans.

A lot of people who know me would probably be shocked that I am a pretty big romantic at heart. Truly, I'd say most of my relationships have ended because I have more of a high schooler's idea of what a relationship should be, which is perfection personified. The fact is relationships are tough, and they're rarely the meadows full of wild flowers and blue skies as far as the eye can see that we imagine them to be. However, from a celluloid area, I am a sucker for a good romance. Indeed, The English Patient, while certainly not a wild flowers story, is by far my favorite movie of all time. When I watched that movie with my parents so long ago, my mother said "There is no way you can love that movie and not be a romantic," which was probably the clearest look I have ever given my parents into my soul. So, knowing that Twilight looks at love from a youthful perspective, I knew that I would likely fall helplessly in love with the story of Bella Swan and Edward Cullin. I did...mostly.

The movie itself was well constructed and acted. Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson have a great chemistry, which is absolutely necessary if you're going to believe a story like this. It takes a lot to make a viewer believe in love at first sight (or scent...), and I certainly believed it this time. However, I came out of the movie wanting to read the book, just because I felt like I was missing a lot of the subtext. This is probably one of the very first times I'll have watched an adaptation without having read the book first, and I suppose I now have greater appreciation for those who didn't quite "get" The Lord of the Rings because they hadn't read and memorized everything like I did.

While I believed the central romance of the movie, I found myself rather bored with the character of Bella Swan, and it really has nothing to do with the story or the actress. For her part, the angsty teen, in love with someone she knows is dangerous is probably one of the most threadbare, movie cliches out there. Sure, she is dealing with the love for the undead, but she pales (ha) in comparison to the much more interesting story of Edward. For the record, I do not want you to think I find Edward interesting because I'm gay and he's a hot guy. No, I'd actually say I find Robert Pattinson to be less than "the hottest guy in school" that Edward is supposed to be. Sure, I would love it if a guy ever looked at me the way Edward looks at Bella, but there is just a lot more depth inherent to Edward. The character arc of the vampire, the predator, who has to fight at every moment the bloodlust to kill Bella is just so damn interesting, and yes, I know this has already sort of been done by Buffy and Angel. The fact that the Cullen clan has been around for at least a century and chooses to be "vegan" -- they do not feed on humans just animals -- makes their whole story a lot more interesting. Indeed, since I was thwarted in my meager effort to purchase Twilight to read tonight, I went online to find out more about Midnight Sun, which is Stephanie Meyer's retelling of the story of Twilight with Edward as the narrator. Something tells me that I'm going to enjoy inhabiting the thoughts of Edward more than Bella, and I'm going to have to resist the urge to read the unpublished manuscript for Midnight Sun, because I'd rather wait until she releases the book on her terms, not because some idiot released it to the wrong person, who subsequently released it to the internet (I'm already one chapter in though....so, um..yeah, probably going to read the rest of it).

Since I do not know how much of the back story you get in the subsequent books, I would hope that Meyer decides to write a prequel series, because I think there is a lot of interesting ideas to be mined about Carlisle Cullen and how the rest of his "family" came into being. That story I would read from day one. Until that happens, I would recommend Twilight to anyone who likes a good romance, and especially, if you're willing to check your adult brain at the door. This story doesn't exist in the reality of relationships, and if someone as jaded as me can get swept up into the story, then I think almost anyone can enjoy Twilight.