Film Adaptations

Let me start this post by saying that my favorite authors/writers include: Jane Austen, Ted Dekker, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, J.K. Rowling, Alice Hoffman, Francine Rivers, and Shakespeare.

Now that you can see I have a wide range of credible authors I love and follow, I can begin my post about another book series that I enjoyed without, hopefully, you discrediting me completely as a writer. ;) I am often teased for enjoying these books, but I am also rather offended at the same time because most of the people who are making fun of me for enjoying these books have never actually read them themselves; they are basing their snap judgments solely on the movies that have been adapted from them. Surely most of you have guessed by now what books I am talking about. Well, if you haven't, I would like to be clear that, yes, I am referring to those Twilight books.

Don't run away yet!

This weekend, the first Twilight movie came on television and I did indulge myself by watching it. Following the first movie, I proceeded to have a Twilight movie marathon this weekend. Feel free to make fun of the movies all you want, I'm right there with you, and now we can get to my topic at hand—film adaptation.

With these books in particular, I can now look back over the films and decidedly say that the film adaptation ruined these books. You will hear many people mock and sneer at this series—some of you might have been some of the ones to do that—but I truly believe that the object of this derision should be the movies themselves and not the books.

No, I do not believe Stephanie Meyer is that brilliant of a writer. You will notice at the beginning of this post, I did not include Stephanie Meyer on my list of favorite authors/writers. With that being said, I will say that I do believe Stephanie Meyer is a great storyteller. While you won't be able to tell this from the movies necessarily, she really did have a unique and wonderful fictional story to tell. Her characters were creative and the story was intriguing—it definitely had me flipping the pages when they first came out, and still does. I just picked up the first book on Sunday and finished it yesterday.

Her language is simple, her characters have an air of mystery, and she does actually produce a main character that many young girls can relate to (not really fitting in; a difficult family dynamic; feeling awkward; not feeling like you are beautiful, especially in high school; etc.) While I don't believe Bella's obsession with Edward is healthy—even in the books she went a little crazy—I still enjoyed the overall story and finding out what would happen with the couple.

The movies, unfortunately, really ruined these books for a lot of people and the fans of them as well. Why should I be ashamed to actually admit I really enjoyed these books? Because if I openly admit that to anyone, I am ridiculed and teased relentlessly. The reason I believe these books made poor movies are: 1. Kristen Stewart, I'm sorry, but you were not a good actress in these films. You just weren't the Bella I had in my head when I was reading these books. 2. The movies lost the humor that was used in these books (Bella and Edward would actually have fun and joke with one another, especially in the beginning. They weren't so serious all of the time). 3. There wasn't enough development of their relationship in the films (in the books you followed how they actually grew to trust each other and like each other. It wasn't an automatic, "I'm in love with you after having never really talked to you before," like it was in the movies). 4. You weren't given enough of the backstory to see that Bella never really felt like she fit in with everyone. She was out of sorts from the rest of the world. Also, Edward had been living alone for the past one hundred years. Bella is his one true love. He finally found her. Of course he's going to be protective of her.

Watching the movies, I can still enjoy them because I know the backstory and the reasoning behind everything. However, watching the movies with other people around who have never read the books, I find myself trying to see how they are seeing these movies and I feel ashamed and embarrassed. Did he really just pop up in her bedroom? That is super creepy! Ha ha, yes, it is pretty creepy watching it unfold in the movies that way. In the books, Bella and Edward had just spent the day together when she invites him to stay with her. Nothing happens—a rarety you see today in the film industry. This is another thing I enjoyed about the books was that Edward insisted they wait for marriage to have sex. How our culture and world has lost touch with this? I still believe in it and held to it. Now, watching this on film was awkward! Let me just say that while I admired the value they held for waiting until marriage to have sex and to know how popular these films were to teenagers around the world and how they would, hopefully, influence them in this, how they filmed their wedding night was extremely uncomfortable and shocking, thinking of the intended audience for these films. Wow, did I want to sink down into my seat? Yikes! 

I will say about the movies, I thought they ended the story in a much better way than Stephanie Meyer did in the books. SPOILER ALERT: In the books, they went up to fight, decided not to, and everyone left. WHAT?! However, in the movie, through Alice's vision, it appeared that they had begun a war and there were several casualties of characters you knew and loved. It was surprising, intense, complex, but then it was the best of both worlds because you later find out that it was all apart of Alice's vision and what would have happened had Aro decided to attack. Yay! Carlisle, Jasper, Seth, and Leah are all okay! :D I thought the directors were turning this film into a play off Hamlet! :O

What film adaptations have you liked/disliked? Please leave your answers below or feel free to message me. I'm very interested to hear them! 

Personally, I loved Coraline's adaptation, Harry Potter (although there were still many things I disliked that they left out or changed, but you can't expect them to fit each of these books, every single detail, into a two-hour film), Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and Lord of the Rings. 

Well, now you know. I loved these books. (I had a really hard time reading through the first book this second time around. Having been an editor for the past two years, my mind has been programmed to find the grammatical mistakes, the punctuation mistakes, and spelling mistakes, and, man, did I find them in these books! Come on, editors, what were you doing?!)