TWILIGHT

twilight

Overall Impression — A teen love story with vampires, not a vampire story with teen lovers.

THE FOUR QUESTIONS

Who’s your main character? — Bella.

What’s she trying to accomplish? — Fall in love with Edward and have him love her back…without it costing her life.

Who’s trying to stop her? — Edward (and also James and also Jacob and also her father and also her friends.  I told you it was a teen love story!) 

What happens if she fails? — She will be either killed or turned into a vampire herself.

THE FOUR ARCHETYPES

Orphan — Bella leaves the sun of Arizona for the clouds of Washington state, starts at a new school and moves in with the father she hasn’t seen much.

Wanderer — She meets Edward and senses that there’s something odd about him.  She starts trying to figure it out.  Bella puts the pieces together and figures out that he’s a vampire.  She’s also now in love with him.

Warrior —  They fight to figure out how to be together without Edward losing control and killing her.  They also discover another group of vampires are working the area, and the most vicious one has caught Bella’s scent.

Martyr — Bella abandons her father in order to protect him and flees James’ pursuit of her.  Edward and his entire vampire family risk themselves to keep her safe, and ultimately Bella is willing to sacrifice herself to protect her mother from James.  

AND, IN THE END…

This was one deliberately paced movie.  Slow, no graphic violence, much more hormonal than hemoglobal.   That’s because it’s a love story, first and foremost.

In love stories, the question is never “will the lovers get together?” but rather “with all of the obstacles standing in their way, how will the lovers ever get together?”  Twilight excels in that it knows exactly what it is.  Edward’s curse is that he’s a vampire; the obstacle to him and Bella being together because the more he wants to be with her, the harder it is for him to control his bloodlust.  How’s THAT for an obstacle?   And even at the end of TWILIGHT, the question of how will they be able to be together is only answered in the short term.  Edward is 17 and will never age.  Bella is 16.  What happens when she catches up to him?  What happens as she gets older than him?  How will they be able to be together without her being turned into a vampire (or, please no, Edward being turned human in some “never tried before on a vampire” experiment contrivance?)

I haven’t read the books, but now I understand why my teenage daughters (and my wife!) are so keen to find out how it all will end.

— Jeffrey Alan Schechter

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