I can't belive that they did that to the worlds best book series ever!!!! The movie absolutly sucked! I would rather press my face against a scalding hot poker than watch it again!! >:-(
Go Stephanie!!!!

True Blood is much better than this

First of all - thank you Peter Travers - I always love reading your articles.

Okay people, calm down. Here's the deal: Twilight (the movie) was put under the category of an "inde" film - meaning independent. The director, Catherine Hardwicke, only received a $37 mil. budget to work with. No one thought Twilight would be the box office hit it has turned out to be (except for us Stephenie Meyer Twilightsaga obsessed fans). Summit Entertainment, the film's distributing company, had no idea this film would be so popular - hence the small budget. Also, Stephenie Meyer, was a collaborator on the filming of the movie as she didn't want the movie to have the "Hollywood" look, so to speak. Given the above, I agree Twilight needed a bigger budget - but now the sequel "New Moon" will have the budget it needs. (Also, for such a small budget, Catherine Hardwicke did a really good job.) As lovers of the books, we have perfect "spot on" casting of the characters. "New Moon" is such an awesome book from an action and emotional standpoint, that I can see it being bigger than Twilight. My recommendation, if you haven't read Twilight, read it. If you already read the book and saw the movie once, go back and see it a second time. It truly isn't as bad as some people make it out to be.

Okay...being a die hard fan of vampire lore from Angel and Buffy. to Bram Stoker's Dracula with Gary Oldman. to Cruise and Pit in "Interview With A Vampire", I had to see what all the fuss was about. So I read Twilight the first book in the series. I actually finished it the same day my friends called and said they had a ticket for me to go check it out. Here's my opinion:

If you are looking for a soap opera masquerading as an action adventure then you might be really into this.

However, if you are more like me a hardcore fan of well developed characters and interesting villains penned by the likes of Joss Whedon, you probably think this an odd perspective.

The film succeeded in translating the book nearly exactly. The book spends roughly 150 to 200 pages talking about Bella's breathing patterns and heart beats as she pines for a guy who is an ass. Basically confirming the suspicions of men globally, that women like pricks. The film leaves out the lame hearbeat motif and crazy breathing. Little girls giggle their ass off though when Bella is clumsy. The cool effect of Edward resuing her from a wayward van may be cool, but let's face it we can see that 5 times a week on Smallville.

The movie fails by following the book too closely in a few aspects. It is choppy, and seems to summarize chapters through key scenes, making a fairly odd movie that actually seems rushed, which is hard to do in Hollywood, where 3 hours movies are normal. It fails in following the book in another way, the ending--as in the book--is very boring and anti climactic. They build up the suspsense of this bad vampire (a very underdeveloped character) and then they kick his ass in a lame 2 minute fight. It makes the whole thing seem pointless when he is so easily defeatable. At least in the movie we see them burn him, in the book she blacks out and we don't even know what happens. LAME.

Pet Peeves:

The vampire are not only allowed to go in the sun, but they glow and sparkle like effing my little ponies--what a curse.

They are unaffected by crosses, or stakes to the heart. (which follows some Anner Rice lore.)

GOOD STUFF:

Jessice, Bella's friend, is hilarious and seems like a Jonah Hill of Forks, WA.

Okay so that's about it guys. I might pick up the sequel just because I"m hoping the vampire spars with that indian werewolf and the werewolf kicks his shiny ass. Oh and if this crap sales why doesn't James Marsters make a Spike movie with Whedon, I'd like a crossover so Ms. Meyer can see what a real vampire looks and acts like. She should know since she ripped off the high school girl in love with a dark vampire thing and made it a farce of the dramatic quality of Buffy.

B-O-R-I-N-G

Read thy books children! Trust me, your imagination will do better.

Excuse me for leaving out this most important of comments in my previous comment...

I believed that every character was perfectly cast - from Billy Black to Alice Cullen. Especially Rob. He was as close to the perfect Edward as any frail human male could get to being a perfect Edward. (Ha.)

Despite what other Die-hard Edward fans may think... there is no one on Earth that could be as perfect as Stephenie Meyer depicts Edward to be. That being said, Pattinson is as close to perfect as any actor could get to portraying him. (And Rob is gorgeous, vampire or not.)

I went to the midnight showing on Thursday night and saw a ton of guys there. Yes, most of them were dragged there by their girlfriends, but I overheard a bunch of them near me saying that they were surprised that it was actually a good movie and that they enjoyed it.

Girlfriend made me go- it was awful. I would never advise a guy to see it by himself at all. Go with a chick, at least you might get a special reward for bearing it.

It was absolutely terrible. The acting was sub-par,the characters weren't believable in any way (even the humans...especially the humans), the camera angles were completely unnecessary and stupid. Overall it's lucky to get even half a star from any self respecting critic. It was bad and I want those few hours of my life back

i hated most of the movie. the special effects sucked, a lot of the acting was forced, and it moved along fairly slowly. the chemistry between the two lead actors was pretty good though. Robert Pattinson came off as forced in the beginning but got better as the movie progressed.

I wonder how many men out of that 25% were gay.

I've been telling anyone who skipped the novel to wait for the DVD. It seemed more like fan service than a movie, since there were parts unexplained or confusing to someone who never read the book (like me). However, there were decent moments, like the restaurant scene with Bella and Edward. Here's hoping the money generated from this will produce better writing and (for the love of god) better special effects for the sequel.

Full disclosure - the fact that the galpal is a big fan was the main reason I went with her & her fellow fans (who were the loudest & most jocular supporters in the theatre, much to the chagrin of everyone else at that showing), although C. Hardwicke as director and Elliot Davis as DP would have been reason alone to be curious (direct hit on both counts - the picture was great-looking, reasonably well-acted & moved along a lot more briskly and confidently than I thought it would). And surprise of surprises - it wasn't half bad. Not good enough to make me want to bother with the source novels, but satisfying enough as a movie experience; there were no lapses of logic or descents into melodrama that I would not have forgiven any other similar flick that had also managed to hold my attention. The closest parallel I'd draw here would be to GHOST - again, neither are great films, but they're decent (if girly) entertainments, and it's unjust that their huge success must lead to inevitable backlash. If you must have sport & need to pick on TWILIGHT, you're obliged to trash the HARRY POTTER series for the same sin: the positioning of a literary property as a film franchise, which entails the shoehorning-in of plot elements & incidents, and the seemingly token appearance of seemingly unimportant characters, all in order to please the faithful & set up the sequels.

i went with another male and 2 of our friends who our girls to twilight and really enjoyed it. whenever its described as a girls only movie i get confused... when i went, there were lots of males. perhaps the girls were the only ones smart enough to reserve tickets haha.