I don't get the overall negativity here sorry

Rating: 8/10 (24 November 2009)

OK I understand that these books have sold millions of copies and there are people that are to the point of obsessed with them (I consider myself one of them actually). However I have also seen more than enough movies to know that you can't expect a movie to be much like a book, if for no reason than books can tell you the internal motivations of any character they focus on, which movies can't do. Also take into account that it is a 600 plus page first person narrative (as in told from Bella's perspective only) and that makes it nearly impossible to convert accurately to anything resembling a movie unless you turn it into a 10 hour miniseries. So they changed the order of some things around, added a couple of things to make it a little more visually stunning for the movie person that hasn't read the books, and dropped a whole lot of stuff just so they could get it onto a movie screen. I think they did an excellent job of condensing it down and still keeping it coherent and somewhere within the themes of the book it is based on. The acting is generally good, especially Taylor Lautner as Jacob, who it the character the whole movie hinges on really, because if he wasn't such a strong presence the whole concept would collapse. Kristen Stewart who plays Bella even manages to be interesting, which is something of a feat considering she spends probably 80 per cent of the movie in something resembling a clinical depression. It is certainly a movie I will be adding to my collection when it makes its DVD release and I enjoyed it immensely.