Posted by unintendedchoice on August 22nd, 2011
Please refer to LTR for all the excuses why Moon & I didn’t write this LTT today!
Dear LTT-ers,
UC and I were emailing the other day (for those of you who don’t remember, we met at college in real life, lost track of each other when she transferred, and reconnected on LTT—and believe it or not, most of our emailing is NOT about Twilight), and she suggested I give you all my take on something Twilight- related that is a little outside-of-the-norm here on LTT:
When I read the Twilight books, I never picture Rob as Edward. In fact, book-Edward—my book-Edward, anyway—is WAY hotter than Rob.
You don't think I look like EDWARD!??
I know, how can that be, right?
Don’t hate me, but I have to admit, I don’t find Rob all that attractive. In fact, I think I am one of the few women who is Team Edward all the way, but thinks that Taylor Lautner is drool-worthy—even if he is way too young for me and I’m very happily married—and Rob Pattinson is just so-so.
I was actually surprised to find that I thought Rob was more attractive after I saw an interview of him— when he wasn’t trying to project his version of who Edward is. I thought his British accent dreamy, his self-deprecating sense of humor endearing, and thought that he would have been one of those guys I wanted to be best friends with in high school…and might have even crushed on once or twice. But he’s just not Edward Cullen.
By way of an explanation that will make sense to all of you who are already thinking I’m crazy, please realize that I read A LOT. Before my daughter was born, I easily made it through three of four books a week at times. Now I make it through only one or two, but that’s still way above the norm. And when I read, I’m usually creating a whole movie in my head.
So since I’ve envisioned this whole alternate reality in vivid detail, when books are made into movies, I go in with low expectations. The directors, actors, casting people, etc. never do things entirely the way I would have, and someone or something is almost always off for me in a way that makes me prefer my own version so much more. (No one has ever cast Mr. Wickham, Mr. Darcy, or Elizabeth Bennet to my satisfaction and don’t get me started on the ways in which the Harry Potter movies mutilated the Harry-
Voldemort face-offs in Goblet of Fire and Deathly Hallows Part 2). There are the times when something is just perfect—Blake Lively as Bridget Vreeland/America Ferrara as Carmen Lowell (Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants), Judi Dench as Lady Catherine, Rosamund Pike as Jane Bennet, Winona Ryder as Jo March with Christian Bale (swoon!) as Teddy Lawrence—but those are the exceptions for me.
He had (some of) us at Ray-Bans
When I read Twilight and it captured my obsessive tendencies in a way few series do, I knew that I would find the movies a disaster. There was just no way that I was going to find any mere human actor to measure up to the perfect vampire of Stephenie Meyer’s creation that I had brought to life in my head.
When I saw Rob (both in pictures before-hand and then in the first movie), some of my disappointment had to do with looks, but most of it was something else. Book-Edward is just a bit lighter than Rob’s depiction of Edward—yes, he’s conflicted, depressed, constantly repressing his appetites (carnal and otherwise), but he’s not so constantly brooding. He makes jokes—he laughs with Bella and Alice—he has mood swings that would make a 13-year-old girl get whiplash. And there’s just a bit of arrogance to him
that I didn’t catch in Rob’s portrayal most of the time—but the sexy type of arrogance (not the oh-my- gosh-shut-up-I-want-to-kill-you kind). And somehow, I don’t get the sense that Rob is a hidden turn-of-the-20th-century gentleman. I can picture my book Edward in coat tails, longish hair, and a white gloves (a la Leonardo DiCaprio in Titanic), but I can’t quite make that mental picture of Rob compute with sex appeal.
The main reason I’m not a Rob-hater (and I’m not, I promise), is that I don’t know who I’d cast instead. I liked Stephenie’s pick (Henry Cavill in the event you can’t remember back that far and don’t have a weird memory for minutiae like I do). Three of my favorite oh-goodness-he’s-so-hot actors are Dean Cain, a younger Christian Bale, and Tom Welling (yeah, I have a Superman fetish, let’s move on). But the first two are way too old and Tom Welling is just nothing like Edward… he’ll always be Clark Kent,
anyway. I think if you had to back me into a corner, I might go for Ian Somerhalder (I’ve never watched Vampire Diaries and am basing this on my love of him from the WB’s summer show Young Americans that almost no one has ever heard of and his days as Boone of Lost) Matt Czuchry, or Justin Hartley. But any of them would have to dye his hair a dark reddish-brown with a few blonde highlights—not that dirty blonde color they’ve dyed Rob’s hair for the movies. And I’m not sure any of the three of them would really capture the essence of the character in my head. I think my perfect vampire is just like any author’s character—an impossible, wish-fulfillment figment of imagination.
So what do you think? Am I crazy, or is your book-Edward different than Rob too? Let the debating (and hating, probably!) begin.
Love,
The Plane Friend
When The Plane Friend told me her feelings about Rob as Edward I assured her she would NOT get hate (then took it back because I’ve been hated for much, much less). But I know that while this topic is NOT allowed on LTR, many LTT readers do not have the love for Rob that some of us do! So today let’s hear from YOU! Who would YOU have liked to have seen cast as Edward?
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