The Twilight Paradox

When it comes to literature, the western world is currently divided into two groups: those who love the Twilight series, and those who loathe it with a vengeance and wish Stephenie Meyer had stuck to her day job. I happen to belong to the first group. This is because I love fantasy stories and I love vampires, and I'm a (not so) secret romantic. I like Bella because she is an outcast who accepts her condition, and I like Edward because he's so melodramatic and self-analytical, and he somehow reminds me of my own boyfriend, only without the clown side.

I love The Host even more. It's got sci fi, romance and lots of morals that you'll probably agree with. Unless you really, really hate humans. But anyway, back to Twilight.

Of those who love the Twilight series, there are those who also loved the film, and those who hated it. This time, I belong to the second group. It's like a goth version of Dawson's Creek made in the 80's. Bella has two facial expressions: mouth open and mouth closed. She has no other personality. Edward has gone from eloquent, turn-of-the-century young gentleman to creepy high school emo pervert. With mascara. Both main characters have lost their intellectual side. The only actors who are actually any good play secondary characters: Alice, Carlisle and Charlie in particular.

Then there's the crappy filming itself. The sex-scene-without-the-sex. The near-complete lack of colour in the scenery - even at the beginning, in Arizona, or on the one day it was supposed to be sunny. The sparkly vampire thing (admittedly, this made me laugh in the book as well), which was bad enough before they took out the sparkle and added, er, nothing actually. If I had not read the book, I would have had no idea what was supposed to be wrong with Edward's skin.

I still watched the film three times before admitting it was crap. It's the story I'm obsessed with, as usual. I had to get Nans to watch it with me, and listen to him point and laugh throughout the film, before I finally admitted he (and my first instinct) was right. To make myself feel better, I looked for parodies, and found two worthy of mention: Twilight In Fifteen Minutes by Cleolinda Jones, author of a small book of hilarious film parodies - I nicked most of the images for this article from her site; and a spoof trailer on Youtube.

Other films I'm disappointed in include The Golden Compass, the entire Harry Potter series and Chocolat. Especially Chocolat. In all three (although not so much Harry Potter), their biggest mistake was to try to adapt the films for children and political correctness fiends. Twilight doesn't even have that excuse. It's just bad.

So if you loved the books but haven't yet seen the film, don't. You will more than likely be horribly disappointed. To console you, here's one more image for the road - just because it's funny: