The Real Reason We Watch Twilight

Dear reader,

So I've recently become a fan of Stephen King's work, having read Misery, The Shining, Carrie and a collection of his short stories. And can I just say, they are phenomenal pieces of writing: the man is a genius. Slightly psychotic, I might add, but they say that a genius is just a mad-man with an audience, and to come up with stories like that I don't see how you couldn't be genius. I'm babbling, it's not important. The point is, read The Shining before you watch the film. Seriously, you'd be doing yourself a favour. I practically cried in frustration when I saw how they butchered the plot-line and characters in the film. Real shame.

And this got me thinking: how many of us can actually, truly, honestly say that the films made of books come even vaguely close to the beauty of  the original novel? NONE. For the simple reason being that it was written as a book, not for the screen. You miss out on the way our favourite character is first described, the way the scene is set with the author's beautiful wording, the way suspense is created with cliffhangers and dramatic dot-dot-dots. You miss the girl's thoughts and feelings when she finally gets the kiss, the hero's adrenaline and panic as he goes forth to battle the dragon. There's an entire world in words, and it's almost impossible to recreate that with actors and a soundtrack.

Damn son

So, in a way, you could argue that it's unfair of me to take a stab at the directors and producers of these films, because of course it's not going to compare to the original book. How do you squeeze four hundred odd words into an hour and a half, what do you cut out, what do you keep? I tell you, I wouldn't like to be on that committee. And there are the few exceptions, look at how successful the Harry Potter films became, despite Radcliffe's hair in the fourth one (WHAT where they thinking?!). And I don't know what you guys thought of the screen editions of The Hunger Games but I really don't think they could have done it much better.

Then there's Twilight, where the only reasons we watch it are for our eleven year old self and Taylor Lautner's torso.

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Keep reading,

Liv.