The below three comments happened to be the first customer reviews I found on iTunes regarding the 2008 release of the movie Twilight. What I find interesting is that if these were reviews for a restaurant and we read them we would probably never consider going to eat there. But as we all know unless we have been sleeping under a rock the second movie of the twilight franchise “New Moon” has just reached all-time box office record history. A movie costing a mere $50 million to produce took in $200 million on its opening night.

Twilight…hmm…
So, I was watching this movie with my friends at a theater, and having been previously reading the books I was expecting a lot from the movie. The sad truth is that, the movie wasn’t that great. In fact, it was horrible. I have to give credit to whoever picked the filming location because the scenery is/was beautiful. When it came to the acting, I wasn’t drawn in at all; and there was no chemistry between the actors. (Robert Pattison is not that hot by the way, he’s okay). The graphics and visual effects were bad, directing was bad too (thank goodness they’re hiring a new director for the next movie.) My point is, this movie could have been better, and the acting could have been better as well. The only reason why I think this movie is so popular because of those Twihards, it wasn’t that great, though the books are a must read.

In the middle
I’ve heard that there is no in-between with regards to this movie. Girls are either wallpapering photos of Robert Pattison to the bedroom walls or viciously attacking the actors on a “Twilighters” website. Today, I speak for those of us smack in the middle of those two extremes. Was Twilight so terrible that I sent hate mail to the director Um no. What is so good that I saw the movie six times in two days and vowed to marry Robert Pattison or no other? Definitely not. So what was it? A movie targeted at teenage girls with the intention of making money sorry.

Yes, I might be biased and was never a fan of the books or the attitude of if I can’t be with him then what is the point of living. Last time I checked, that was called separation anxiety, not true love. Anyway, I digress. The movie is a movie, stick to books if you can’t stand to have your vision shattered. Rent it, and then buy something worthy of debate.

Terrible by all standards
It’s not enough to get actors who look like the characters from the book, they have to know how to act to. I don’t know what Catherine Hardwickle was thinking but she can do wayyy better than this. The story fell flat, rushed. The acting was terrible my God I didn’t know KristenStewart could sink so low in acting standards and the camera work was terrible. Anyone who said this was way better than Harry Potter in B.O. terms are really really really dumb and immature. The screenplay needed way more work because the relationship between these two characters was really bad. Chemistry? What chemistry? Sorry Twilight fans… this movie is an epic fail in all standards.

How Come?

So how can something that had some of the worst movie ratings and customer reviews find its way into top twitter trending topic for the last two weeks and have a picture or mention of some kind in everybody’s Facebook Stream.

I even took the liberty to ask my teenage daughter and some of her friends what they thought about the original movie, and they confirmed 3 things.
1. They thought the original movie was bad
2. They most definitely would be going to see “New Moon”
3. That the promise of seeing Taylor Lautner with his shirt off was good enough

So here I sit wondering as a culture what can we learn from this, if anything? Is there some insight we can gleam.

First sex still sells and we should all go and find a hunk of a guy to promote our product, but if that fails we may have to look a little deeper.

Perhaps next one of the things that we can say is if it didn’t go quite right the first time we certainly have the opportunity to do it again and come at it with new vision and new expectations. I am not saying that the first movie was a complete and utter disaster although some of the reviews I read might affirm that. I’m just saying that a foundation was built for something major to grow from. And I think this is an important lesson in life that we should never forget. An experience good or bad should always be a learning experience.

Also I think what the twilight franchise confirms is the social media has incredible female demographic, I know this movie skews into the lower age bracket, but stats are stating

Fastest Growing Demographic on Facebook: Women Over 55
In the World of Social Media, Women Rule
This is awesome if you are using social media to promote a product or service, as you could not ask for a better-narrowed audience.

Movies are quite culturally different than a lot of other things. Like I mentioned at the beginig if you are a resturant, or a business or even your own reputation a few bad reviews and you can be done for if you are not aware of what is going on .
But with movies we have the ability to throw a new director or producer at it, and it seems you can turn the whole perception around, the new “Star Trek” is a fine example of this. However If you changed the writer of the books and suddenly got rid of Stephenie Meyer it would be most interesting to see what happened then.
We often see a new CEO arrive in a company or a new Chef at a our favourite restaurant, and perhaps as a share holder we hope that things are going to get better, or hopefully not effect the way things tasted, but we still wait very tentatively and do not accept change that well

So do you accept change, do you give something a second try, do you read reviews and take them as gold or do you make up your own mind and spread the word?