Twilight (2008): Movie Review
Tuesday, January 13, 2009;)
First off, before I go on, I would just like to say that this movie was overly hyped for nothing. Now, I’ll begin. Basically, this movie is about a teenage girl, Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart), who falls in love with a male vampire named Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson). Twilight was released in the theaters on November 21, 2008 in the United States and in Canada and grossed $35.7 million on its opening day. That’s quite a lot for a movie like this.
When I first saw the trailer for this movie, I was expecting it to be more of a awesome vampire story, but unfortunately it was just a misleading movie trailer like most over hyped movies. The movie tries to be a vampire story, and a love story, which is good, but because the direction (Catherine Hardwicke) was not so good, the movie did not perform at it’s best. Acting wise, both Robert Pattinson, and Kristen Stewart could have performed better. They do have potential, and hopefully they will gain enough experience in all the movies that they are going to act and give us great performance later on in the future. As for the hype and reviews, they are all just full of it. I read in a magazine saying that this is the best romantic movie since Titanic. Make no mistake people, this movie is nowhere close to what Titanic was. Overall, Twilight was just an average movie trying to be a great movie. It could have been better if the direction was better and also if the acting was better.
Here’s the plot of the movie taken directly from Wikipedia. The plot contains SPOILERS, so please be warned.
"Seventeen-year-old Bella Swan moves to Forks, a small town on Washington state's rugged coast, to live with her father, Charlie, after her mother remarries to a minor league baseball player. She is quickly befriended by many students at her new high school, but she is intrigued by the mysterious and aloof Cullen siblings. Bella sits next to Edward Cullen in Biology class on her first day of school; he appears to be disgusted by her, much to Bella's confusion. A few days later, Bella is nearly struck by a van in the school parking lot. Edward inexplicably moves from some feet away and stops the vehicle with his hand. Edward refuses to explain this act to Bella and warns her against becoming friends with him.
After much research, Bella eventually discovers that Edward is a vampire, though he only consumes animal blood. The pair fall in love and Edward introduces Bella to his vampire family, Carlisle, Esme, Alice, Jasper, Emmett, and Rosalie. Soon after, three nomadic vampires—James, Victoria, and Laurent—arrive. James, a tracker vampire, is intrigued by Edward's protectiveness over a human and wants to hunt Bella for sport. Edward and his family risk their lives to protect her, but James tracks Bella to Phoenix where she is hiding and lures her into a trap by claiming he is holding her mother hostage. James attacks Bella and bites her wrist, but Edward, along with the other Cullen family members, arrives before he can kill her. James is destroyed, and Edward sucks James's venom from Bella's wrist, preventing her from becoming a vampire. A severely injured Bella is taken to a hospital. Upon returning to Forks, Bella and Edward attend their school prom. While there, Bella expresses her desire to become a vampire, which Edward refuses. The film ends with Victoria secretly watching the pair dancing, plotting revenge for her lover James' murder."
If you didn’t read the plot which contained spoilers, here’s a spoiler free summary of the plot;
“Bella falls in love with Edward, who is a vampire. She slowly discovers what abilities Edward has. Soon after their love starts growing, Bella’s live is in danger because of a tracker vampire, James. This causes Edward to do his best to protect his love, Bella.“
Hopefully that was a good enough summary for the movie. That should give you an idea on what the movie is about.
So, when the movie first came out, I really didn’t have any intention on watching it as I already knew that the movie wasn’t going to be that good. So, what made me watch the movie? Well it’s all because of the movie’s soundtrack titled Decode. Decode is performed by Paramore, and it is a beautiful song. Paramore did a great job for the song, but the music video might be a little too awesome for this movie, as it is quite misleading. But, I love the song and the music video, which made me want to watch the movie, even though I knew the movie wasn’t going to be very good. All in all, the movie has a lot of potential. If you can overlook the few flaws the movie has to offer, you will enjoy it. My suggestion would be to wait until the DVD comes out, and then just rent it. But it’s up to you, some people might love the movie, and others might not. Hopefully this review gave everyone a rough idea on what the movie is like, so that you can decide to watch it or not.
Verdict: 3 / 5
chaospetrifier
Time does change things. I might be going through a weird phase, but I just wanted to watch Twilight so badly all over again today. And I have completely no idea why (weird phase i think). So, I dropped by HMV after work today and bought myself a copy of Twilight on Blu Ray. And I watched the movie all over again. What did I think this time?
This time, after watching it thoroughly, I thought the movie was excellent. Yes I know, I previously said that it wasn't very good. I'm sorry and I take most of the bad stuff that I said about the movie back. So, I loved the movie, and enjoyed it. And I think the acting was actually very well done. But of course, there's still room for improvement. I might have misread the character of Edward and Bella when I first watched the movie. I think I didn't quite get the type of characters (Edward and Bella) the movie was trying to portray. But after my watch today, I'm glad to say that I fully understand the movie now and why the acting was the way it was. It's actually perfect and also a very diffuclt role for Robert Pattinson especially. I'm sorry if I'm not making any sense, but the good news is that I finally get it. Direction was also done quite well. I don't know why I complained previously, but sorry Catherine Hardwicke, you did do a good job.
And I'm even starting to see how this movie was compared to Titanic. Hmmm... am I losing it here? Anyway, since my judgement about the movie has changed, I would like to rerate it. This means you should disregard my previous score for the movie and use my current score. I'm glad I watched the movie again, I think it's my new favourite movie.
Final Verdict: 4 / 5
Here's the trailer for the next movie; New Moon; just because I felt like posting it. It looks awesome by the way.
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Reader Comments (6)
Good thing I didn’t watch this movie. You know me and “this sort” of movie; lalala~ *hides behind a barricade, prepares for a barrage from Darani*
Hey, just wanna tell you that I’ve changed my blog to a new location. Check out the link above. Hope you’ll visit some time soon! ^^
*admin note - comment originally posted on January 13, 2009 at 5:55 pm
@jusuchin85: the movie isn’t that bad, just wasn’t well made, i wonder how the book was? hehe…. oh, so you changed your site? ok, will check it out soon! =)
*admin note - comment originally posted on January 14, 2009 at 8:31 am
seems likely that they will come out with a Twilight sequel pretty soon, there’s more crazy money at stake
*admin note - comment originally posted on January 16, 2009 at 4:18 pm
@coffee: thanks for visiting my site! yeah, the sequel is going to be based on the second book, titled “New Moon”. but on the bright side, Hardwicke isn’t going to be directing it, Chris Weitz is. so, hopefully, he’ll do a better job.
*admin note - comment originally posted on January 17, 2009 at 7:30 am
Titanic was really a superb movie! Anyway, I must say that Twilight has a great story based on Twilight book…however, with Hardwicke directing it, something is really missing about the movie. I was expecting of something more! All in all movie casts were totally great and hot!
*admin note - comment originally posted on January 19, 2009 at 7:39 pm
@Garden Hose Bib: thanks for visiting my site! yup, there was some lack of directing power, and the part about the casts being totally great and hot, you got that right! ;)
*admin note - comment originally posted on January 20, 2009 at 7:44 am