Twilight, Vampires on Film

The amazingly popular Twilight series has captured the hearts and minds of the theatre going public. The twilight vampires are portrayed as beautiful. In the sunshine they glisten and sparkle. In the movie, Twilight, Bella tells Edward that he is beautiful and that he sparkles like diamonds. In this movie series vampires can go out during the day if as long as it is not sunny. They are always seen on gloomy and overcast days. In other movies, like Interview with a Vampire, they come out only at night.

It seems the world is enamored lately with vampires. Everywhere you turn there is a movie, book, or magazine article about these creatures. Vampires have been romanticized in novels and portrayed as handsome, educated, and charming in movies. Movies from the past have portrayed the undead as deadly bats that could take human form. They portrayed them more as cold blooded killers than handsome lovers.

Team Edward or Team Lestat?

“Interview with a Vampire” and Twilight both portray vampires as seductive creatures. In the movie Twilight, Edward tells Bella he can never sleep and that is why there is no bed in his room. He does not sleep in a coffin or in a darkened room or basement. In Anne Rice’s Interview with a Vampire, Louis de Pointe du Lac sleeps in a coffin. Both movies do portray them as cold blooded creatures that can charm their victims by their voice and their voice.

In Twilight the main vampires consider themselves ‘vegetarian’ vampires. This is because they do not go after human blood. They only hunt and drink the blood of animals. Edward does tell Bella that while it satisfies them it never fully quenches their thirst.

The Vampire Chronicles set the stage for more and more vampire novels and movies. Everyone wants that handsome young vampire to appear in their bedroom one night to whisk them away to immortality. They see how Edward loves Bella and that their love will be eternal love. That it will last forever. This is appealing to everyone.

Both movies also portray women and girls as vampires. In Twilight, Dr. Cullen actually rescued the ones that he claims are his adoptive children. They were all in danger of dying. In the movie Interview with a Vampire, the head vampire, Lestat, drank the blood of a six year old orphan girl. Louis took her under his wing and raised her as if he was her father. Taking a child that young condemns them to live eternity as a mere child. Their minds may mature and develop but she will always appear to the world as a six year old, never to know love or marriage. This was very sad to watch. At least in the movie Twilight the vampires are all in their late teens or early twenties. The fact that they never age means they can only stay in one place for a few years before the local towns people start questioning their appearance and ask why they never seem to age. They keep all their high school graduation caps and made them into wall art as sort of a family joke. In the Vampire Chronicles the vampires do live in one place for many years and just do not associate with the local human population. They seem lonely and forlorn when compared to the Cullen family of vampires.

HBO capitalized on the mass appeal of vampires by creating the series True Blood. These vampires live amongst the humans just like in Twilight. The difference here is that there are lots of vampires and they try to live alongside the humans. They also only come out at night. If not they can burst into flames. The Vampire Bill can also charm his victims using his voice and his eyes so that his victims willingly submit to him.