Okay, so I think I posted in this thread some months back - maybe even a year ago, not sure - that I had downloaded the Twilight books nefariously and that I wanted to at least try to read them so that I could have an informed opinion. I read a page or two and became convinced that it was banal, and while I still intended to try to read some more later, I somehow never got around to it.
Fast forward to a few weeks ago, as I'm at Wal-mart and bored while they put a tire on my car (which takes two hours). I found myself in the books section. I didn't have enough money to get a book (tire wiped me out), so I didn't want to read something that was going to make me want to finish it. Then I noticed the Twilight books, and thought, 'hey, I'm bored so I'll read this and I probably won't care to finish it, but if I do, the books are on my laptop. yay.'
My first impression (from Wal-mart) was not that the writing was bad - it wasn't particularly good (not everyone can be Stephen King) but it was competent writing - but that the story was remarkably limited and unambitious.
Nevertheless, I found myself wanting to read on. Maybe it's because I'm a girl, after all. I found myself liking Edward (in the books, he's a very compelling character despite being a little unbelievable) and even sympathizing with Bella. She wasn't a typical Mary Sue character because she is pretty much a Plain Jane and there are actual plot reasons why every guy in town (including Edward) suddenly has the hots for her (which kinda freaks her out). It's a small town and she's the new girl. She's moderately attractive, which makes it believable when all the guys hone in on her. Edward's reason is that her blood smells really good to him, and if things were normal he'd just kill her and be done with the obsession but he's a good vampire, so he can't. So while the plot is unambitious, it is nevertheless logical and even trend-bending in quite a few cases.
I got bored in the second book (New Moon) because Edward went away and it gets into the whole werewolves (who aren't really werewolves) thing, and I was like, 'I thought these books were about vampires!' So, no Edward, and I like Bella but she is not as interesting as Edward, and then she starts hanging out with this Jacob dude (because she's miserable and depressed), and the reader is like 'no, no, noooo you stupid girl Edward is coming back!' At this point I started to dislike Bella, because back in book one she flirted with the guy to get him to tell her what his tribe knew about the Cullen family, and he's the one who told her they were vampires. At the time, the deception was annoying, but worth the price of the information she got, but when she starts hanging out with him in book two it's really easy to hate her for it because you know that Edward is somehow going to come back, and that she's going to choose Edward over Jacob, which is totally not fair to the kid.
I was sort of dreading the end of book two for that reason, and also because I figured that the plot details would be cheesy. She gave the impression that Bella was going to put herself in so much danger that Edward would actually come save her from it, but she actually set up a nice drama for the end and made it believable - very believable - and she went in a different place than the average reader would expect. She even dropped clues earlier in the book about where she was going, with Romeo and Juliet. At that point, I was pretty impressed, relative to the unambitious nature of the story. There's actually some creativity and good plotting in it. When you back up and look at it again from a book snob's perspective, it's still relatively cheesy and unambitious, but it's not your average crap that has no redeeming qualities when the romance aspect is removed.
It actually started to get really good in book three (Eclipse) with the whole Edward vs Jacob thing. I enjoyed book four (Breaking Dawn) but at the same time, I feel a compulsion to write a fanfic with an alternate ending, because the treatment of Jacob's character, while technically fair, is still disappointing. It's not like I really believed that she was going to make the love triangle work - she's pretty conservative, for a romance author - but it was such a
good love triangle. Also, the whole marriage and baby thing was a little too traditional for me even without the tempting alternate ending of a happy threesome. The resolution at the end with the Volturi was....tame. And unsatisfactory in a lot of ways, despite some amazing potential.
So, the movies. Some time while reading the first book, I watched a trailer for the first movie, and I was just
appalled at the acting. It was bad. Really bad, especially Rob Pattinson. So I was convinced at that point that I didn't want to watch the movies, and decided instead to read up on the actors and what people had said about their performances to see if my impression from the trailer was accurate. I found that Rob Pattinson and Kristen Stewart defend each other's acting a lot in interviews, which is interesting, and Pattinson has flat out stated that he can't act, that's he's just guessing at what to do most of the time. I also noted that he's English, which explained at least partly why he was so bad - doing the American accent apparently makes him think too much. He often stops in the middle of his sentences as if he's reminding himself how to pronounce what he has to say next. It makes him a very awkward Edward. Since they had to change so much for the movies, I kinda wish they had made Edward English. It would have been easy enough, since he is theoretically adopted, and his story could have happened as easily in London as in Chicago, probably. But oh well.
To make a long story short, I watched the movies because I liked the actors as people. Their lives are weird - none of them quite expected to become the modern day Beatles when they signed up for the first film. They have screaming fans following them everywhere they go. They're modest people with relatively modest ambitions. And the movies were not bad aside from their little problems with acting, which get better as time goes on. Kristen Stewart in particular gets better, and Taylor Lautner is not bad from the beginning. He's not incredibly great either, but he's better than Rob Pattinson. I noticed in New Moon that his acting was a little off, and after watching an interview with him I realized that's probably because he's gay. In any case, his Jacob voice is a little manlier than his real voice - or at least, it was. I've noticed he's started using his manly voice (which is still pretty gay) even in interviews now. Sometimes he slips back and forth. Also, I think he might possibly be the hottest dude to come out of Hollywood in years. Perhaps ever.
Just saying.
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