Twilight

I finally watched the movie this weekend. It was ok, but I didn’t think it was great. Since I read the series, I knew that with any book-turned-movie that you are bound to run into some disappointments. No way can they really capture the essence of all those pages into a 2 hour movie. Still, it wasn’t really the story itself that was the disappointment.

No, my biggest complaint was in the actors for Bella and Edward. They just seemed really flat. Its one thing for Edward to appear a bit repressed especially since there was a lot of himself that he was hiding in this particular piece of the story. I could have bought that I suppose. Bella was the real drag in this movie. Her performance was awful. Honestly, it was like watching a female version of Toby Maguire. Bella is supposed to be a bit of a loner and kind of shy, but I wasn’t getting that from her performance. She seemed so deadpan most of the time I found myself rolling my eyes a lot at the things she would say with no emotion on her face.

I think the best part was when James broke her leg and bit her. At least then she was required to do something other than stare and mumble something. The version of the movie I bought was the 3 disc set with a bunch of interviews and a documentary of the making of it. That part was more interesting. There were a couple of interview segments with the actors for Bella and Edward. It was clear from their commentary that they understood the characters well enough and the mindset they had in their performances. The delivery was just off somehow.

Oh well, maybe the second movie with Jacob and the pack will be better. What I will really be interested in seeing is the scene in the beginning when Edward breaks up with Bella and leaves her in the woods. To read that scene and the following pages had me bawling my eyes out. Hopefully seeing it on the big screen won’t cause me to bawl in disappointment.

Frankly, the Harry Potter movies did a better job with the casting.