Good Night to Twilight

When seventeen-year-old Isabella Swan moves to Forks, Washington to live with her father she expects that her new life will be as dull as the town itself.

In spite of her awkward manner and low expectations, she finds that her new classmates are drawn to this pale, dark-haired new girl in town. But not, it seems, the Cullen family. These five adopted brothers and sisters obviously prefer their own company and will make no exception for Bella.

Bella is convinced that Edward Cullen in particular hates her, but she feels a strange attraction to him, although his hostility makes her feel almost physically ill. He seems determined to push her away - until, that is, he saves her life from an out of control car.

Bella will soon discover that there is a very good reason for Edward's coldness. He, and his family, are vampires - and he knows how dangerous it is for others to get too close.

I'm going to put it out there. I absolutely loved the first Twilight film. It was all blue and hazy, the soundtrack was top notch and Robert Pattinson was undeniably fit and, more importantly, looked clean. Plus, I've always wanted to go to Oregon and take in that spectacular coast, potter around Portland and jump from tree to tree. Ok, so maybe the last bit is more tricky. I bite my nails, you see, so no grip. Sad times.

The Young Adult book market shows that the idea itself, albeit simple, was pretty genius. No one can deny that. The Twilight saga has spawned shelves and shelves of werewolf and vampire fiction and, as with all those successful teen franchises, millions of lookalike dolls, craft sets, halloween outfits, XBOX games etc. For all that, I give it to Stephanie Meyer, she's taken a massive slice of the teen market when no one thought anyone could even try to rival Potter.

The films are also beautifully shot. The most recent one being no exception (I saw it on Wednesday at the BFI IMAX... how BIG is that screen!?) The different filters that make each film stand out from one another works really well and the special effects are pretty umm.. effective?

The book I really struggled with, though. I don't mean the writing is too hard... it's possibly the easiest read in the world and I'd definitely recommend to people who want some quick entertainment. I don't want to upset anyone here but I guess I had two main issues with the series as a whole. The first being slightly snobby and admittedly not necessarily fair as it is, first and foremost, a kids book. The writing is just not good. It's pretty repetitive, lots of 'perfect' this and 'marble' that, and it's full of the kind of embarrassing cliches that EL James would envy as well as sentences like this... 'Aro started to laugh. "Ha, ha, ha," he chuckled' courtesy of New Moon. It's not just the wording that is repetitive, but the story too. I really struggled to find anything new in any of the sequels. The characters seemed to never develop properly.

As I said though, it feels mean picking apart the writing because most children really don't care. I know I didn't when I read some pretty standard writing from the wonderful JK Rowling. But for me, and this is subjective so don't persecute me Twi-hards, JK had such amazing detail - it was a completely new world and language - and the characters really grew. In Twilight, Bella Swan comes across as this weak girl who needs a predatory male to keep her happy - I'm not quite sure that is a good depiction of young women, which is worrying given they make up most of Meyer's readership.

I don't mean to Twilight bash as I'm a big fan of the first film (I own it on DVD...) and I think it's both naive and wrong to say that something is entirely bad, especially when it has done so well. Meyer has done many things right. Who doesn't enjoy a love story anyway? But for me it was just no where close to Harry Potter in terms of sophistication of plot and characters... she says nervously... what a twist though in the final film... did NOT see that coming. Feeling 'mugged' as my cinema companion so eloquently described it.