Tonight at 7 PM PST a more than four year relationship with Bella, Edward and Jacob will come to an end. The first time I wrote about the Twilight franchise was in I Wanna be a ‘Twilight’ Mom!!” From there the madness ensued.
The franchise has so far brought in over $2.5 billion worldwide and this weekend’s release of The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2 will bring this current iteration of the “saga” to a close and presumably send Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner off into the sunset with memories of Catherine Hardwicke‘s first outing as Twilight director fading into their subconscious.
Hardwicke was the first director to tackle the series and while 2008’s Twilight wasn’t a good movie, it remains the best of the four films to be released so far and the final sentence of my Twilight review would seem to sum up the last four years quite appropriately: “For the rest of us, we will have to grin and bear it, hoping future chapters will be more compelling.”
That “hope” was obviously dashed as subsequent releases only proceeded to become increasingly worse. Edward was never able to cure himself of the constipation caused by the mere sight of Bella. Jacob could never figure out how to keep his shirt on and Bella couldn’t stop gazing at Edward open-mouthed, head cocked and hand-in-hair. If a film franchise ever begged to be sponsored by Ex-Lax this is the one, but the opportunity has been missed.
Following Twilight came The Twilight Saga: New Moon and my final review statements again question the future of the franchise:
Fans of Stephenie Meyer’s best-selling teen-vampire franchise were tolerant of the first film, and some may have legitimately enjoyed it, but I can’t help but wonder how long they can remain interested if the filmed adaptations continue to disappoint.
My The Twilight Saga: Eclipse exhibited an acceptance of what the franchise had become:
The built-in fan base is sure to love Eclipse. Their favorite characters are on the big screen and the emotional core of the story already exists in their hearts, which makes the quality of what’s on screen rather inconsequential as long as it sticks close enough to the story they know. There is no problem with this as this is a film made specifically for them, but it simply leaves the rest of us out in the cold. And after three films this is something I’ve now come to accept. Hopefully with that in mind the next two films will be easier to swallow.
Even then, hope remained…
