Twilight

This first part has no spoilers!

Wow.  What a day.  I was extremely, extremely excited to see the movie tonight.  I think everyone at work thought I was a little off because I was SO excited about a movie.  I seriously could not quit smiling for most of the day.  At some points I really thought I’d need to find a little corner to cry in just to get some anxiety out.  And I’m not really kidding there.  I was keyed up this evening!

We got there 45 minutes early and realized we didn’t actually have reserved seats.  It was a free for all save 3 rows mid theater saved for the media.  Thankfully Heather and I got two seats on the end on the next to the last row.  I was REALLY afraid of sitting on the first row.  No one did as it wasn’t a sold-out theater.  I would say a good 75% of the people were teenagers. I have no idea how anyone else got their tickets.

Because of the previews from Italy and such it seemed like the audiences could be annoying but we had a great audience.  We screamed/clapped at the beginning and just a little when Edward and then Jac0b made their first screen appearance but otherwise no one moved an inch unless we were laughing.  I think I MAY have seen one girl run to the bathroom towards the end but otherwise everyone was a very good moviegoer.  ALL cellphones/camera were taken at the door so no distractions there.

Now, without spoiling it, I have to say the movie was SO good.  I walked away really satisfied with the movie.  As Kristen said in an interview, I felt like the essence of the book was captured.  There was only one scene Heather and I were like oh, that would have been nice to see but otherwise the Melissa did a FABULOUS job of fitting the book into a movie.  Yes, things changed but I was very satisfied with it.  Now, I have to say I didn’t like every single little second.  I have a list of things I didn’t like but I also have a longer list of things that made me very happy or were even better than I thought.  SO, if you are so inclined, please go to the jump to get more of the scoop.

SPOILER ALERT

YOU HEARD ME RIGHT?  LIKE MAJOR, MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD

YOU’RE SURE?

REALLY?

If you want to read some others’ reactions, I found a few already posted on TwilightMoms forum

Heather’s short review is up

OK, so Heather and I actually wrote down every single scene we could remember and in the order that we remembered them.  I’m don’t think I’m going to type it up just because I don’t want to give it ALL away and I really don’t think we have it all right.  For the most part, it does go in order of the book.

The biggest change was that Jac0b does not tell Bella that Edward is a vampire.  He only tells her that the Quiletes came from werewolves and the Cullen family is their enemy.  What Bella does is goes back and googles the Quiletes history and finds a book to read and finds the address to a bookstore in Port Angeles and that is her reason for tagging along with Jessica and Angela to Port Angeles.  When he rescues her from Port Angeles, she doesn’t know yet.  It’s not until she figures it out that night with the book and the Internet and then the next morning at school that they meet in the woods at school and we see the scene from the previews where she says vampires.  It is after this scene that the meadow scene happens.

There is no girls-pick dance.  Only Mike asks her to the prom and we never see anything about going to Seattle.  They cut all this out and stuck the meadow scene onto the stuff above.

Honestly, besides that, the story sticks really closely to the book.  The one scene Heather and I didn’t see that we sort of wished had been in there is the Blood Testing.  We did see them in Biology the first time and then again for the Prophase stuff so it was kind of been-there, done-that.

OK, as for reviews of specific things….

Things that were good or better than expected in absolutely no logical order

• The tree scene were he takes her to the top from the previews was amazing.  One of my favorite scenes from the movie.
• The kissing scene was amazing.  It’s more than just a peck.  I think they kiss 4 or 5 times and she pulls him down on to her and then he pulls himself back so hard, he hits himself against the opposite wall.  Really good and much better than the previews let on.
• There were also some scenes that might have been right after that that were a montage of them in her room talking at night and she falls asleep on him that were really great.
• They combined some conversation at Port Angeles dinner.  I can’t remember exactly what but we both liked that scene in the movie more than the book.
• The ballet scene rocked.  I didn’t expect to like that much but I did.
• Kristen ROCKED Bella.  Seriously.  She did EVERYTHING EXACTLY like I thought Bella should.  The klutziness, her wonder at him, her seriousness.  Just everything.  Ok, one caveat is she overacted a tad in the hospital at the end.
• Charlie turned out to be one of my favorites from the movie.  I loved his lines, great, great acting.  A big surprise there for me.
• Mike was hilarious.  So cute and funny.
• Eric was so funny.  Loved him.
• Emmett was a lot of fun.
• Rosalie wasn’t nearly as annoying as I thought she’d be.  I liked her character.
• The bad vampires were great.  Victoria rocked at her part.  Laurent had an accent that I really liked.  James was fierce.
• Jac0b!!!  Taylor was AMAZING as Jac0b.  He was SO cute.  He had great timing and really some great chemistry with Bella.  Jac0b and Edward have a great moment at the end and really, I CAN NOT WAIT to see the next two books with more Jac0b.
• Edward playing the piano…I really could have watched that for hours.
• The movie was really, really funny.  There were so many funny lines that we were cracking up laughing at parts.  Rob and Kristen always talk about their connection and such that I thought it was going to be so serious but it was so funny!
• They did a fabulous job of adding in quotes from the book..”bad guy” “exact brand of heroin”, “lion/lamb”, “three things I was sure of”
• Bella does a voiceover and I really liked that.
• The baseball scene.  That was WAY better than I thought and it rocked.
• The Cullens coming into the cafeteria for the first time.  That was so exciting to see Edward for the first time!  But really, all of them.  Heather and I were squeezing each other’s hands for this.
• Bella leaving Charlie for Phoenix was heartwrenching in the movie.  I liked Charlie so much more in the movie that it was really hard to watch Bella tell him she hated Forks.
• The prom dancing was so much better than I thought.  With that cast on I thought it was going to be awkward but he lifts her up and it’s really sweet.  Plus he kisses her neck and it’s hot!  Yowzers!

Things that didn’t quite live up to my expectations (and please be aware I’m being nit-picky)

• OK, I hate to say this but Edward and Bella’s instant connection didn’t live up to my expectations in the first part of the movie.  Edward ended up just looking mean and uninterested.  In one scene they are leaving the greenhouse and he won’t let her come on the bus that him, Alice and Jasper are on and he is downright rude to her.  I was like what was that??  You could see Bella’s interest/curiosity of him but their love connection?  Just wasn’t there and then within like 3 scenes of them together they were saying they couldn’t live without one another.  Now all that to say that Edward’s intensity WAS there but that gentlemanly quality wasn’t there.  I’m not sure how they could have remedied that in the time they had but it just disappointed a bit.  However, after the woods scene and they admit they are going to be together, it’s great!
• Rob’s accent.  His voice and accent were WEIRD for the first part of the movie.  He sounded just NOT good.  And at times, part of British accent showed through.  That didn’t bother me as much though as I think it actually would have worked well for Edward to have a British accent.  At first though we were like why is he talking like that??
• OK, the dazzling was a letdown.  They made it look like lots of little diamonds and he shows her in the woods scenes after she says Vampire and he just stands in a patch of light.  He just looks…weird.  Almost like something is wrong with his skin instead of beautiful as Bella says he is after seeing him.  And he shows her out of anger and says it’s bad instead of something dazzling with a big build-up to the meadow scene.  Didn’t like they handled that.
• And speaking of the meadow scene…it happens right after that (I think) and they just lay down together.  No touching or talking or anything.  Heather and I decided the tree scenes were better than the meadow.  Big disappointment on this scene.
• Jasper was disappointing.  He had this weird look on his face the whole movie.  I generally have a problem with the casting of this character though.  Jasper was supposed to be this mean vampire that could attack at any second and Jasper looked like a pansy that needed to poop.  Sorry to be blunt, but I didn’t like it.
• The look on Edward’s face when he sucks the venom out of Bella at the studio was hilarious.  He got bug-eyed and Heather and I had to hold in the laughter.  It just did not look good.
• When Bella first walks into Biology, they have a fan that blows her scent to Edward.  In the movie, Edward puts his hand up to his nose like something something smelled and it was so hilarious because it seriously looks like Edward just smelled someone’s really bad gas.  That scene is supposed to be intense but we were laughing so hard at that.
• Really nit-picky…the girl in Port Angeles was not gorgeous like Bella describes in the book.

I hate to end on the bad stuff but I want to be honest.  Again, overall I’m VERY pleased with the book.  I would have paid to watch it over and over all night.  Some people are going to want to say oh, the book is always better.  And in some ways I want to say no, it’s not like that.  In some cases the movie was SO MUCH BETTER than reading about it.  In others, yes, I think you got more out of the book.  So I think it’s a mix.  I’m very, very happy with it and I think other fans are going to be too.  And oh my word, I just wrote a book about a movie.