Sunday, November 23, 2008

Twilight: The Movie

My wife and 12 year old daughter and I went to see the movie tonight, Sunday night. My wife has read the first three books and it seems to have given her some peace after losing her father this summer. So I have put up with her reading the first three books a lot lately. My daughter wants to read the first book after seeing the movie too.

Though I had heard my wife talk about the story line and I even told her about twilightmoms.com or something like that for Mom's whose teenage(or older) daughters fall in love with the books and so they join together with their daughters with other friends reading the books.

My wife described the books as Romeo and Juliet meets Harry Potter as a 17 year old. Only in this one Harry potter would be Edward, the non, human blood drinking vampire. He is with a group who only drink animal blood, primarily it seems, deer blood of the local deer population in the Olympic Rainforest of coastal Washington State. Oh, by the way Edward has been a vampire since 1918 and was made that way so his new stepfather, a doctor didn't have to watch him die in the influenza epidemic of 1918 at the end of World War I.

Anyway, Bella the 17 year old girl from Arizona falls in love with Edward the vampire. It is sort of like Romeo and Juliet, modern day in the Olympic Rainforest only Romeo is a vampire.

I can see why the girls are so hot and heavy because of the character who played Cedric Diggory who Voldemort killed in the Triwizard tournament. So, you see even there is the connection with this Harry Potter kind of feel to a movie. Oh, by the way you sort of get that the Indian tribe on the reservation might be werewolves to because they call themselves the wolf people. However, that is probably in the next movie. Sort of like Harry Potter it has at leas 3 movies still coming. Having made 70 million the first weekend I sort of think there will be a sequel or two at least.


There is a real element in this movie. They sort of take the blood lust of a vampire and show it they way boys and men can sometimes be when they are so in love with a woman that they can't survive without her. Likewise, Bella might not survive without Edward. And unlike many women 17 who can't make up their mind even about what shade of lipstick to wear, Bella refuses to live without Edward even if it kills her which it almost does in the first movie.

I was having a conversation about this sort of "in love" intensity with my wife recently. I was saying that I thought that the kind of relationship that you felt you couldn't live without another is mostly just too dangerous for everyone, especially if it is mutual and you both are under 20 to 25 years old.

I personally said that being friends and even desiring someone is great but that kind of "of human bondage" kind of love is way to scary to put up with for a lifetime. It just makes people nervous wrecks and sometimes costs lives.

No, it is much better to be a whole person and then meet another whole person who is your friend that you respect and that you care about mutually. Otherwise, too often somebody goes crazy or dies. If you are the other one that lives I can't think of a more awful fate.

There is a saying, "It is better to have loved and lost than never to love at all". This is true but remember you have to survive that love to be able to have the saying be true!

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