My eyes!!!! My EYES!!!! (Twilight)

I went downstairs to see nothing but twilight and a bunch of women. I kept saying that I thought it was awful and they would say “No it’s not!!!”

Does anybody else hate these movies like me?

Never even considered watching either of the films.

Noticed a copy on a bookshelf at my sister's house when I was visiting her a few months back. Read a few chapters and thumbed around threw it for a bit. Man, absolutely awful stuff! It is almost literally 600 pages of lusting over an imaginary character. Lines like, "He walked into the cafeteria, looking more like a Greek god than anyone had a right to" run rampant throughout.

Me and my buddies call it "Female Vampire Porn". 

The only thing that still sticks in my mind was how fake a couple of 'travelling shots' were: 

The part where whats-her-name is riding on emo-vamp's back...

1. ...through the forest. Was he on a rail, or something? His running was soo...flat/level/straight.
2. ...going up up a tall tree. It looked like he was just pulled up by a crane, and told to wave his arms and legs to make it look like he was actually doing something.

Whew...glad I could get that off my breast...err, I mean chest. ;)

You might enjoy this version a bit more:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPi4FeH4dx4

** puts head into noose....and almost kicks away chair...**

....no....must stay strong....for Erica......

Man, that movie is even worse than I remember. Imagine how bad it would be without the Vampire angle.

I've yet to even think about it. I'm sure if I did...MY EYES WOULD EXPLODE!

That is why I refuse to even think about tween angst fantasies.

I don't shake things like this off as utter trash just to shake them off. Harry Potter is one of my favorite sets ever. But, for some reason watching commercials and seeing the people that drooled over it made me decide not to like it at all. Then I saw a few minutes of the first one and nearly barfed. I was forced to watch New Moon and wanted to slit my throat with broken shards of TV glass.

You don't like the HP movies? Not even the first?

I thought he was referring to the first Twilight movie, but I could be wrong.

Also, "not even the first"?  As I understand, a lot of people dislike both of the Columbus-directed Harry Potter films.

Really, Gaff? It may be just a generation thing, but I've always found a lot of people preferred Columbus' take on the movies. At least for me, I know they feel more... magical. Less emphasis on dumb action movie trends - seriously, people, not even Harry Potter is safe from this stuff anymore! Although they were more liberal with what they cut than some, I felt they worked best as movies.

Feel free to disregard as irrational nostalgia.

bkev said:

You don't like the HP movies? Not even the first?

Whoa, I didn't mean that, but thank you for pointing out how I need to word my statements better. I was referring to hating Twilight. I absolutely love HP and the first one is my favorite. So it is my bad.

bkev said:

Really, Gaff? It may be just a generation thing, but I've always found a lot of people preferred Columbus' take on the movies. At least for me, I know they feel more... magical. Less emphasis on dumb action movie trends - seriously, people, not even Harry Potter is safe from this stuff anymore! Although they were more liberal with what they cut than some, I felt they worked best as movies.

Feel free to disregard as irrational nostalgia.

I absolutely agree. When I saw the first movie, I was captivated by it. I wanted to go to Hogwarts because Columbus made it more magical. I think the direction has been good for the whole series because they are supposed to get darker. The fan base grows with the series, and it works. The only thing I have ever hated about the newer ones is the colour.

EyeShotFirst said:

 

The only thing I have ever hated about the newer ones is the colour.

I'm with you there. The HP movies have been way too filter-happy.

Rifftrax, my friends, Rifftrax makes the world a better place.

bkev said:

Really, Gaff? It may be just a generation thing, but I've always found a lot of people preferred Columbus' take on the movies. At least for me, I know they feel more... magical. Less emphasis on dumb action movie trends - seriously, people, not even Harry Potter is safe from this stuff anymore! Although they were more liberal with what they cut than some, I felt they worked best as movies.

Feel free to disregard as irrational nostalgia.

That's the impression I got.  Most people I've talked to regard them as amateurish and shallow.  I never had a problem with his two films, although I don't know if that style would work for the later ones.  Although I do have to disagree with the Columbus movies liberally cutting stuff.  If his films had any tangible thing going for them, it's that they were the most accurate to the books of any of them.  Granted, working with the shorter books helps, but putting them side by side to Cuaron's Prisoner of Azkaban gave fans plenty to think about, as they were completely different.  Cuaron's was much more stylized and original at the cost of being much less faithful to the book and leaving out lots of pertinent information.  It was when Mike Newell came along in Goblet that I felt a Potter film adaptation of one of the long books could be both its own identity as well as capturing everything important from the book.  Order felt the same way to me.  I never saw Half-Blood.... so I don't care.

And, yes, I agree that the first two films felt "magical."

My problem with the Columbus movies is that he didn't reformat anything for the movies. Also, way too many establishing shots of "LOOK WHAT WE MADE! IT'S JUST LIKE THE BOOKS!"

But that's just me. PoA is my favorite one, but that may be because it was the first one to blow my mind. I hadn't read the books, so all of the twists had me on the edge of my seat. I realized that they weren't little kid books at that point and read them all. I'm not huge fans of the post-me-reading-them movies, as I know what is going to happen and I just sit in the theater waiting to see how they did such-and-such or who they got to play so-and-so.

I'm a firm believer in experiencing the movie first, then reading the book. In most cases. Maybe I should write a blog post on that...

I think this pretty common.  I refused to read the books until after the 2nd movie.  I thought the 2nd story took the "gee-whiz" element of the first and actually started to tell an interesting story.  (This comment probably belongs in the "sequel/sequal" discussion Boost and I are having in the other thread.)

So my wife and I read all of the books (4 was out at the time, if memory serves) and I immediately disliked 3.  I thought it was

a. missing critical information that made the denoument make sense.
b. Hyping style over story
c. Dismissing magic.  The lack of "school robes" and their replacement "street clothes" and Mike Gambon, I thought, was a poor replacement for Richard Harris, especially as he (and the director?) were set on rebooting the character at the same time. 

Rewatching HP1 the other month with my kids made me think maybe Richard Harris wasn't as perfect as I remember him being... but that was my thought at the time.

4 was sort of 'meh' to me, even if it had been a little bit since I had read the book.  5 was awesome to me (longest book = shortest movie?) probably because it had been long enough that I had forgotten what was in the book that I could enjoy it again.  I think 6 was decent enough, but I had to ask my wife what the deltas were.

I quit caring about the movies after I saw the 5th one. It seemed like it was just kind of a "greatest hits" reel of the book. It's been a while since I've seen it though, so I might have to give it another watch.

The fifth one was the first where I was just waiting for the battle at the end. The entire movie. Did not enjoy the rest because I knew nothing happened until then.

7.1 and 7.2 will probably be the same thing, but I'll have to sit through two movies to get there.