Okay confession time I am a 37 year old male married father of 4 and I like Twilight. There you go Ive said it. I am a huge fan of the books. They are what I call an eye closer. What I mean by this is I read them until I cant read them anymore. I have read three of them in 3 weeks and I cant get enough of them. I haven't read books like this since Harry Potter.
They are very well written, they drag you in and the stories are superb. They allow you to use your own imagination. They are simply fantastic and I highly recommend them. The astonishing thing as well is that they have been written in the past 5 years. An amazing piece of writing and full credit to Stephenie Meyer for her work.
However I have a slight issue with Twilight and its not the authors fault by any stretch of the imagination. Its Hollywood and the way the films of the books have been made. To be fair they do absolutely no justice to the books at all. It appeared rushed to me if I'm honest. The main characters Edward and Bella were spot on just as Id imagined them to be, as were all of the Cullen's and Billy and Jacob. Victoria was as well. But James and Lauren weren't neither was Charlie or her school friends.
That wasn't the only problem I had with it either. The storyliue was missing the tension, the conflict that Bella goes through as well as the campfire on the beach, the upturned tree and the fight at the end. It appeared they were rushing through it in a series of tick box exercises on a shoe string budget.
When you look at the Harry Potter films and the money and how closely they follow the script it was a major disappointment. If I'm honest if I hadn't read the books first I wouldn't have read them at all after watching the films. What a wasted opportunity. How much I would have missed out on from the books. I understand that a film cannot follow a book its a different medium but surely if you are going to do something that means so much to so many people, take the time, spend the money and do it properly surely.
It happens time and time again that really good books are given the Hollywood treatment and are rubbish. The only exceptions to this that I can think of are The Shawshank Redemption, which was a Steven King short story and is my second favourite film of all time, the first will be another blog, and The Green Mile. If Ive missed any let me know in the comments below.
So I'm a massive fan off the books just not the films. I guess Ill have to wait 20 years until someone remakes them to be the films they should have been the first time around, A huge shame and a massive missed oppurtunity that I hope they are regretting massively becasue I feel they wont stand the test of time like Harry Potter will.
I agree that the books are superb; but I love the films too. In fact, I'd even go so far as to say that some parts of the films work better than in the books. I expect to be struck by lightning for saying something so heretical. (Specifically, I think the better parts in the films are Edward's call and the Volturi fight in New Moon, and the chase scenes in Eclipse.)
ReplyDeleteIf it's not too far to travel, I sense you need to come to my Twilight book club. I'll send you an invitation on Facebook.