Twilight

I know this is sort of cliche to blog about seeing the new Twilight movie, but I wanted to add my opinion. :)
I started reading the series this summer when my co-worker Danielle and Jeff's sisters Amy and Nikki were so excited and hyped about the 4th book coming out. I figured I'd give it a go when we went to Lake Powell, and see how I liked the first book. I read it the first day. I was thrilled (Jeff was not) when Nikki told me she'd brought the second with her too! I read that the second day. Don't worry, I still participated in every game and boat trip that everyone else did, I just didn't take naps or go to bed when I was tired like most of them. ;) I came home and borrowed the last 2 from Danielle, finishing them very quickly as well.
For those of you who have not read the series and are leery about jumping on the ridiculous band wagon of female Twilight lovers, I would suggest giving it a shot. I was not excited to read about vampires. I didn't expect to fall in love with the story and characters like everyone else. But these books are so well written that you find yourself completely engulfed in the story, feeling a part of every scene- the danger and the romance. My husband refuses to read them, but he willingly listened to my hours of telling him every detail of the story as best I could. What a trooper!
So when the movie came out this weekend we had the opportunity to see it for free opening night. (I'm not sure I would've joined the hundreds of screaming teenage girls for midnight showing opening night otherwise...) I went in with no expectations. I have seen very few movies as good as their books. You just can't fit 500 pages into 2 hours of film. Too many details get left out. I figured there would be many people disappointed with the movie, and those people would be the ones who'd camped out for 10 hours, bought the T-shirts, who are completely obsessed. It is especially hard to please everyone when every single book fan has a different image of each character and each scene and how it should all play out.
In general I am someone who is easy to please, and I am not much of a movie critic. So going in with no expectations, generally accepting of cheesy computer effects, as long as the acting is good, I found myself enjoying the film. I think now I could even say I loved it. I've read a few reviews and articles about the making and success of the film. The rights were originally sold to another company and when Stephenie Meyer read the script, she said you almost couldn't give her any credit, it had nothing to do with the books. Somehow the rights were resold to another company who wanted Meyer's complete opinion and input, Summit Entertainment. They are a newer, smaller company with lower budgets. Their budget for Twilight was around 37 million, and did incredible in the box offices for that budget. The expected turn out was around $30-$60 million at most. It made $70.6 million opening weekend. Of the top 30 openers of all time, of which Twilight is now one, only seven cost less than $100 million to produce. It made the fourth-best November opening of all time and the most of any female director ever. I was impressed when I found this out. If they'd had a huge budget, a lot of the jumping, running, flying scenes could have been incredible, and I already thought they were good enough. Rumor is they will begin filming the second movie New Moon immediately, as they were waiting to see the turn out of Twilight because they need a much bigger budget for the second movie, with the werewolves and phasing and all that. As I read these articles I realized that I really did enjoy the movie more than I'd realized, rekindled my thorough enjoyment of the story from this summer, and I am actually excited for the next to come out!