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Twilight: Book vs. Movie
First off, this isn't really a review of either the book or the movie, but it's a list of some of what I perceive as significant differences between the book and the movie and why I think they do or don't work. I saw the movie first, so that colors my perception; in general, I prefer the movie to the book.
Numbers in brackets are page numbers, and I may link to Midnight Sun page numbers for Edward's (or other characters') POV, so those will be preceded by MS, e.g [MS 3-6]. You can read the incomplete draft of Midnight Sun here.
Point of View Changes
There's no universal right or wrong answer for point of view, but a book as in the main character's head as Twilight is would be difficult to film.
The book is in first person, with no scenes from any other perspective. Midnight Sun is in a limited omniscient of a sort, since Edward can pick and choose who he hears the thoughts of, except for Bella. That said, nearly all his eavesdropping involves information about Bella.
The movie, however, pretty much had to have a different POV: the prologue/frame was left in, and thus there had to be footage to go along with it. In order to strengthen the suspense, earlier scenes with the nomads were brought in, which allowed for more scenes between Bella and her father, and to tie in with the similar feel in the prologue scene. The first nomad hunting scene comes shortly after Edward first meets Bella and wants to kill her.
Aside from that, there's only a few other breaks from Bella's POV in the movie: the Cullen family reaction to Bella's arrival at their home; James's reaction to Bella and Edward leaving Charlie's house, and the scenes that follow Edward and James during the time that Edward's trying to mislead James. Each of these had some dramatic reason for occurring and made the movie stronger, but wouldn't necessarily have made the book stronger.
The Revelation
In a story where the male lead is a vampire and the female lead is not, the main problem is how and when to reveal that the character is a vampire.
In the book:
1) Jacob introduces himself then tells Jessica that the Cullens are vampires during their encounter at the La Push beach, in violation of the treaty with the Cullens. This makes Jacob the "Magical Negro" character in that he isn't a fully developed and, in the book, really exists solely to provide this information to Bella. I hardly believe that anyone would introduce themselves, even if the woman in question were a friend of the family, then spill tribal stories like that. [119-128]
2) After that, Bella does some computer research.
3) The next time she sees Edward is when he appears out of nowhere and rescues her from the attackers in Port Angeles; she's gone off in search of bookstores, but for no particular book.
4) They have dinner together, but Bella doesn't confront him, saying that she'll talk about it in the car on the way back.
5) On the way back, Bella says that she didn't come up with the theory on her own, and then tells Edward what Jacob had said. She first utters the word vampire to him on page 183. [MS 201]
At a page a minute, the reader knows that Edward's a vampire approximately an hour before the confrontation occurs.
In the movie, only one scene is changed in order, and another bit is added, but see how this flows so much better:
1) Jacob (who has already introduced himself in the beginning of the movie) talks with Bella, tells about the legend of the Quileutes being descended from wolves, and that the Cullens were from an enemy clan, but there's a treaty. He refuses to say what they are, saying "It's just a story, Bella."
2) Bella does research online and finds about a book of Quileute legends, and decides to go to Port Angeles to get the book. As in the novel, she goes with Angela and Jessica.
2) The next time she sees Edward is when he appears out of nowhere and rescues her from the attackers in Port Angeles, where she's bought a book.
3) They have dinner together, and Edward reveals that he can read minds. Except hers. I think the only reason he reveals it then is his anger at the attackers -- he's slipped, and he can't cover it the way he did when he pushed the van away from her.
4) On the way back, Bella touches his hand accidentally and realizes how cold it is.
5) They then stop at the police station, having seen her father's car and his father's car there. Turns out that a long-time friend of her father's had been murdered by an "animal" (later revealed to be a rogue vampire). Bella observes how pale the dead person's feet actually are.
6) During her research, she puts together Edward's speed (getting across the lot to save her from the van), strength (pushing away the van), never eating or drinking anything, cold skin, paleness, avoidance of sunlight and figures out what he is herself. (This is the scene that's moved and changed in meaning as a result.)
7) When she sees him at school, she heads away from school and he follows her, and she confronts him. I much prefer the interaction there: "Say it. Out loud. Say it." He is bound not to tell her, and pushing her to end the torment of what she knows seems very Edward.
In other words, she works for it; it's not handed to her, she doesn't need a magical negro, and I find the order more realistic. In the movie, the revelation process takes only a few minutes (approximately 5). Of course, the timeline of the movie is greatly condensed; it has to be.
The Bed
In the book, the fact that he doesn't sleep is revealed in the car during the conversation when the revelation occurs.
In the movie, it happens when Bella's given a house tour of the Cullen home, ending up in his room.
"No bed?" she asks.
Much more dramatic, especially since she has that tidge of disappointment.
Edward's Motivation
Edward's motivation isn't entirely clear in the Twilight book, in part because we're looking through such a close filter of Bella's point of view. In Twilight, there's one primary motivation that isn't made clear in the movie, and two others revealed in Midnight Sun.
1) He can't read her mind, so one of the means he uses is watching her sleep because she talks in her sleep. [293]
2) Two other vampires, who do still hunt humans, are visiting the Cullens (though do not hunt near them). Edward becomes more concerned for Bella's safety, [MS 147-165] Now, Edward realizes they're not really a risk, but it's the thing that pushes him over the edge, the rationalization he permits himself.
3) Most important, Alice sees two futures for Bella: Edward will kill her (or very nearly so) or she will become one of them. [MS 83-87] Until the point where he resolves to try to live between those extremes [MS 110], Edward avoids Bella. In the book, this is for a long duration (about two months), but it seems shorter in the movie, somewhere between one and two months by inference.
Location Changes
A great many of the scenes were shot in different locations than they occurred in the book. For example, the confrontation about Edward being a vampire takes place in the car in the book [183][MS 199] vs. in the forest in the movie. Cars are not generally dynamic scene settings, and the actions of several scenes needed to be conflated in the movie, thus the forest (the best place to demonstrate Edward's full speed and strength) became the logical choice in the movie.
Without getting into too much neepery (too late!), the car scene's location was adequate in the book because the description of the forest might have been too distracting from the issue at hand, where in the movie, which is a highly visual form, the forest sets the mood. So, does the location add to or detract from the scene? That's the question.
Conflations
1) Two dances are conflated into one, which means that there's not the tension over the girl's choice dance and people wanting Bella to ask them out. For the prom in the movie, Eric and Mike both ask Bella out. Eric starts to ask Bella but is interrupted by Mike, and then by Bella seeing Edward sitting in lab. For Mike, he approaches Bella before the field trip, but her focus changes to Edward and she doesn't even hear Mike's question. When she turns Mike down, Edward smiles. In the book, Bella's denials are in fact the reason Edward changes his strategy from avoidance to pursuit: because, eventually, she's going to say yes, and he realizes that he wants her to say yes to him.
2) Minor characters are conflated and their roles change. Jessica, Mike, the Cullens, the rogues -- their roles stay the same, but Eric and Ben are combined, Lauren disappears entirely. Tyler's role becomes smaller. Jessica is more sympathetic in the movie than she is in the book, and especially more so in the movie than in Midnight Sun.
Favorite bits in the movie that aren't in the book:
1) When Bella goes to visit the Cullens, and they're cooking for her, the song that's playing while they're cooking is "Libiamo" (Drink!) from La Traviata. I may be one of the five people who saw the movie who got the joke.
2) My favorite scene is the several minute multi-scene sequence from her putting the pieces of what Edward is together to her confrontation, up to the scene on top of the mountain. Most of the dialogue from this scene is original to the screenplay.
3) Tree scene, starting with the "I could always make you" / "I'm not afraid of you" dialogue.
4) The way the scene ends where Bella invites Edward to the beach in the movie vs. in the book.
5) The visuals on the baseball scene.
Favorite bits in the book that aren't in the movie:
1) The over-the-top reaction of the hostess and waitress in the restaurant, especially from Edward's POV. [167-177][MS 177-193]
2) The blood-typing scene and aftermath. [95-102][MS 125-133]
3) Bella being asked out for a date three times (the third forced by Edward) and Edward's reactions. Mike: [72-73][MS 94-97] Eric: [76][MS 102-103] Tyler: [77-78][MS 102-105] Edward then approaching Bella: [81-84][MS 111-114]. In the movie, this was replaced by Mike asking Bella out to the prom, and Edward standing there, and Bella's focus shifting between the two of them, backward and forward, completely missing Mike's question the first time. Granted, this is one of my favorite bits of camera work, but it isn't the same.
4) The scene where Bella sees Carlisle's study, which becomes important for anchoring the later three books, but isn't particularly dramatic. It's the gun on the mantlepiece.
Numbers in brackets are page numbers, and I may link to Midnight Sun page numbers for Edward's (or other characters') POV, so those will be preceded by MS, e.g [MS 3-6]. You can read the incomplete draft of Midnight Sun here.
Point of View Changes
There's no universal right or wrong answer for point of view, but a book as in the main character's head as Twilight is would be difficult to film.
The book is in first person, with no scenes from any other perspective. Midnight Sun is in a limited omniscient of a sort, since Edward can pick and choose who he hears the thoughts of, except for Bella. That said, nearly all his eavesdropping involves information about Bella.
The movie, however, pretty much had to have a different POV: the prologue/frame was left in, and thus there had to be footage to go along with it. In order to strengthen the suspense, earlier scenes with the nomads were brought in, which allowed for more scenes between Bella and her father, and to tie in with the similar feel in the prologue scene. The first nomad hunting scene comes shortly after Edward first meets Bella and wants to kill her.
Aside from that, there's only a few other breaks from Bella's POV in the movie: the Cullen family reaction to Bella's arrival at their home; James's reaction to Bella and Edward leaving Charlie's house, and the scenes that follow Edward and James during the time that Edward's trying to mislead James. Each of these had some dramatic reason for occurring and made the movie stronger, but wouldn't necessarily have made the book stronger.
The Revelation
In a story where the male lead is a vampire and the female lead is not, the main problem is how and when to reveal that the character is a vampire.
In the book:
1) Jacob introduces himself then tells Jessica that the Cullens are vampires during their encounter at the La Push beach, in violation of the treaty with the Cullens. This makes Jacob the "Magical Negro" character in that he isn't a fully developed and, in the book, really exists solely to provide this information to Bella. I hardly believe that anyone would introduce themselves, even if the woman in question were a friend of the family, then spill tribal stories like that. [119-128]
2) After that, Bella does some computer research.
3) The next time she sees Edward is when he appears out of nowhere and rescues her from the attackers in Port Angeles; she's gone off in search of bookstores, but for no particular book.
4) They have dinner together, but Bella doesn't confront him, saying that she'll talk about it in the car on the way back.
5) On the way back, Bella says that she didn't come up with the theory on her own, and then tells Edward what Jacob had said. She first utters the word vampire to him on page 183. [MS 201]
At a page a minute, the reader knows that Edward's a vampire approximately an hour before the confrontation occurs.
In the movie, only one scene is changed in order, and another bit is added, but see how this flows so much better:
1) Jacob (who has already introduced himself in the beginning of the movie) talks with Bella, tells about the legend of the Quileutes being descended from wolves, and that the Cullens were from an enemy clan, but there's a treaty. He refuses to say what they are, saying "It's just a story, Bella."
2) Bella does research online and finds about a book of Quileute legends, and decides to go to Port Angeles to get the book. As in the novel, she goes with Angela and Jessica.
2) The next time she sees Edward is when he appears out of nowhere and rescues her from the attackers in Port Angeles, where she's bought a book.
3) They have dinner together, and Edward reveals that he can read minds. Except hers. I think the only reason he reveals it then is his anger at the attackers -- he's slipped, and he can't cover it the way he did when he pushed the van away from her.
4) On the way back, Bella touches his hand accidentally and realizes how cold it is.
5) They then stop at the police station, having seen her father's car and his father's car there. Turns out that a long-time friend of her father's had been murdered by an "animal" (later revealed to be a rogue vampire). Bella observes how pale the dead person's feet actually are.
6) During her research, she puts together Edward's speed (getting across the lot to save her from the van), strength (pushing away the van), never eating or drinking anything, cold skin, paleness, avoidance of sunlight and figures out what he is herself. (This is the scene that's moved and changed in meaning as a result.)
7) When she sees him at school, she heads away from school and he follows her, and she confronts him. I much prefer the interaction there: "Say it. Out loud. Say it." He is bound not to tell her, and pushing her to end the torment of what she knows seems very Edward.
In other words, she works for it; it's not handed to her, she doesn't need a magical negro, and I find the order more realistic. In the movie, the revelation process takes only a few minutes (approximately 5). Of course, the timeline of the movie is greatly condensed; it has to be.
The Bed
In the book, the fact that he doesn't sleep is revealed in the car during the conversation when the revelation occurs.
In the movie, it happens when Bella's given a house tour of the Cullen home, ending up in his room.
"No bed?" she asks.
Much more dramatic, especially since she has that tidge of disappointment.
Edward's Motivation
Edward's motivation isn't entirely clear in the Twilight book, in part because we're looking through such a close filter of Bella's point of view. In Twilight, there's one primary motivation that isn't made clear in the movie, and two others revealed in Midnight Sun.
1) He can't read her mind, so one of the means he uses is watching her sleep because she talks in her sleep. [293]
2) Two other vampires, who do still hunt humans, are visiting the Cullens (though do not hunt near them). Edward becomes more concerned for Bella's safety, [MS 147-165] Now, Edward realizes they're not really a risk, but it's the thing that pushes him over the edge, the rationalization he permits himself.
3) Most important, Alice sees two futures for Bella: Edward will kill her (or very nearly so) or she will become one of them. [MS 83-87] Until the point where he resolves to try to live between those extremes [MS 110], Edward avoids Bella. In the book, this is for a long duration (about two months), but it seems shorter in the movie, somewhere between one and two months by inference.
Location Changes
A great many of the scenes were shot in different locations than they occurred in the book. For example, the confrontation about Edward being a vampire takes place in the car in the book [183][MS 199] vs. in the forest in the movie. Cars are not generally dynamic scene settings, and the actions of several scenes needed to be conflated in the movie, thus the forest (the best place to demonstrate Edward's full speed and strength) became the logical choice in the movie.
Without getting into too much neepery (too late!), the car scene's location was adequate in the book because the description of the forest might have been too distracting from the issue at hand, where in the movie, which is a highly visual form, the forest sets the mood. So, does the location add to or detract from the scene? That's the question.
Conflations
1) Two dances are conflated into one, which means that there's not the tension over the girl's choice dance and people wanting Bella to ask them out. For the prom in the movie, Eric and Mike both ask Bella out. Eric starts to ask Bella but is interrupted by Mike, and then by Bella seeing Edward sitting in lab. For Mike, he approaches Bella before the field trip, but her focus changes to Edward and she doesn't even hear Mike's question. When she turns Mike down, Edward smiles. In the book, Bella's denials are in fact the reason Edward changes his strategy from avoidance to pursuit: because, eventually, she's going to say yes, and he realizes that he wants her to say yes to him.
2) Minor characters are conflated and their roles change. Jessica, Mike, the Cullens, the rogues -- their roles stay the same, but Eric and Ben are combined, Lauren disappears entirely. Tyler's role becomes smaller. Jessica is more sympathetic in the movie than she is in the book, and especially more so in the movie than in Midnight Sun.
Favorite bits in the movie that aren't in the book:
1) When Bella goes to visit the Cullens, and they're cooking for her, the song that's playing while they're cooking is "Libiamo" (Drink!) from La Traviata. I may be one of the five people who saw the movie who got the joke.
2) My favorite scene is the several minute multi-scene sequence from her putting the pieces of what Edward is together to her confrontation, up to the scene on top of the mountain. Most of the dialogue from this scene is original to the screenplay.
3) Tree scene, starting with the "I could always make you" / "I'm not afraid of you" dialogue.
4) The way the scene ends where Bella invites Edward to the beach in the movie vs. in the book.
5) The visuals on the baseball scene.
Favorite bits in the book that aren't in the movie:
1) The over-the-top reaction of the hostess and waitress in the restaurant, especially from Edward's POV. [167-177][MS 177-193]
2) The blood-typing scene and aftermath. [95-102][MS 125-133]
3) Bella being asked out for a date three times (the third forced by Edward) and Edward's reactions. Mike: [72-73][MS 94-97] Eric: [76][MS 102-103] Tyler: [77-78][MS 102-105] Edward then approaching Bella: [81-84][MS 111-114]. In the movie, this was replaced by Mike asking Bella out to the prom, and Edward standing there, and Bella's focus shifting between the two of them, backward and forward, completely missing Mike's question the first time. Granted, this is one of my favorite bits of camera work, but it isn't the same.
4) The scene where Bella sees Carlisle's study, which becomes important for anchoring the later three books, but isn't particularly dramatic. It's the gun on the mantlepiece.