Hi J-14ers!
Once upon a time, I fell in love with a boy in high school. He was cold. He was hard. He'd disappear for days at a time. Yet every word he said and everything he did was even more romantic and sweet than I could even imagine. He put every crush I ever had to shame. I started comparing every guy to his perfection. What can I say? I was head over heels for him.
And even when I found out that his oddities meant he had a secret -- a bizarre secret that was literally out of this world! -- I didn't care. By that time, I was in too deep. I was utterly and completely in love with Edward Cullen... and I didn't even care that he stared at me in my sleep or craved my blood. I had fallen in love with a vampire.
But when I closed the book on him and snapped back into the real world, I quickly realized I had a little competition for my man. Millions of others had gone through the same eternal-love-at-first-sight experience I was going through after reading Stephenie Meyer's 2005 book Twilight. And who wouldn't? It was a hopelessly romantic story about the kind of everlasting love everyone searches for... and with that, a pop culture phenomenon was born.
As I navigated through the three other books of The Twilight Saga, I must admit -- guiltily! -- that I didn't always pay attention to what was going on exactly... especially when he started going off about evil foreign vampires. But I was in love with Edward, so I had to read every word about him. After all, he was my first vampire love.
But as the books shifted their focus from forbidden love to a supernatural love triangle and eventually to a half-human, half-vampire baby hybrid threatening the global vampire community, the love story that drew me into the series no longer became the central focus of the Saga. In fact, when people asked what the series was about, I'd summarize it as: "A werewolf and a vampire fight over a human girl -- and the vampire gets the girl. They have a vampire-human baby and the werewolf falls for their child." And just as I finish saying those words, I stop and think... okay, maybe that did sound a little ridiculous.
And that's not it. Turns out the mother-father-baby-plus-wolf-soulmate foursome are actually okay with each other -- but they're all threatened by the evil vampires who want to destroy the child... and the end of the last book, Breaking Dawn, leads up to a final epic battle. But as I was nearing the climax of the plot, I only had a few pages left in the book. Suddenly I feared the worst: Was everyone going to die in one fell swoop? How could this 754-page book resolve itself in so few pages?
Needless to say, it resolve itself (no spoilers). And it wrapped things up pretty quickly for a book. But the whole time, I worried that this fourth and final book wouldn't translate to the big screen. So of course I was surprised when I heard it was going to be split into two movies! How would they break it up and have enough of a story to tell?
Last year's Breaking Dawn Part 1 had so much in it -- a wedding, a baby, and human-to-vampire transformation... and I worried there was nothing left to tell in Part 2. So when I heard there was going to be a major plot twist, I was beyond excited.
I was lucky enough to catch a screening of the movie on Wednesday night -- without giving any spoilers away -- let's just say, I actually shouted these things out loud when the twist happened: "Noooooo!!!" "This is awesoooome" and "This is better than Fan Fiction."
Needless to say, I was super impressed with what screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg and director Bill Condon did with the twist. It makes you jump out of your seat, yet still stays loyal to the book series... and gives the book series just the right amount of boost it needs.
So thrilling. So genius. And it so made me fall in love with my vampire crush all over again. And in fact, it may have turned Breaking Dawn, Part 2, into one of the best book-to-screen adaptions I've ever seen.
Without giving much more away, I'm dying (well, technically I'm dead already as a vampire bride to Mr. Cullen) to know what you thought of the twist. And those who've already seen it... I've never been more ecstatic to get punk'd! Wink, wink!
Can't wait to hear from you!
Rachel Chang
J-14 Editor-in-Chief