Twilight – The Story I Hate to Love

I recently decided to pick up the wildly popular series of Twilight books.  I’ve heard so much about them but always had other things I wanted to read first.  When the movie came out, I felt a bit pressed for time, because I really wanted to see the movie, but not without reading the books first.  I like to be able to make up my own images of people in my mind before they are shown to me on screen.

A friend read the books recently and raved about them.  She went beyond raving though, into a place that I’ve never seen someone go over a book before.  Honest to goodness depression that the story was over.

Could it be that good, seriously?  They are ‘teen romance’ books after all.

Little did I know what I was in for *sigh*… from the first moment I opened the first book, I was completely hooked.   For the following three days I was incommunicado.  I actually bought the first book, so I could read it wherever I was, but when I finished it I was so hooked I couldn’t wait to start reading the next, so I downloaded it… and the one after that… and the one after that.

My friends didn’t hear from me, except the ones who have read it, so that I could blab my thoughts on the story to them.  My husband wondered if I was ever going to come out from behind my laptop for something other than food, toilet breaks or sleep and I’m pretty sure I didn’t bother to shower or answer the door or phone the entire time.  It was bad… really bad.

The Cullen family of vampires

I didn’t realize how much worse it could get until I was finished reading them… and then I understood what my friend meant when she said she was so depressed now that it’s all over.   I was devastated!  Suddenly I was thrown back into the real world and I didn’t want to be here.   I wanted to live in Bella’s world where you are never alone, there is always someone watching over you and protecting you… where the family of the one you love accepts you and loves you wholeheartedly even though you are different… A world of lullabies and baseball in the rain.

Vampire Baseball

I wasn’t there though.  I was sitting at home, alone… my dogs were bugging to be fed, there was laundry to do, I hadn’t figured out what to make for dinner yet, there were bills waiting to be paid and my hair was in that annoying ‘growing out stage’.  It fucking sucked.

Twilight is an amazing story, but it’s quite dangerous too.   It has a way of dragging you into a perfect world where even the most impossible things can seem real.   When it’s over and you close the book, you are left sitting and hating everything real about the world you live in.   Where the love you feel is real but will never have the force or excitement of the completely unrealistic (but desirable) form of it you just read about.   Where everything takes so much more effort and every relationship you have seems to be missing something by comparison.   It’s scary that a story in a book can have that affect on people, but it does and I know I’m not the only one.  I’ve visited a few fan sites and by the looks of things I am (believe it or not) among the more mildly affected.  Frightening thought.

Edward and Bella. Forbidden love at it’s best.

If you’ve not read this series, you (like I did when my friend tried to explain it to me) couldn’t possibly understand, but if you have – I know you’re with me on this.

The world created by the author is one of the purest kind of love.   Not just that but it’s a forbidden love, and we all know that the forbidden fruit sayings exist for a reason.   Put that together with unconditional acceptance, excitement and magic… how can anyone ever finish this story and not feel a little disappointed to be back in the real world?

This is all what makes me love these books, and hate them at the same time.  They are like a drug and they affect you in a way that I’ve never experienced with any other book in the past.   They stay with you, even days after you’ve finished them you can be driving down the road or watching TV and the characters will flash into your mind for no real reason.  It could go on forever and you’d still be left wanting more.

Crazy, right?  I know… even as I write all of this I know how ridiculous I sound… but that doesn’t stop it all from being true.

Our first glimpse of sweet Jacob

So anyway, Saturday my friend came over and we watched the movie together.  Both of us hopping with excitement in our seats as it began.   I know, it was hard to believe we were both over 30, but I guess we’re all still teenage girls at heart…

I was disappointed.  I was disappointed to be disappointed!   I knew that they had no chance in hell of fitting everything into the movie that was in the book, but they really could have done better.

First, the things I did like.  I love the people they chose to play all the parts, they were perfect… (although I did sort of imagine Alice to be more like Daisy Adaire from Dead Like Me).   I loved being able to see these beloved characters “live” and sit there and gush during the parts where they DID get it right.  I loved that for all the parts they left out, they didn’t forget the scene in the meadow, which was one of my favorites.

There were a lot of things I found wrong with the movie though, and they deserve a bullet list.

• The field trip.  What in the hell?  There were so many bits and pieces to fit into the movie, why make up an entirely new scene that didn’t even exist?  I hated that.
• They didn’t get across just how intense the relationship was between Bella and Edward.  You knew they wanted each other and that they wanted to be together, but it came nowhere even close to what you experience in the book… where they love each other so intensely that neither of them know how to cope with it.  Where the world isn’t even worth living in for them unless the other is in it too.  Where they actually say it to each other.   Their love is the foundation that the story is built on, and the book goes quite in depth explaining what exactly these two feel for each other… but in the movie it’s just not there.   That was so disappointing for me.
• Bella’s reactions.  When you read the book you understand that the majority of the reactions Bella has towards Edward stem from her own insecurity and that this makes her nervous around him.   She is worried about losing him, but is never afraid of him or being around him, which I found was the reaction she seemed to always portray in the movie.
• There wasn’t enough of the Cullens.  Some of the best parts of the book are when she is with the them!  For example, the scene with her, Alice and Jasper in the hotel.  That was shortened to almost non-existance in the movie.   None of her true bonding with Edwards family happened in the movie, and that is sad.
• Edward’s mind reading and his competition weren’t much of a part in the movie.  In the books he gets quite a lot of competition from the guys Bella goes to school with and it’s a major source of irritation for him, but that wasn’t an issue at all in the movie.  In fact, the people she went to school with may as well have not even existed, even though they made up a big portion of the story in the book.
• Angela and Eric? Huh?  Wasn’t she with Ben?
• Victoria had flaming red hair – FLAMING!!  Not red – ish.
• They didn’t really show any of the true relationship between Bella and her father.  None of the way she took care of him was shown in the movie, she pretty much just lived there, and that was it.

Oh James, bad boys always are so hot.

Ugh, there’s just so much… I could go on forever.   If you were to imagine the Twilight story as a beach, the movie was just one grain of sand.   They really should have made a miniseries out of it or something.  I’m going to stop harping about it now though.   Even while we were in the process of watching the movie my husband laughed at us. He also pointed out that we were worse than the Trekkies or Lord of the Rings weirdos.   I can’t argue, it’s true.  We’re absurd…

… but you can best your ass we’ll be first in line when the next movie comes out!  Even if, like Twilight, it pales in comparison to the book… we still won’t be able to stop ourselves.   We’ll take any scraps we can get.  Plus, I really want to see more of Jacob.