Taste of fame
There’s no question about it. ‘Twilight’ is a pop culture sensation.
In its opening weekend, the film grossed nearly $70 million, making it the third best box-office opener of the year. It has been unusually successful for a teenage romance, and the strides it made otherwise make it more than just a twisted chick flick.
Director Catherine Hardwicke broke the opening weekend record for a female director. Hardwicke jumped onto the film scene as a director with 2003’s ‘Thirteen,’ so she clearly knows her way around conveying teenage angst.
But the director alone didn’t launch the film, with all its merchandising, into epic status. The producers very carefully cooked up a combination warranting nothing less than the massive following ‘Twilight’ has created.
Sure, we’ve seen it a million times: people take successful books and make them multi-million dollar motion pictures. Sometimes they do it well (‘Lord of the Rings,’ ‘The Notebook’), and other times they can be vastly disappointing (‘The Time Machine,’ ‘Beowulf’).
But ‘Twilight’ did something more – it reignited the romance of the vampire obsession. Long gone since the classic ‘Interview with a Vampire,’ the traditional love story of vampires has been sucked dry. The ‘Blade’ trilogy made vampires cool again, but turned them into sword-toting action heroes instead of emotionally complex lovers.
Not this time. Now we have Robert Pattinson. As the charismatic, seductive, pale-but-oh-so-beautiful Edward Cullen, Pattinson successfully stole the hearts of almost every teenage girl in America (even though he’s British and 22 years old).
Let’s be honest, though: Pattinson was the best part of the film. The special effects were pretty cheesy. When Edward carries his lover, Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart), up the mountain, his little legs moving fast looked like someone flipping a pencil between his or her fingers until you can’t tell where the pencil is anymore.
But the cinematography was spectacular for the mood Hardwicke was going for. Who would have thought that a dreary, rainy, Pacific-Northwest setting could be so damn romantic?The make-up was great. Though, I pity all the girls who rushed home after the film and Googled Pattinson only to find out that he’s not quite as good looking when tan and, well, mortal.
The writing was poetic and epic. But that credit is owed to the novelist. After all, ‘Twilight’ was a best-selling novel before it hit the silver screen.
The biggest problem of this film: the ending. Okay, so it’s setting up for the sequel, ‘New Moon,’ which is already in production, but the ending was still sloppy. The script took a mere six weeks to write, and it’s obvious why they were able to do it so quickly: they spent maybe a day on the last 20 minutes of the movie.
Nevertheless, ‘Twilight’ was an entertaining flick (unless you’re single, then it’s just depressing). It’s worth watching and paying for the now-$9.50 movie ticket. During such an economic rut, it’s impressive that the film managed to pull in such a large audience.
Published on December 3, 2008 at 12:00 pm
