Nov 22
What Twilight Did Right
With the recent release of New Moon into theaters the Twilight saga is back in people’s minds. The new movie brings a spark of excitement to its many fans, but its critics can do little to hide their disdain.
I am quite aware of the criticisms of the series, and I wholeheartedly agree.
The book is poorly written. Twilight is analogous to something I’d find at a fan-fiction website. I wouldn’t call them the greatest works of fiction. There is plenty of poorly written fiction out there, and I don’t think that should stop someone from enjoying the story.
I feel that the fan base is a large factor into the harsh criticism of Twilight. You have Harry Potter fans, Joss Whedon fans, Star Trek fans, and all sorts of aficionados of various science fiction works scouring about, but at least those works are somewhat tried and true. While Harry Potter may be children’s fiction, at least the writing is fairly solid.
Horror fans who have liked vampire fiction are generally embarrassed at how vampires are treated in these novels. The vampires play baseball in the rain, and they glisten in the sunlight!
So Twilight seems to do a lot of things wrong, and make plenty of people upset due to the assumed subpar nature of the work.
What does it do right?
The series has sparked a craze for more vampires! This work has modernized vampires and made it popular. The market seems flooded with copycats, but at least Twilight is trying something different from what the genre has done in the past.
Twilight is a catalyst for a modernized vampire genre that appeals to a much wider demographic than the classic stories of Dracula. I respect the classics, but sometimes genres need to evolve. Evolution has to start somewhere. Eventually, someone will come along and try to capitalize off the success of Twilight, but they’ll do it better. Perhaps some would say HBO’s True Blood series already did.
Every series will have its annoying fans, and Twilight is no different. I feel this series is bringing about change, and even though not all change is good – at least change is….entertaining. Isn’t entertainment why we read books and go to movies in the first place?
Comments are off for this postPosted By: Andrew Eidson
