Stephenie Meyer vs. Anne Rice? Queen of the Damned from book to movie compared to the book to movie adaptation of Interview with the Vampire?
Some of these topics are perhaps old news, but since they still infuriate me, I imagine they still mean something to a lot of you as well. I have always loved to read vampire novels, and have even begun to write a few of my own at different times in my life. So I definitely feel strongly about this immortal creatures.
Now, I do believe in an author’s creative license. I never judged Stephenie Meyer by her choice to approach her vampires differently. If they sparkle instead of burn in the sunlight, that’s her artistic license. I personally enjoyed the idea of trying to look at a new reason for vampires to want to stay out of the sunlight.
What I think is that people sometimes focus on the wrong reasons for why Stephanie Meyer should not be held in such high esteem. My problems are with her writing. I made it through the first three books of her Twilight series without truly regretting my decision to read them. I was intrigued by her character’s relationships, although I knew from the first page of her first book that her writing itself was certainly not among the best I had read. At times, her writing is amateurish and is often repetitive. And in her fourth book, her writing was destroyed for me entirely. Everything interesting from her first three books was ruined by the fourth. It was too perfect, too unrealistic – every single thing worked out perfectly in a “happy ending”. A happy ending in general is fine, but she ruined each conflict by making everything work out without the slightest bit of trouble. And besides that, almost every character of the first three books behaved out of character in the fourth book. Jacob was the only character who stayed constant, and that was only because he wasn’t central to most of the story in that book.
Now, how anyone can even try to compare Stephenie Meyer to Anne Rice is beyond me. I think that Rice surpasses her in every way. The best thing that Stephanie Meyer had going for her in her books was her characters and their relationship with each other, but even that comes nowhere near the depth of Anne Rice’s characters. People haven’t stopped talking about Lestat since first reading Interview with the Vampire, and I don’t think they will any time soon. I don’t think that Stephanie Meyer should even be mentioned in comparison to Anne Rice. The latter is so far out of her league, it is unbelievable. If you really want to cling to the naive stories and flimsy characters of Meyer’s books, I certainly won’t stop you, but don’t think for a second that her writing is anywhere near the depth, intrigue, and gorgeous writing of Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles.
Finally, one of my other pet peeves is the Queen of the Damned movie. It pains me every time that someone tells me how much they love this movie, or love Stuart Townsend as Lestat. And I’ll make this clear – I don’t dislike Stuart Townsend as an actor, but I think that his portrayal of Lestat is completely off the mark (whether that is his fault, the director’s, or both). I know some people have said they don’t like Tom Cruise as Lestat in the Interview with the Vampire movie. After reading the book, I’ll admit Tom Cruise was not my own picture of Lestat either. But, I thought that he pulled out many of the characteristics that truly represent Lestat to me. And of course, that movie in general followed the story of the book much more closely than Queen of the Damned did.
In the Queen of the Damned, the only positive thing I can say is that Ailiyah acted quite beautifully. She was the only part of that movie that seemed to fit anywhere into Anne Rice’s descriptions within her book. So many other parts of the movie just had me shouting at my TV screen. Vampires were flying around without abandon, one of the most crucial characters was cut out entirely, the entire ending was wrong, and Stuart Townsend was so far off from Lestat that it horrified me every second I watched him. One of my biggest pet peeves? They made Lestat a brunette! How difficult would it have been to give Townsend a wig or dye his hair? It may not seem important, but go back and read any of the books Lestat is in. Almost every description of him mentions his blonde hair – it was his most important physical characteristic. And even ignoring the physical side of things, suddenly instead of Lestat’s charm, wit, mystery, bravery, and darkness…we had some ridiculous rocker wanna-be with very few interesting characteristics. How is it that one of the best written characters I’ve ever read could be represented so terribly?
Anyway, that is my rant for today. Feel free to comment and tell me your own opinions on Anne Rice, Stephenie Meyer, and the book to movie problems, or anything else about this topic!
