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Wednesday, December 17, 2014

Books VS. Movies: Twilight by Stephanie Meyer

It seems like nowadays that all of our favorite books are being turned into movies. This meme is about the failures and winners of the silver screen in comparison to their books.



Winner:

The book is the clear winner in this round. The book is well-written and even though the plot isn't unique it was well executed. Most of all, it was really sweet. The romance between Edward and Bella was and is beautiful. A lot of you say that Edward is a creepy stalker and that the whole book is cheesy. I agree with those comments to a certain extent but the book is more than that. If you look at most YA romance books, most of them have similar themes are are on the cheesy side but this is one of the good ones.

Loser:

This first movie murdered the entire franchise. The effects were cheap and cringe-worthy. All of the make-up and lighting made the actors all look like corpses. The movie added extra things to the story and script to try to make it more comical and engaging towards their target audience but it didn't work. If anything, those scenes made them more awkward (with the exception of Charlie and the shotgun, I love that scene). Worst of all: the acting. It was so awkward. I'd say it was robotic but robots can display more emotion than Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart do in this movie. There was no passion, no romance, nothing. All intensity and chemistry that Bella and Edward have for each other are completely nonexistent between these two. In general, I blame the ultimate failure of this movie on the direction. Apparently Summit agreed with me since after this movie they changed directors. That wasn't enough to save this trilogy though. The following movies were better but the first sucked so bad that it took away from any positives the franchise had.

You guys can check out my Book Boyfriend post on Edward Cullen here; I have a few book quotes from Twilight and the other books in the series.

11 comments:

  1. The movies were indeed a joke, but the books themselves read like a fanfiction. It's possible to pull off the whole "creepy stalker for supernatural reasons" if you do it well. Amazing writing will help books overcome the most ridiculous things. Just by 2 cents though.

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    1. That's an interesting point. I assume you mean bad fanfiction because I've read plenty of books where I find myself going, "how did this ever get published?" and I've read many fanfictions where I find myself going, "how is this not an actual book?"

      I guess what I'm saying is that it's hard to critique a book--at least for me--by saying it's reads like a fanfiction.

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    2. Generally I didn't mean terrible fanfiction. I meant writing that clearly did not go through the editing and revising process thoroughly enough, like a professionally published novel would. Except that, I felt that the main character was completely unlikable. There was no rhyme or reason for why guys were falling head-over-heels in love with her. Don't get me wrong, I know that lots of people love these books. Just like many people love the "Shatter Me" trilogy, while I think it's written like a smutty (and terribly cheesy) fanfic.

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    3. I didn't notice anything about the books that made it seem like they didn't go through the editing and revising process. Nothing blaring anyway.

      As for Bella being an unlikeable character and there being no reason that everyone was falling for her, I can't say I agree either. With Edward, they spend a lot of time together just talking and they had a lot in common. While reading their scenes I felt their chemistry and their spark as they spent more time together and talked about their lives. Bella's relationship with Jacob on the other hand, we see them spend time together as friends and start to develop feelings for one another.
      As for finding her likable, she's just an ordinary teenager. She's not a Katniss or Tris but she is intelligent, empathetic, loving, brave and at times funny.

      I can completely agree with you about "Shatter Me." At first, I liked the writing style because it was unique but as the book and trilogy carried on, I found it to be really immature and exactly as you said smutty and cheesy. Also, I think that Mafi completely destroyed her characters and romanticized a villain which I find disgusting.

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  2. I loved the books. And they were way better than the movies. Neither of the main actors were what I pictured with the characters in the book for one thing. Then, the first movie left out all the stuff that made you see how the two fell in love, so it was so hard to understand why anyone liked each other in the movie. As for the main character being unlikeable, I totally disagree as I don't think of myself as unlikeable, and I totally identified with Bella. I don't understand saying something is fanfic unless it is based on another story. What would you say Twilight is fanfic of? 50 Shades of Gray is fanfic of Twilight, and horrible fanfic at that.

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    1. I totally agree with you! I loved the Twilight series (maybe except Breaking Dawn) but the movies were just horrid. Now people just make fun of Twilight based on how terrible the movies were without ever having read the books.

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    2. When I read Twilight, appearance wise only, I pictured Robert Pattinson but I definitely didn't see Kristen Stewart as Bella. Both of them were really awkward and seemed as if they couldn't act at all.

      Just like Julie said, I feel as if a lot of the people who trash the books have never read them and have only based their opinion off the movies. Before the movies came out, the books were a huge deal and were doing very well. I only noticed all the negative comments after the first movie was released.

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    3. That's because the first movie was a joke (and that's not to say that the rest of the movies were cinematic masterpieces or anything, because they were only slightly less painful and embarrassing)... If someone told me that the Twilight movie was a parody film based on the books, I would totally believe them and everything would finally make perfect sense! Honestly though--what in the world was Catherine Hardwicke thinking?

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    4. I think she was thinking it was artistic...although it was quite the opposite.

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