Twilight (the movie)

I went to see the Twilight movie today.  I had made sure to get my expectations sufficiently lowered before I went in, so I actually ended up enjoying it more than I thought I would.  It did a pretty good job at adapting the story, which is always difficult.  Some of the changes were actually improvements, I think, some were things I wasn’t crazy about, but most were things that I neither especially liked nor disliked.  At least there wasn’t anything that I felt especially cheated over having been left out, but that was probably because there weren’t a lot of specific things in the book that I was just crazy in love with (and most of the time if something I really liked was cut, it was made up for in a different scene).  I do wonder what it would be like for someone who hadn’t read the books, though, because, as with many adaptations, I sometimes found myself filling in the blanks and catching subtle things that people unfamiliar with the story may not have.

And now I’ll be moving into the realm of spoilers, so don’t read further if you want to be surprised.

First, a note on the cast.  For the most part, the people they cast don’t look much like the way I’ve imagined the characters in my head.  Jasper, Charlie, and Angela particularly looked so different that if I hadn’t been told who they were, I would never have guessed by looking at them (well, other than Jasper’s yellow eyes, that is).  One thing I find amusing in a slightly annoying way is that, of the three blond Cullens (Carlisle, Rosalie, and Jasper), all of them are natural brunettes.  Ordinarily this wouldn’t really matter, but unfortunately, to varying degrees, it’s somewhat noticible.  The eyebrows give it away, for one.  Carlisle particularly–not that his hair looks especially bad; it just looks as obviously faked as his skin and eye color.  As for the acting, I think they mostly did a decent job.  It was kind of hard to tell, as Alice, Jasper, Emmett, Rosalie, and Esme probably had a total of twenty lines between them.  Jasper had some nice intense looks, though, especially if you have read enough to know what he’s thinking.  Carlisle was the second-most used Cullen (in that he had more screen time than the others, but still way behind Edward), which was nice.  I think Peter Facinelli did a pretty good job.  There is something I noticed, though–something I noticed before going in with watching interviews and stuff, too.  Despite being, I think, 33 (ten years older than Carlisle should look, but the right age for what he’s “barely passing” for), there’s something very young about him.  I know it’s one of those things I can’t really explain very well because it’s more just an impression, but he just didn’t have the quiet, steady, but undeniable presence that I would expect from someone in his 300s.    He just didn’t seem much like a patriarch.  For a story where Edward’s the main focus, for Carlisle to actually appear to fill the role that he does, he’s got to really radiate authority and wisdom, and he just doesn’t.  That’s all just my impression, though.  I can’t really say anything bad about the performance, and I actually liked it well enough, but it just seems like maybe a different casting choice might have brought a little more to the role (though I heard that they almost cast someone in his 40s, and that would have been a travesty).

As for the humans, I thought most of them were great.  Jessica was just as vacuous as she should be (though maybe not quite petulant enough), and Eric, Mike, and Tyler (a trio so ethnically diverse it’s a little hard to ignore the obviousness of it) are actually really funny in their dorkiness.  Where in the book, all this attention from guys was just annoying and unrealistic, these three are so over-the-top that it just makes for good comic relief.  And Mike especially (played by Michael Welch, a young actor I’ve seen in various parts since he was a kid, including roles in Star Trek Insurrection, Frasier, Stargate SG-1, and The Invisible Man, which makes him the cast member I’m most familiar with), who in the books mostly comes across as creepy and annoying, is actually so adorable that I just can’t dislike him.  Charlie, unfortunately, is mostly wooden and emotionless, but admittedly Charlie is pretty low-key… though a bit more life in the whole Bella-storming-out scene would have been nice.  Billy and Jacob, on the other hand, were wonderful.  Billy was very likable and sufficiently mysterious, and there’s this moment where he and Edward pass each other in their cars and slow down to give each other such an antagonistic glare that it just cracked me up.  I was pleasantly surprised with Jacob.  He really did seem just about perfect, both in looks and in manner, and I really look forward to his expanded role in later films (though I am a bit nervous about it–it’s just not physically possible for him to make the change that Jacob does so rapidly in the second book [and I don't mean the turning into a wolf part], but I hope there’s at least some noticeable bulking up).

But of course, this is a story about Bella and Edward, so most of the other characters sadly aren’t in it enough to really even develop into three-dimensional characters, though I hope having four movies will help that some.  Now, as for Bella and Edward… Bella initially comes across as a much stronger girl than she seems in the book, and I think that’s largely due to the actress, Kristen Stewart.  Just the way she carries herself, and her rather low voice, seem to lend a maturity to her that was often talked about in the books, but which I never saw.  Unfortunately, this largely goes out the window when the whole “being in love with Edward” thing starts, but I saw it pick up again near the end.  Really, given how stupid and silly this character is, I think the fact that I bought her at all speaks very well of Kristen.  Edward was… not terrible.  He was kind of… well, just odd.  I’m not sure how much of this to attribute to Robert Pattinson’s acting, though, as the lines he was given were largely ridiculous.  Well, anyone who’s read the book should know how cheesy much of what Edward says is, and I was actually surprised by how many lines were lifted directly from the book (though I was more surprised to find that two of what I think of as big ones, “Do I dazzle you?” and the whole “Not her” bit, were left out entirely).  But there’s just something that seemed really forced about Edward–or rather, about Edward and Bella’s interactions.  I just didn’t buy this relationship, which, given that it’s the primary focus of and reason for this movie, is kind of a a problem.  The only time I bought it, the only time I saw any actual chemistry, was the final scene when they’re dancing at the prom.  That was it.  Everything else just felt so… well, forced.  Though this, of course, might easily be blamed on the fact that the relationship in the book wasn’t entirely believable either.

Now, a note on the pacing.  Maybe it’s because I’m less protective of the source material than, say, LotR or Harry Potter that I can appreciate the efforts made to tell the same story in a much shorter period by moving things around a bit.  Some sections are removed entirely, but mostly things are just shifted around or told in very short beats.  While this has the benefit of getting most of the story in there and staying fairly true to the book, it also means that everything seems to go at super-speed, and a romance which was unbelievably rushed in the book becomes jarringly instantaneous.  By the time Edward says, “I’m done trying to stay away from you,” it really doesn’t seem much like he’s tried to stay away from her at all.  And what initially looks like Bella’s natural curiosity about a strange (and cute) guy who first hates her, then is polite to her, then saves her life by stopping a runaway van with one hand, becomes “true love” at some point I must have missed and suddenly all credibility the character had with me is lost.  The threat from James happens really too quickly, as well.  One second they’re chatting politely and the next Edward is frantically driving away and telling Bella how James will stop at nothing to kill her.  Again, this happened pretty quickly in the book, but even that gave enough detail and time for it to be marginally understandable.

One thing I did think the movie did well was setting up the bad guys much earlier on.  It shows a couple scenes of them killing people, and some mentions of the effects of that, gradually, so that their appearance isn’t completely out of the blue.  One of these scenes involves the bad vamps killing an old friend of Charlie’s, which leads to Bella and Edward stopping by the station on their way home from Port Angeles (a change from the book), and Carlisle coming out and telling them what happened.  Here was one of those nice subtle moments where, if you’re familiar with the characters, is quite amusing.  Carlisle tells them, “He was attacked by an animal,” then immediately looks at Edward, and Edward reacts just enough that you  know that Carlisle followed up his spoken words by thinking, “It wasn’t an animal,” or somesuch.  This wonderful, understated example of the ease of communication between Edward and his family, which is a part of the unfinished Midnight Sun chapters that I loved, is a great little addition.

Speaking of parts I loved, I do have to say that the scene where Edward brings Bella to his house to meet his family is really awfully hysterical.  The adorableness of Carlisle, Esme, and Emmett excitedly cooking something for Bella, Rosalie’s overreaction to the news that Bella’s already eaten, Jasper’s creepy-eyed entrance as he tries to withstand the proximity of the human, the awkward/funny vampire conversation, and, most of all, Edward’s expressions through everything–there’s pretty much nothing in that scene that’s not made of win.

Just a few more random notes… The scene that was shown in some of the trailers, of Emmett confronting Edward about Bella at his car, is nowhere to be seen.  Hopefully this means there will be some deleted scenes on the DVD.  I really hate it when they put scenes in the trailer that don’t end up in the movie. … Watch for Stephenie Meyer’s cameo as a customer at the diner counter in one scene.  It’s not funny or anything, but it’s there, and I think that’s nice.  … When Edward was about to show Bella his sparkling, all I could think was, “This had better be awesome.”  Of course, it wasn’t.  I had read one review online (maybe Ebert’s) that said that the effect made it look like he was just really sweaty, and it totally, totally did.  This does not seem like an effect that would stop traffic, make women scream, and instantly cause such chaos in a crowded square that a hoard of vampires would swoop down for fear of their secret being revealed.  I really do wonder how they could possibly pull off the big climax in the next book if that’s all that it looks like (remember, Edward chooses this over lifting a car over his head or killing a bunch of people–it’s meant to be dramatic and stunning.  It’s totally not).  … Also, the scene where Edward has to suck the poison out is funny, what with Carlisle first having to keep Alice from pouncing on wounded Bella with what I recall as a kind of hilarious, “Come on, really?” look on his face, then the way he’s like, “Edward… Edward…” when Edward needs to stop because he’s gotten all the venom out and is killing her (which apparently Carlisle knows by magic, since he has no medical bag so Bella don’t get no morphine).  Although I do have to wonder yet again why he just didn’t do it himself, especially since in this version he’s not particularly doing much doctoring, just apparently keeping Bella’s femoral artery compressed with one hand, which he probably still could have done while sucking out the venom, and anyway, handing off that job to Edward would have entailed much less risk than letting him actually drink her blood.  Although I suppose the point is that Carlisle was asking Edward to make the decision whether to suck the venom out or let her become a vampire, but… meh.  Once again logic takes a back seat because Edward’s the main vampire.  Or maybe that’s just my preference for Carlisle showing.  (BTW, the flashback scenes of him biting Edward and Esme?  Yeah, totally hot.)

Overall, I thought the movie was quite entertaining, and often hilarious (sometimes intentionally, sometimes not).  It’s not as much fun as the book, but it does have the same mix of cheesiness and actual likability to make it worth watching, and I find myself quite looking forward to seeing the sequels.