Or don't, because unless you are a die hard fan of the books, I'm going to pretty much guarantee that you aren't going to like the movie. And if you are fan's of the books, I'm going to pretty much guarantee that you aren't going to like the movie. Or at least you are going to have huge issues with the movie as I did. And so, for better or for worse, as i promised like a million years ago, here are my gripes with what was probably my most highly anticipated move in 2008.
So let me start off by saying I wasn't expecting much. In fact, I was pretty much expecting the movie to suck and I guess it sucked just about as much as I thought it would. But at first I had hope. Because I kept watching that trailer and getting goosebumps because I was so ridiculously obsessed and excited about the movie coming out and I just thought that maybe, maybe it would all be so much better than I thought. I was proved wrong, of course and upon the first viewing I was pretty upset that my book had been massacred. But I moved beyond it eventually and in doing so, still feel the need to explain, in detail, all of the issues that I had with a movie that in my opinion could have been a whole hell of a lot better.
I think one of my biggest problems was the screenwriting and I'm sure, my issues have a whole lot to do with the fact that I graduated from college with a BA in English Writing Arts and took some screenwriting classes and while I DO NOT claim to be an expert, I DO happen to know a thing or two. The movie Twilight was 2 hours long. That's 120 minutes. That's roughly 120 pages. Considering most scripts are not even looked at by studio executives if they are more than 90 pages, that's a lot. Far more than it should have had. And they still screwed up. They added things that they shouldn't have (field trip anyone?) and they took out things that absolutely should have been included and then they messed a whole bunch of other things up. But I am not going to dwell, because there's far more to discuss than just this.
Moving on, and these issues are in no particular order, and so I'm just going to start spewing shit out and hopefully the 4 people who actually read this can follow. Ok, major issue number one - Edwards constipation face. I blame this totally on poor direction and not the absolutely wonderful Robert Pattinson who did an excellent fucking job as Edward if you ask me. No really, I blame this solely on Catherine Hardwick because she could have changed it, she could have made him not make that face and just... made it better.
Next, the whole running up trees things. It was awful. AWFUL. And I had to cover my face, and cringe at this thing that definitely did NOT add to the plot of the movie in any way shape or form and also, made me SO angry because they were wasting precious production dollars on fucking insane tree climbing madness! UGH words cannot even express how the whole ordeal made me feel. Really, worst idea ever.
Speaking of terrible ideas, and I am also going to blame this on the screenwriting as well as probably the directing, but what was up with the complete lack of character development? It seemed like the movie existed in 4 separate parts: Bella moves to Forks, Edward is a Vampire, Edward loves Bella, Fight Scene. This is not the way to tell a story. EVER. This also allowed for what I call purposely funny scenes vs. accidentally funny scenes. Things that I am absolutely positive were not in any way supposed to be funny, were because of the ridiculous ways in which this movie was made. Funny lines were delivered poorly, making them not as funny as they should have been and lines that weren't meant to be funny, came across as hysterical because they didn't fit the characters at all. This movie was riddled with useless conversation. And for a story that relied in some parts heavily on (yes admittedly cheesy) conversation, this sucked a lot for me. So many important character details were just completely left out and that bothered me as well. For instance, Bella's lack of ability to cook. As stupid as that was in the book, it was kinda big deal, kinda a normal thing for someone to do that connected her to her father in a way that helped to show just the kind of person she was. Another thing they left out that TPTB are probably shooting themselves over, Carlisle's history. Pretty important stuff for the next 2 books, don't you think? WHAT THE HELL??? But worst of all was how we were just expected to take it that these two characters were in love, even though they never said I love you or never really expressed their love in any way shape or form. WTF!!! This is a huge part of the book HUGE, I just don't understand it.
One of my biggest issues was that there was no mention of the word Twilight at all which makes me wonder, why was the movie even called Twilight if they were going to leave out one of the key lines in the book. Seriously, did you want to piss ALL of the fans of the book off. Jesus Christ.
And as much as I love love love love love Robert Pattinson, the entire movie was poorly cast. Yes the characters grew on me, and yes I obsessed like every other fan girl about the Cullens and soon these actors became the family they represented to me but honestly, they could have done better. I love Ashley Greene but Alice should have been smaller. I don't have a problem with Nikki Reed, but Rosalie should have been a natural blond. Emmette was supposed to have long curly hair, not the buzz cut that Kellen Lutz had. Jackson Rathbone is absolutely adorable but he looked way too much like Edward Scissorhands for my liking. And last but not least, someone should have FORCED Robert Pattison so bulk up properly so that all of us in the over 25 crowd could have got what we wanted, Edward shirtless. Sigh, I could go on, but I won't.
Okay, and now for the issues I had with the actual movie theater itself. I fucking LOVE going to the movies but the things I saw at the Twilight premier really made me hate the world. I don't understand people who clap at movies. THEY CAN'T HEAR YOU. When people do this, I think I actually dies a little inside. I don't understand people who scream during movies. Also, makes me die a little inside. It's okay to laugh and it's okay to gasp, but can we please keep our personal sounds to a minimum! There were girls in the movie theater crawling over walls, girls jumping over walls, girl's taking pictures IN THE MOVIE THEATER. It was awful. And while it was almost expected, that doesn't make it okay.
There was more, I know that there was more, even beyond the notes that I took about things that I wanted to talk about but I just feel defeated when I think about it. New Moon comes out in 10 months and 9 days (yeah, lame that i know that, i know) so I'm just going to spend those 10 months and 9 days hoping that it turns out a little better than Twilight, because if it doesn't, I don't really know what I am going to do with myself.
The sign reads: It is your birthday. And I was really sad that Party City did not have brown balloons. They're kinda blurry because I took them on my phone so that I could twitpic them and then twitpic didn't work all day and the only pic that got posted was the cupcakes. 
