They didn’t turn into bats. This was a real disappointment; I like vampires becoming bats, it’s a personal thing. However they can jump high, run really fast and scale trees like a monkey on speed. But no bats.
They didn’t sleep in coffins, in fact they don’t sleep at all. I may have to overlook the fact they would surely be more hungry for blood by not sleeping. Not sleeping means they would be using up energy by being awake all the time and need to eat.
The silver stake to the heart wasn’t dealt with, but Twilight does show another way to kill a vampire, which could have be awesome. The film also doesn’t deal with death by crucifix.
My big problem was that they can walk around outside during the day. Now, maybe I’m a traditionalist, but one of the coolest thing about vampire films is watching them turn to dust in a ray of sunlight. Just look at Christopher Lee’s death in 1958’s Dracula; it was epic! The laws of movie monsters are changing to make films more exciting and action-packed. The film 28 Days Later is a fine example of this. 28 Days Later gave us fast zombies. As a plot device it does make the film more exciting than you quintessential staggering zombies, but it isn’t how we know and love zombies. And Simon Pegg agrees with me. Here’s an excerpt from a piece he wrote for The Guardian newspaper on the forth of November, 2008.
I know it is absurd to debate the rules of a reality that does not exist, but this genuinely irks me. You cannot kill a vampire with an MDF stake; werewolves can't fly; zombies do not run. It's a misconception, a bastardisation that diminishes a classic movie monster. The best phantasmagoria uses reality to render the inconceivable conceivable. The speedy zombie seems implausible to me, even within the fantastic realm it inhabits. A biological agent, I'll buy. Some sort of super-virus? Sure, why not. But death? Death is a disability, not a superpower. It's hard to run with a cold, let alone the most debilitating malady of them all.
All I’m saying is that movies are becoming faster-paced, audiences are looking for a new spin on things and traditions are being twisted. But what’s wrong with an ambling zombie or a vampire being killed by the sun? I wanted to like Twilight, I really did, but I didn’t. I worked out half way through the film what was going to happen and realized that I didn’t really care how they got there. And I found it impossible to warm to the characters, there seemed to be a lot of staring at nothing and general wooden acting.
One other thing, is Twilight a high school drama with vampires or a vampire film set in a high school?
1 comment:
It's really more a setting up or laying down of foundations for the next book/film which again is a bit slow as it sets up the next one, which is much better paced as the author finds her stride, so to speak, but the last book is where it all comes together and it's a real culmination of what Mills & Boons used to be like (All meaningful staring and disjointed conversations) and the ubiquituos high school movie. Also a bit like the Harry Potter series - it gets darker and a bit meatier the further into it you get.
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