Twilight captivates young audience

Written by: the Site Administrator on December 18, 2008 at 9:18 am

Emma Mills
Managing Editor
Not since the begining of the Harry Potter fandom has a book series captivated young minds so avidly than the now world-famous Twilight saga, and teenagers all across the nation are aching to sink their teeth into the much-anticipated movie based off of the first book in the series, set to hit theatres on November 21.

For those of you who have been living under a rock for the past year, whether you aren’t already obsessed or haven’t been endlessly annoyed by friends or family nearly threatening you to read the book, Twilight is about two star-crossed lovers, forbidden by their very nature of predator and prey, to be together.

When our heroine, the charmingly ordinary Bella Swan, moves to the small town of Forks, Wa to live with her father, she dreads that the tiny town would be so depressingly boring that she would lose her mind a bit too quickly. … That is, until she meets Edward Cullen, (who is being deemed by fangirls everywhere as “the perfect boyfriend”) an incredibly beautiful and chivalrous boy… who just happens to be a vampire, forever preserved in a seventeen-year-old body. Quite inexplicably, in each other they find their soul mates and are swept up into an incredibly passionate and thrilling romance that has had readers everywhere transfixed, and Bella’s life is never again the same.

But will the movie counterpart to this award-winning novel do the series justice? Fans of the saga are already split, and nothing more than clips from the trailer and the casting list has been released. Debates have already sparked, ranging from outrage to approval, over their casting choices of the main characters, how the characters are portrayed, acting, and even music choices.

The slight changes in the adaptation won’t deter most fans from loving the movie, though. Junior Cassie Cox is wisely keeping her expectations realistic and, like any loyal Twilight fan, has made plans to see the movie with a big group of friends on the opening weekend.

“I’m very excited about the movie,” Cox said. “[Changes] are to be expected in any movie. The books are always going to be better.”

But is the vampire-loving readers that comprise the majority of Twilight’s fan base enough to meet, or even exceed, sales goals for the movie, or will all the hype be enough to pull in enough people new to the Twilight world? The fate of a possible sequel (the second book in the series, ‘New Moon’) rides on the outcome.

With Paramount Pictures, a fledgling studio, producing the movie, all of whose past movies are unheard of and major flops, it’s putting big bucks into promoting the movie as much as possible as if they are hoping they hit the holy grail of movie franchises. But in this case there might be a big case of too much exposure. At this point you can’t watch a TV show without seeing at least one, usually two, Twilight trailers. The average american could probably quote the lines, at any given time, “Say it out loud…”, “…Vampire.” The soundtrack, featuring brand new tunes from the very popular Paramore, was released almost three weeks before the movie premiere, Youtube, Facebook, Myspace, and most popular search engines are plagued with Twilight advertisements, videos, and stories, and Hot Topic is celebrating the upcoming movie as if they are the only Christmas shop open only days before the holidays.

If Paramount isn’t careful, half the movie could be given away before it’s even hit theatres, and all of the hype could boost anyone’s expectations, fan or not, so high that absolutely nothing, no matter how spectacular, could satisfy them. Or worse, people could get simply burned out before a ticket is ever purchased. Only time will tell.

One thing is certain, though. The phenomenon of Twilight is certainly one for the record-books.