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Saving the Vampires: Can the Damage "Twilight" Has Done Be Reversed?
Vampires are one of our most enduring creatures of the night, popping up in the folklore of almost every region of the world well before they rose to dominate the horror genre in both books and movies. Before Bram Stoker's literary clasc, Dracula, took the first step towards popularizing what we've come to know as the contemporary vampire, there was a great deal of variation in what, exactly, vampires were from one culture to the next. The one constant in most cultures was that vampires were pretty much undead beings across the board. In fact, in some cultures, anyone who was a wicked person that died unrepentant might very well rise from the grave as a vampire, whether they had been bitten by another vampire or not.
With that in mind, I am not opposed to some variation in what modern vampires are from one work of fiction to the next. Novelists and screenwriters should both feel a certain amount of creative freedom to tweak certain things about vampires. Fans of vampires are accustomed to dealing with certain discrepancies. In some vampire tales, it takes an exchange of blood between vampire and human to create a new bloodsucker. In others, a vampire bite alone is enough to turn a person. In some stories, vampires transform into bats or other animals, while in others, they can't shapeshift at all. Some vampires have telepathy, some vampires don't. All of this is par for the course and not really reason to get up in arms. What I do have a problem with are changes that make vampires less scary, less threatening, less sexy and exist solely because of the ego of a lone author who is trying to push a conservative moral agenda.Sunlight is supposed to kill vampires, not make them sparkle : This is one of my biggest beefs with Twilight. I have always been fond of the saying "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". Vampires are creatures of the night, case closed. They are not supposed to be able to come out during the daylight, even if they do live in an area with a lot of trees and fog. And when they do encounter daylight, it is supposed to kill them. Barring that, I might accept a vampire tale where sunlight caused them extreme pain but didn't actually destroy them. What I can't accept is that the only reason vampires make half-hearted attempts to avoid sunlight is because it makes them glitter like little panes. I especially don't buy the statement of Edward Cullen in the first Twilight movie, where he claims that if anyone saw them sparkling in the daylight, they would immediately be exposed as vampires. Really? It seems to me that most people think daylight kills vampires. Therefore, if someone saw Edward standing there all sparkly in the sunlight, they would just think he was trying to look pretty. Or maybe that he was experimenting with different ways of expresng his true gender identity. The last
thing they'd be likely to think is that he must be a vampire. There was mply no good reason to make this stupid change, but that hasn't stopped legions of other hack writers from copying Stephanie Meyer, giving us more and more vampires who strut about in the daylight, often with no explanation given as to how they can do that. It's like it's just assumed now that if you like vampires, it's because of Twilight. Abstinent vampires?! Seriously?? : Let's cut right to the point here. Vampires don't care about waiting until marriage to have sex, and a vampire who does care about that is as ridiculous as a vegetarian tiger. The dark sex appeal of vampires is one of the most compelling parts of their mythology. By making Edward Cullen a vampire who is so anti-sex that he actually talks his girlfriend out of sleeping with him, Stephanie Meyer effectively neutered one of her central characters. It's not just Edward Cullen, either. Practically the entire Cullen family seems utterly sexless and depressed. Is there seriously not a ngle one of them that finds immortality and eternal youth even a little bit sexy? The "good vampires" only enjoy wholesome activities like sports. Only the "bad vampires" flaunt their sex appeal in any way, shape or form. From everything I've heard, sex doesn't work out very well for Edward and Bella even after they get married. The message here is clear. Pre-marital sex is such an unspeakable evil that even many undead creatures shy away from it, and sex after marriage is just something to suffer through. Even if the Mormon Stephanie Meyer was not trying to push an agenda here (which it seems to me she was), she is still deserving of condemnation for going to such great lengths to castrate the sexiest of all things that go bump in the night. Vampires don't need to go to high school : I find myself hard pressed to think of anything more ridiculous than vampires who are HUNDREDS of years old going to school with a bunch of teenyboppers. In fact, the only thing that does
seem more stupid than that is the very notion that someone as old as Edward Cullen would find himself enraptured by a teenage girl as dull, wishy-washy and spineless as Bella Swan. I understand that Meyer probably thought her teen fiction novels would appeal more to her target audience if they were set in a high school. To me, that just proves that she was more concerned with marketing than having her story make sense. Ostenbly, the reason the Cullen "kids" go to school with normal kids is to keep up appearances. They want to seem just as normal as the other kids. Sadly, the story itself makes short work of that reasoning, because the Cullens hardly ever interact with their peers at the high school. They keep to themselves, stand out like sore thumbs, and are the object of rumors, ridicule and much speculation. They draw a lot more attention to themselves by appearing 5 days a week at school just to act strangely than they would if the elder Cullens mply pretended to be homeschooling them. Meyer is obviously either not a good enough writer to think of that option, or she mply decided to go with what might make her books popular rather than what would be smartest for her characters to do. Either way, vampires have fallen pretty low when they're forced to deal with the social politics of a high school cafeteria. I can't think of anything less scary. Vampires aren't made out of glass : Can anyone tell me why in the hell the Twilight vampires shatter when they die? You can see what looks like glass shards sticking out of their wounds, no matter how they're killed. Is it supposed to tie in to the fact that they sparkle in the sunlight? Are they literally supposed to be made of glass? If so, that makes them even more wussy. Not only is there no good reason for a vampire to be made out of glass, it just makes those scenes where vampires meet their end extremely distracting and cheap looking. It's also mply not as cool as disentigration or a good old fashioned splattering of blood or necroplasm would've been. This is yet another change made by Twilight
that didn't do vampires any favors.There are probably other complaints I could think of in regards to Stephanie Meyer's disrespectful treatment of vampires, but those are the ones that I find to be her most serious offenses. We cannot erase the damage she has done to our beloved monsters, but I am hopeful that we can help heal the wounds and minimize the scarring. What we need now are some hardcore, bloody and sexy vampire movies to help return them to their former glory. We may even need to go all the way back to bacs and have a kick-ass director crank out a new adaptation of Dracula. Who better to teach all those Twihards out there what a vampire is supposed to be than the Count himself? Alternatively, perhaps the memory of Twilight could be better wiped away by a veron of vampires we haven't seen on film yet, but which is no less scary than the vampires we're used to. Perhaps we need to send some screenwriters to root through ancient folklore from across the globe in search of the scariest veron of vampires they can find. A good step in this direction would be to adapt Jonathan Maberry's Ghost Road Blues trilogy for the big screen, nce he bases a lot of his story on the kind of folklore I'm describing.Whatever avenue the genre decides to take, what is certain is that something must be done to save the vampire. With only one more Twilight
movie upcoming, and no more books being released in the series (at least until Meyer sells out completely), the time to mount a rescue is drawing near. I'd love to hear all of your ideas about what form, exactly, that rescue should take. Because make no mistake about it, my fellow Bidites. What Stephanie Meyer has done to the vampire amounts to nothing less than creative rape. And I know that people like us don't stand for crap like that!
With that in mind, I am not opposed to some variation in what modern vampires are from one work of fiction to the next. Novelists and screenwriters should both feel a certain amount of creative freedom to tweak certain things about vampires. Fans of vampires are accustomed to dealing with certain discrepancies. In some vampire tales, it takes an exchange of blood between vampire and human to create a new bloodsucker. In others, a vampire bite alone is enough to turn a person. In some stories, vampires transform into bats or other animals, while in others, they can't shapeshift at all. Some vampires have telepathy, some vampires don't. All of this is par for the course and not really reason to get up in arms. What I do have a problem with are changes that make vampires less scary, less threatening, less sexy and exist solely because of the ego of a lone author who is trying to push a conservative moral agenda.Sunlight is supposed to kill vampires, not make them sparkle : This is one of my biggest beefs with Twilight. I have always been fond of the saying "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". Vampires are creatures of the night, case closed. They are not supposed to be able to come out during the daylight, even if they do live in an area with a lot of trees and fog. And when they do encounter daylight, it is supposed to kill them. Barring that, I might accept a vampire tale where sunlight caused them extreme pain but didn't actually destroy them. What I can't accept is that the only reason vampires make half-hearted attempts to avoid sunlight is because it makes them glitter like little panes. I especially don't buy the statement of Edward Cullen in the first Twilight movie, where he claims that if anyone saw them sparkling in the daylight, they would immediately be exposed as vampires. Really? It seems to me that most people think daylight kills vampires. Therefore, if someone saw Edward standing there all sparkly in the sunlight, they would just think he was trying to look pretty. Or maybe that he was experimenting with different ways of expresng his true gender identity. The last
thing they'd be likely to think is that he must be a vampire. There was mply no good reason to make this stupid change, but that hasn't stopped legions of other hack writers from copying Stephanie Meyer, giving us more and more vampires who strut about in the daylight, often with no explanation given as to how they can do that. It's like it's just assumed now that if you like vampires, it's because of Twilight. Abstinent vampires?! Seriously?? : Let's cut right to the point here. Vampires don't care about waiting until marriage to have sex, and a vampire who does care about that is as ridiculous as a vegetarian tiger. The dark sex appeal of vampires is one of the most compelling parts of their mythology. By making Edward Cullen a vampire who is so anti-sex that he actually talks his girlfriend out of sleeping with him, Stephanie Meyer effectively neutered one of her central characters. It's not just Edward Cullen, either. Practically the entire Cullen family seems utterly sexless and depressed. Is there seriously not a ngle one of them that finds immortality and eternal youth even a little bit sexy? The "good vampires" only enjoy wholesome activities like sports. Only the "bad vampires" flaunt their sex appeal in any way, shape or form. From everything I've heard, sex doesn't work out very well for Edward and Bella even after they get married. The message here is clear. Pre-marital sex is such an unspeakable evil that even many undead creatures shy away from it, and sex after marriage is just something to suffer through. Even if the Mormon Stephanie Meyer was not trying to push an agenda here (which it seems to me she was), she is still deserving of condemnation for going to such great lengths to castrate the sexiest of all things that go bump in the night. Vampires don't need to go to high school : I find myself hard pressed to think of anything more ridiculous than vampires who are HUNDREDS of years old going to school with a bunch of teenyboppers. In fact, the only thing that does
seem more stupid than that is the very notion that someone as old as Edward Cullen would find himself enraptured by a teenage girl as dull, wishy-washy and spineless as Bella Swan. I understand that Meyer probably thought her teen fiction novels would appeal more to her target audience if they were set in a high school. To me, that just proves that she was more concerned with marketing than having her story make sense. Ostenbly, the reason the Cullen "kids" go to school with normal kids is to keep up appearances. They want to seem just as normal as the other kids. Sadly, the story itself makes short work of that reasoning, because the Cullens hardly ever interact with their peers at the high school. They keep to themselves, stand out like sore thumbs, and are the object of rumors, ridicule and much speculation. They draw a lot more attention to themselves by appearing 5 days a week at school just to act strangely than they would if the elder Cullens mply pretended to be homeschooling them. Meyer is obviously either not a good enough writer to think of that option, or she mply decided to go with what might make her books popular rather than what would be smartest for her characters to do. Either way, vampires have fallen pretty low when they're forced to deal with the social politics of a high school cafeteria. I can't think of anything less scary. Vampires aren't made out of glass : Can anyone tell me why in the hell the Twilight vampires shatter when they die? You can see what looks like glass shards sticking out of their wounds, no matter how they're killed. Is it supposed to tie in to the fact that they sparkle in the sunlight? Are they literally supposed to be made of glass? If so, that makes them even more wussy. Not only is there no good reason for a vampire to be made out of glass, it just makes those scenes where vampires meet their end extremely distracting and cheap looking. It's also mply not as cool as disentigration or a good old fashioned splattering of blood or necroplasm would've been. This is yet another change made by Twilight
that didn't do vampires any favors.There are probably other complaints I could think of in regards to Stephanie Meyer's disrespectful treatment of vampires, but those are the ones that I find to be her most serious offenses. We cannot erase the damage she has done to our beloved monsters, but I am hopeful that we can help heal the wounds and minimize the scarring. What we need now are some hardcore, bloody and sexy vampire movies to help return them to their former glory. We may even need to go all the way back to bacs and have a kick-ass director crank out a new adaptation of Dracula. Who better to teach all those Twihards out there what a vampire is supposed to be than the Count himself? Alternatively, perhaps the memory of Twilight could be better wiped away by a veron of vampires we haven't seen on film yet, but which is no less scary than the vampires we're used to. Perhaps we need to send some screenwriters to root through ancient folklore from across the globe in search of the scariest veron of vampires they can find. A good step in this direction would be to adapt Jonathan Maberry's Ghost Road Blues trilogy for the big screen, nce he bases a lot of his story on the kind of folklore I'm describing.Whatever avenue the genre decides to take, what is certain is that something must be done to save the vampire. With only one more Twilight
movie upcoming, and no more books being released in the series (at least until Meyer sells out completely), the time to mount a rescue is drawing near. I'd love to hear all of your ideas about what form, exactly, that rescue should take. Because make no mistake about it, my fellow Bidites. What Stephanie Meyer has done to the vampire amounts to nothing less than creative rape. And I know that people like us don't stand for crap like that!
ImmortalSidneyP
Wednesday 1/11/2012 at 08:14 AM | 89283
I tried to give Twilight a chance, but yeah, when he 'sparkled' in the sunlight I decided this wasn't a franchise for me. Can these movies even be condered "horror"? I believe these films are just a fad and fickle audiences soon move on. Personally I'd love to see a serious adaptation of Anne Rice's The Vampire Lestat and even another Nosferatu style vampire film.
Evilution
Wednesday 1/11/2012 at 03:28 PM | 89290
i wont even attempt to t through a twilight movie. I agree with just about everything you said in this piece, and i thank you for offering forth an actual article; it seems they're really dwindling lately in favor of news. Good lookin out with this post!
Matt_Molgaard
Wednesday 1/11/2012 at 05:03 PM | 89298
The sad fact is that the only way to finally put the proverbial stake in the heart of the current crappy vampire trend is to wait it out. The kids who have invested time with this series will (hopefully) grow more mature and seek out movies with better stories. When this happens the next type of PG-13 vampires/monsters will rear their PC heads. I just think that todays generation of young horror fans are under the impreson that Twilight invented vampires and werewolves and their eternal struggle with each other and the humans they love. To this I am here to tell you that this is not the case. Make no mistake, Twilight has refined the art of making vampires suck harder than anyone ever thought posble, (sorry had to go there) but cry-baby vamps have been around for years and years. Don't believe me?
I look at it like this, being a child of the early 80's horror offerings I watcheed alll the Univesal and Hammer
stuff, but I eventually had LOST BOYS as a guilty pleasure growing up. I make my kids watch it now when they try to put on Twilight. It stuck to the traditional rules, but was still very horror lite compared to the other movie that came out the same year (1987) about vampires. That other movie was more violent and more straight laced horror, and it was called NEAR DARK.
Now... Which movie does the average (non hardcore horror fan) person remember? The lite hearted one, the friendlier one. Also, go back and look at the "blood" coming out of the vampires in LOST BOYS. Y'know what it does? SPARKLES! Joel Schumacher explained how they mixed in sparkles with the fake blood in an interview. See where I'm headed with this?
LOST BOYS made vamps cool in the 80's and brought them pop culture recognition, but like it or not, it paved the way for Twilight! I'll go one better and say, so did the book and movie of Anne Rice's Interview with a Vampire. The whole book and movie is about Louie being a depressed human who is turned into a reluctant Vampire. The book came out in 1976 originally and the movie with Cruise and Pitt came out in 1994, long before Mr.Cullen ever glared his first depressed look at the dull Bella. They even romanticized poor Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992) into a love story with Gary Oldman and Winnona Ryder. The damn tagline for the movie was "Love never dies." True love saved Drac's soul at the end of the damn movie!
The point behind my rant here is that a change needs to be made and it has to start with the bac story structure. Even NEAR DARK was a story about a guy who gets bit by a mysterious girl he is falling for and ends up trying to figure out how not to be a vamp? It still has the girl/boy story line in it. My suggestion would be to get away from the reluctant vamp wants a girl or boy angle. The only movie recently that put a nice twist on that was LET THE RIGHT ONE IN / LET ME IN. Otherwise, It has been done to death. Tell us an overall story with real characters like a DEAD OF NIGHT style setup or even a serail killer vamp storyline that makes the vamp out to be the nasty ck sadistic hungry creatures of the night they used to be known as. FYI, The Euro trash goth leather thing is getting stale too, but that kiddies is story for another time...
I look at it like this, being a child of the early 80's horror offerings I watcheed alll the Univesal and Hammer
stuff, but I eventually had LOST BOYS as a guilty pleasure growing up. I make my kids watch it now when they try to put on Twilight. It stuck to the traditional rules, but was still very horror lite compared to the other movie that came out the same year (1987) about vampires. That other movie was more violent and more straight laced horror, and it was called NEAR DARK.
Now... Which movie does the average (non hardcore horror fan) person remember? The lite hearted one, the friendlier one. Also, go back and look at the "blood" coming out of the vampires in LOST BOYS. Y'know what it does? SPARKLES! Joel Schumacher explained how they mixed in sparkles with the fake blood in an interview. See where I'm headed with this?
LOST BOYS made vamps cool in the 80's and brought them pop culture recognition, but like it or not, it paved the way for Twilight! I'll go one better and say, so did the book and movie of Anne Rice's Interview with a Vampire. The whole book and movie is about Louie being a depressed human who is turned into a reluctant Vampire. The book came out in 1976 originally and the movie with Cruise and Pitt came out in 1994, long before Mr.Cullen ever glared his first depressed look at the dull Bella. They even romanticized poor Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992) into a love story with Gary Oldman and Winnona Ryder. The damn tagline for the movie was "Love never dies." True love saved Drac's soul at the end of the damn movie!
The point behind my rant here is that a change needs to be made and it has to start with the bac story structure. Even NEAR DARK was a story about a guy who gets bit by a mysterious girl he is falling for and ends up trying to figure out how not to be a vamp? It still has the girl/boy story line in it. My suggestion would be to get away from the reluctant vamp wants a girl or boy angle. The only movie recently that put a nice twist on that was LET THE RIGHT ONE IN / LET ME IN. Otherwise, It has been done to death. Tell us an overall story with real characters like a DEAD OF NIGHT style setup or even a serail killer vamp storyline that makes the vamp out to be the nasty ck sadistic hungry creatures of the night they used to be known as. FYI, The Euro trash goth leather thing is getting stale too, but that kiddies is story for another time...
Anonymous
Wednesday 1/11/2012 at 06:18 PM | 89303
The sad fact is that the only way to finally put the proverbial stake in the heart of the current crappy vampire trend is to wait it out. The kids who have invested time with this series will (hopefully) grow more mature and seek out movies with better stories. When this happens the next type of PG-13 vampires/monsters will rear their PC heads. I just think that todays generation of young horror fans are under the impreson that Twilight invented vampires and werewolves and their eternal struggle with each other and the humans they love. To this I am here to tell you that this is not the case. Make no mistake, Twilight has refined the art of making vampires suck harder than anyone ever thought posble, (sorry had to go there) but cry-baby vamps have been around for years and years. Don't believe me?
I look at it like this, being a child of the early 80's horror offerings I watcheed alll the Univesal and Hammer
stuff, but I eventually had LOST BOYS as a guilty pleasure growing up. I make my kids watch it now when they try to put on Twilight. It stuck to the traditional rules, but was still very horror lite compared to the other movie that came out the same year (1987) about vampires. That other movie was more violent and more straight laced horror, and it was called NEAR DARK.
Now... Which movie does the average (non hardcore horror fan) person remember? The lite hearted one, the friendlier one. Also, go back and look at the "blood" coming out of the vampires in LOST BOYS. Y'know what it does? SPARKLES! Joel Schumacher explained how they mixed in sparkles with the fake blood in an interview. See where I'm headed with this?
LOST BOYS made vamps cool in the 80's and brought them pop culture recognition, but like it or not, it paved the way for Twilight! I'll go one better and say, so did the book and movie of Anne Rice's Interview with a Vampire. The whole book and movie is about Louie being a depressed human who is turned into a reluctant Vampire. The book came out in 1976 originally and the movie with Cruise and Pitt came out in 1994, long before Mr.Cullen ever glared his first depressed look at the dull Bella. They even romanticized poor Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992) into a love story with Gary Oldman and Winnona Ryder. The damn tagline for the movie was "Love never dies." True love saved Drac's soul at the end of the damn movie!
The point behind my rant here is that a change needs to be made and it has to start with the bac story structure. Even NEAR DARK was a story about a guy who gets bit by a mysterious girl he is falling for and ends up trying to figure out how not to be a vamp? It still has the girl/boy story line in it. My suggestion would be to get away from the reluctant vamp wants a girl or boy angle. The only movie recently that put a nice twist on that was LET THE RIGHT ONE IN / LET ME IN. Otherwise, It has been done to death. Tell us an overall story with real characters like a DEAD OF NIGHT style setup or even a serail killer vamp storyline that makes the vamp out to be the nasty ck sadistic hungry creatures of the night they used to be known as. FYI, The Euro trash goth leather thing is getting stale too, but that kiddies is story for another time...
the (on screen) seductive vampire dates back to the 30's/40's. It's not new, and it's one of the more "original" approaches to the sub genre. Take a look at Stoker's book, for the perfect example of early romanticism within the vampire realm. They pretty much began as sympathetic and often seductive creatures; films like Twilight however have just taken on more of a Kiddie pop appeal. The cycle will never end, because the roots lie in seduction, heartbreak and love.
I look at it like this, being a child of the early 80's horror offerings I watcheed alll the Univesal and Hammer
stuff, but I eventually had LOST BOYS as a guilty pleasure growing up. I make my kids watch it now when they try to put on Twilight. It stuck to the traditional rules, but was still very horror lite compared to the other movie that came out the same year (1987) about vampires. That other movie was more violent and more straight laced horror, and it was called NEAR DARK.
Now... Which movie does the average (non hardcore horror fan) person remember? The lite hearted one, the friendlier one. Also, go back and look at the "blood" coming out of the vampires in LOST BOYS. Y'know what it does? SPARKLES! Joel Schumacher explained how they mixed in sparkles with the fake blood in an interview. See where I'm headed with this?
LOST BOYS made vamps cool in the 80's and brought them pop culture recognition, but like it or not, it paved the way for Twilight! I'll go one better and say, so did the book and movie of Anne Rice's Interview with a Vampire. The whole book and movie is about Louie being a depressed human who is turned into a reluctant Vampire. The book came out in 1976 originally and the movie with Cruise and Pitt came out in 1994, long before Mr.Cullen ever glared his first depressed look at the dull Bella. They even romanticized poor Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992) into a love story with Gary Oldman and Winnona Ryder. The damn tagline for the movie was "Love never dies." True love saved Drac's soul at the end of the damn movie!
The point behind my rant here is that a change needs to be made and it has to start with the bac story structure. Even NEAR DARK was a story about a guy who gets bit by a mysterious girl he is falling for and ends up trying to figure out how not to be a vamp? It still has the girl/boy story line in it. My suggestion would be to get away from the reluctant vamp wants a girl or boy angle. The only movie recently that put a nice twist on that was LET THE RIGHT ONE IN / LET ME IN. Otherwise, It has been done to death. Tell us an overall story with real characters like a DEAD OF NIGHT style setup or even a serail killer vamp storyline that makes the vamp out to be the nasty ck sadistic hungry creatures of the night they used to be known as. FYI, The Euro trash goth leather thing is getting stale too, but that kiddies is story for another time...
the (on screen) seductive vampire dates back to the 30's/40's. It's not new, and it's one of the more "original" approaches to the sub genre. Take a look at Stoker's book, for the perfect example of early romanticism within the vampire realm. They pretty much began as sympathetic and often seductive creatures; films like Twilight however have just taken on more of a Kiddie pop appeal. The cycle will never end, because the roots lie in seduction, heartbreak and love.
Matt_Molgaard
Wednesday 1/11/2012 at 06:42 PM | 89306
The sad fact is that the only way to finally put the proverbial stake in the heart of the current crappy vampire trend is to wait it out. The kids who have invested time with this series will (hopefully) grow more mature and seek out movies with better stories. When this happens the next type of PG-13 vampires/monsters will rear their PC heads. I just think that todays generation of young horror fans are under the impreson that Twilight invented vampires and werewolves and their eternal struggle with each other and the humans they love. To this I am here to tell you that this is not the case. Make no mistake, Twilight has refined the art of making vampires suck harder than anyone ever thought posble, (sorry had to go there) but cry-baby vamps have been around for years and years. Don't believe me?
I look at it like this, being a child of the early 80's horror offerings I watcheed alll the Univesal and Hammer
stuff, but I eventually had LOST BOYS as a guilty pleasure growing up. I make my kids watch it now when they try to put on Twilight. It stuck to the traditional rules, but was still very horror lite compared to the other movie that came out the same year (1987) about vampires. That other movie was more violent and more straight laced horror, and it was called NEAR DARK.
Now... Which movie does the average (non hardcore horror fan) person remember? The lite hearted one, the friendlier one. Also, go back and look at the "blood" coming out of the vampires in LOST BOYS. Y'know what it does? SPARKLES! Joel Schumacher explained how they mixed in sparkles with the fake blood in an interview. See where I'm headed with this?
LOST BOYS made vamps cool in the 80's and brought them pop culture recognition, but like it or not, it paved the way for Twilight! I'll go one better and say, so did the book and movie of Anne Rice's Interview with a Vampire. The whole book and movie is about Louie being a depressed human who is turned into a reluctant Vampire. The book came out in 1976 originally and the movie with Cruise and Pitt came out in 1994, long before Mr.Cullen ever glared his first depressed look at the dull Bella. They even romanticized poor Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992) into a love story with Gary Oldman and Winnona Ryder. The damn tagline for the movie was "Love never dies." True love saved Drac's soul at the end of the damn movie!
The point behind my rant here is that a change needs to be made and it has to start with the bac story structure. Even NEAR DARK was a story about a guy who gets bit by a mysterious girl he is falling for and ends up trying to figure out how not to be a vamp? It still has the girl/boy story line in it. My suggestion would be to get away from the reluctant vamp wants a girl or boy angle. The only movie recently that put a nice twist on that was LET THE RIGHT ONE IN / LET ME IN. Otherwise, It has been done to death. Tell us an overall story with real characters like a DEAD OF NIGHT style setup or even a serail killer vamp storyline that makes the vamp out to be the nasty ck sadistic hungry creatures of the night they used to be known as. FYI, The Euro trash goth leather thing is getting stale too, but that kiddies is story for another time...Thanks for taking the time to write this thoughtful response. While you're correct that The Lost Boys
can be condered "horror lite", it's one hardcore movie compared to the Twilight films, which are just a bridge too far. As for Interview With the Vampire, there were times when that film felt more like a drama to me than a horror film, but there were other scenes that were uncompromingly bloody and yes, even scary. And it was just such a claser, more accomplished film, with much better performances in comparison to Twilight. I feel like I'm disrespecting Interview
by even mentioning it in the same sentence as Twilight. As for Near Dark, that's a truly fantastic film, and I think you might be underestimating the number of fans it has. You are also correct that love stories have long been a part of vampire mythology. My problem with Twilight is that the love story it provides is limp, corny and ultimately sort of nauseating. You know from the get-go that nothing too awful is going to happen to Bella, there's no real sense of danger mixed in with the love, and it is only expressed through constant scenes of brooding. Not to mention the fact that, as a character, Bella represents a real setback for women. All of the other movies you mentioned featured female characters who were much stronger. I think Stephanie Meyer, in a rather overt way, set out to make a buttload of money while multaneously pushing her moral code onto her readers. I'm not sure why she had to choose vampires and werewolves to do that when she could have written a sappy, boring story about anything at all, but unfortunately for horror fans, that's the route she took.
I look at it like this, being a child of the early 80's horror offerings I watcheed alll the Univesal and Hammer
stuff, but I eventually had LOST BOYS as a guilty pleasure growing up. I make my kids watch it now when they try to put on Twilight. It stuck to the traditional rules, but was still very horror lite compared to the other movie that came out the same year (1987) about vampires. That other movie was more violent and more straight laced horror, and it was called NEAR DARK.
Now... Which movie does the average (non hardcore horror fan) person remember? The lite hearted one, the friendlier one. Also, go back and look at the "blood" coming out of the vampires in LOST BOYS. Y'know what it does? SPARKLES! Joel Schumacher explained how they mixed in sparkles with the fake blood in an interview. See where I'm headed with this?
LOST BOYS made vamps cool in the 80's and brought them pop culture recognition, but like it or not, it paved the way for Twilight! I'll go one better and say, so did the book and movie of Anne Rice's Interview with a Vampire. The whole book and movie is about Louie being a depressed human who is turned into a reluctant Vampire. The book came out in 1976 originally and the movie with Cruise and Pitt came out in 1994, long before Mr.Cullen ever glared his first depressed look at the dull Bella. They even romanticized poor Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992) into a love story with Gary Oldman and Winnona Ryder. The damn tagline for the movie was "Love never dies." True love saved Drac's soul at the end of the damn movie!
The point behind my rant here is that a change needs to be made and it has to start with the bac story structure. Even NEAR DARK was a story about a guy who gets bit by a mysterious girl he is falling for and ends up trying to figure out how not to be a vamp? It still has the girl/boy story line in it. My suggestion would be to get away from the reluctant vamp wants a girl or boy angle. The only movie recently that put a nice twist on that was LET THE RIGHT ONE IN / LET ME IN. Otherwise, It has been done to death. Tell us an overall story with real characters like a DEAD OF NIGHT style setup or even a serail killer vamp storyline that makes the vamp out to be the nasty ck sadistic hungry creatures of the night they used to be known as. FYI, The Euro trash goth leather thing is getting stale too, but that kiddies is story for another time...Thanks for taking the time to write this thoughtful response. While you're correct that The Lost Boys
can be condered "horror lite", it's one hardcore movie compared to the Twilight films, which are just a bridge too far. As for Interview With the Vampire, there were times when that film felt more like a drama to me than a horror film, but there were other scenes that were uncompromingly bloody and yes, even scary. And it was just such a claser, more accomplished film, with much better performances in comparison to Twilight. I feel like I'm disrespecting Interview
by even mentioning it in the same sentence as Twilight. As for Near Dark, that's a truly fantastic film, and I think you might be underestimating the number of fans it has. You are also correct that love stories have long been a part of vampire mythology. My problem with Twilight is that the love story it provides is limp, corny and ultimately sort of nauseating. You know from the get-go that nothing too awful is going to happen to Bella, there's no real sense of danger mixed in with the love, and it is only expressed through constant scenes of brooding. Not to mention the fact that, as a character, Bella represents a real setback for women. All of the other movies you mentioned featured female characters who were much stronger. I think Stephanie Meyer, in a rather overt way, set out to make a buttload of money while multaneously pushing her moral code onto her readers. I'm not sure why she had to choose vampires and werewolves to do that when she could have written a sappy, boring story about anything at all, but unfortunately for horror fans, that's the route she took.
ImmortalSidneyP
Wednesday 1/11/2012 at 09:01 PM | 89314
The real vampires will return once the Twilight vampires lose profitability. Then a new wave of movies with monstrous vampires will rise as a counter response to the Twilight vampires. You' see.
In a way, the real vampires are sleeping waiting for their time to come again.
In a way, the real vampires are sleeping waiting for their time to come again.
CrazySwede
Wednesday 1/11/2012 at 10:31 PM | 89318
