Can the Twins get a Cullen to bat cleanup next year? (photo by Peter Sorel)Yep, I saw "Twilight" (and Mitch C. and Cullen N. from 1st hour) last night at the Southdale AMC Theater. I actually enjoyed it, though my expectations were fairly low. I have spent the last month or so teasing my wife for being a "Twi-mom," and more or less bagging on the swooning of Bella Swann. There were also a few occasions when I laughed out loud at the over-the-top melodrama, as when Bella's eyes went crossed when Edward was sucking her blood at the end to keep her from turning into a vampire. I know it was supposed to be dramatic, but she just looked kind of silly to me. The baseball game scene also felt like a Moutain Dew commercial on steroids. Give the storytellers credit for this, though, they followed the hero's journey quite closely. If you consider the world of the vampires to be a new threshhold that Bella crosses, then the whole story of "Twilight" offers many of the ingredients of the monomyth. For instance, her Belly of the Whale moment is when Edward makes her say "vampire" aloud. Once she acknowledges that she knows who and what he is, there is no turning back. The elixir is when Edward sucks her blood at the end. It is a magical moment that saves her life. Edward himself is a supernatural guide. When Bella survives her near-death experience, she has returned from the land of the dead and become a master of two worlds. There is also reconciliation with the father and a whole bunch of helpers in the whole Cullen family. See? It's not just a bunch of random note-taking. Hollywood really believes in this stuff.
