by Jimmy Patrick

Created on: September 25, 2009

The movie "Twilight" follows the book "Twilight" to perfection in every way except for a couple of significant points. First, the movie brings in evil vampires sooner and with more death and gore attached than in the book. Second, the movie provides a slight change in the way the two lead characters spend time together. The final result is a movie that plays like a true summary of the book with slight twists that are intended to add suspense and visual stimulation.

In "Twilight" the book, there are good vampires and evil vampires, but the reader does not become aware of the evil vampire's presence until the last quarter of the story. This doesn't mean the concept of evil vampires is foreign to the reader or the lead character of Bella, but actual evil vampire characters don't come about until near the end.

In "Twilight" the movie, the evil vampires are presented to the viewer very early on, but in a mysterious way that tries to hint toward the idea that Edward, the lead male character, and his family could be killing people in the small town of Forks. There are dark scenes in which the vampires hunt their prey like shadows in the night. These scenes are shown right about the time Bella and the rest of us are starting to realize that Edward and his family are vampires. In the book, there are no victims of vampires at any point. In the movie, there are two dead bodies found before the half way point.

As with all movie adaptations of books, it is inherently difficult to include all the information from the written pages. In the book, we are given all sorts of details, including thoughts inside the character's heads. Without the use of voice overs, which are often difficult to pull off effectively, there is only one way to get at the character's thoughts and that is through dialogue with other characters.

In the case of "Twilight" they do a pretty good job of fitting all the important dialogue from the book into the movie. One significant scene that is added to the movie, however, is one in which Edward takes Bella on his back and starts climbing the tall, green pine trees of the northwestern United States.

In the book, most of the initial bonding between Edward and Bella takes place inside Edward's car on a ride from Port Angeles to Forks. As you can imagine, the visual of two people just sitting in a car and asking questions about each other might play out rather dull, so the movie makers chose to let Edward and Bella have their fact-finding conversations among the beautiful scenery of the northwest.

There are a few other odds and ends that play out differently in the movie, but they are extremely trivial. There is a phone call or two between Bella and her mother in the movie that are not in the book. In fact, in the book, Bella communicates with her mother by email. There is a scene in the movie in which Edward pulls a dent out of a car fender like it was a piece of lint he was flicking off his pants. It is a visual way of showing us Edward's strength that is not described in the book.

Many times, movie adaptations fail to capture the book's story; the movie makers will add and subtract where they see fit and the finished product is one that barely resembles the story that so many readers loved. "Twilight" is not one of those movies. If you enjoy reading, by all means read the book; if you just are curious about the story, see the movie and you really won't miss out on anything at all.

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