The Vampire Chronicles vs Twilight
I hate Twilight. I think Stephanie Meyer’s poorly written and inane series is the worst thing to ever happen to fictional vampire culture. Possibly the entire fiction world.
Vampires that sparkle in the sun? Seriously?
And don’t even get me started on the abusive relationship between Mr. Hot Vampire Guy and his totally unremarkable leading lady.
But this isn’t a forum for me to bitch about Twilight. At least not today. Today I am comparing as impartially as possible the franchises of Twilight and Anne Rice’s older series, The Vampire Chronicles that began with its most notable title, Interview with the Vampire.
My bias is even worse here since I have reed the entire original series by Anne Rice and I absolutely adore it, at least up until the point when the author lost her mind, but again, I will do my best to remain impartial throughout.
Onto the history.
THE VAMPIRE CHRONICLES
Created by Anne Rice, while the film adaptation for Interview with the Vampire (a favorite movie of mine) didn’t come about until 1994, the book version first graced shelves in 1976. It starred the original brooding vampire, Louis de Pointe du Lac, and detailed his life from 18th century human to blood sucker as he told it to the human writer, Daniel Molloy.
Louis was the original star, but the character of the blonde, eternally laughing, much more vicious and traditional vampire, Lestat de Lioncourt, quickly took the spotlight away from Louis and was the focal point for the remaining original series, The Vampire Lestat (1985), The Queen of the Damned (1988), The Tale of the Body Thief (1992), and Memnoch the Devil (1995).
The Brat Prince, as Lestat is often called, takes point in the series as a more bloodthirsty character, not plagued with guilt like Louis, and embarks on various adventures from becoming consort to the original queen of the vampires, trading bodies with an ambitious human, and getting a tour of Heaven and Hell guided by the Devil himself.
Two films have been made, Interview in 1994 with Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise, worked on very closely with Anne Rice, and Queen of the Damned in 2002 that the author didn’t go near with a 10-foot poll.
There was even a short-lived musical simply titled “Lestat“. If anyone knows how to get their hands on the soundtrack, please let me know.
Now, I am only speaking of the original series for this debate, those first five books.
Anne Rice lost her mind after that and began The New Tales of the Vampires starting with Pandora and The Vampire Armand in 1998.
Focusing on characters that had previously been supporting cast, the later series gives some insight into those other vampires’ pasts and minds, but does not further the overall story in any positive way, especially when Anne Rice decided to turn fiction into fanfiction and combined The Vampire Chronicles with her MayFair Witches series.
I won’t be going into that.
Anne Rice and Lestat are the most quoted references when referring to beautiful brooding vampires (even though Lestat didn’t brood, Louis did) and as some fans put it, they are to blame for Twilight existing at all.
THE TWILIGHT SAGA
Twilight is a series of four vampire-themed soft-core romance novels by Stephenie Meyer. The series is Young Adult Fiction, coming mostly from the 1st person POV of a teenage girl, unlike The Vampire Chronicles’ more adult writing.
Twilight is enjoyed by fans of all ages, however, much like the Harry Potter phenomenon, regardless of the target age group.
Twilight is a more recent series as well, the first book having come out in 2005. Now, with all four books of the original series completed, they are already on the second film adaptation and preparing to finish out the entire series.
Twilight is mostly told from the POV of Bella, a plain every-girl character who moves away from the Arizona sunshine to live with her father. Adored by all for some unknown reason, even to her, and even as the new girl, Bella turns away from other boys’ affections and falls in love with the 104 year old (but eternally 17) vampire Edward.
Edward takes a cue from Louis here as the brooding vampire abstaining from drinking human blood and thinking himself a monster that Bella should stay away from. Adding werewolves, a vampire high council, and Edward’s adoptive vampire family, Bella is swept up in the mysterious world of these creatures anyway.
The book series has sold over 85 million worldwide and the second film, New Moon, that opened a couple weekends ago broke records for its opening night, beating out the last Harry Potter film and The Dark Knight (though not for the entire weekend).
Twilight still pulls in a lot of scorn from literary circles and non-fans, however, much more than ever seen for Anne Rice’s work.
With a large following at Comic Con this past year, even Kevin Smith had to step up and defend the rabid Twilight fans from scorn when the other attending geeks were getting on the (mostly) teenage girls’ cases.
It is definitely a new world for vampire fiction with Twilight, and the series has an entirely different feel from The Vampire Chronicles. Despite Edward getting his POV in there as well, among other characters, this is mostly Bella’s story, the human girl falling in love, rather than an adventure and intrigue tale from the POV of a vampire.
COMPARISON
I would like to start the comparison by explaining the basic vampire lore of each series so you understand how different but sometimes similar these series are.
Lestat would have to drain you nearly completely of blood and then feed you some of his own blood in order to turn you. With Edward, the vampire bite carries a poison that turns you if you do not die. Both processes are painful.
Lestat cannot go out in the sun or he will burn up. It becomes easier to go out as he gets older, but it would still be painful and damaging. Edward sparkles.
Lestat needs to sleep in a coffin during the day. Edward doesn’t sleep.
A stake through the heart won’t kill either, but dismember and burn Edward and it’s goodbye. Lestat could survive being burnt as long as the ashes weren’t spread around enough, though it would be a painful recovery.
Crosses have no affect on either. Both are incredibly strong, agile, and resilient, and can practically fly with how they move. Both are beautiful, though Lestat gets whiter with age and has the benefit of being a young 20 something instead of a teenager forever.
They are alluring and can affectively pull in willing victims whenever they choose, and both are strongest when feeding from human blood, though they can survive on animal blood easily enough. The hunger is almost unbearable if they do not feed, but starvation is not enough to kill them.
In truth, they have a lot in common. I’m sure Lestat would find Edward beautiful and interesting, like his Louis, and Edward would piss his pants at how powerful and vicious Lestat can be.
I doubt they could be friends, but it would be an interesting meeting.
The real comparisons?
Interview with the Vampire vs Twilight:
As films, Twilight stands no chance comparing cast—I mean, come on, this was Tom Cruise’s best role—but it is difficult to really compare when Interview was rated R, and for good reason, while Twilight is for a younger crowd. Interview was darker, more alluring and sexual, despite Twilight being a supposed romance. The vampire affects might be better, but Twilight has over a decade of advancements over Interview, and even in 1994 that ghostly skin and the glowing eyes were thrilling. Interview wins for presentation and being more engaging throughout.
Twilight gets points for werewolves though. There are none in Anne Rice’s world.
Twilight loses points for sparkling.
I would like to compare Bella to someone, but there really isn’t a parallel character in the original Vampire Chronicles series. Maybe Dora from Memnoch the Devil, since she is a human that Lestat gets somewhat involved with, but Lestat is not the romantic type. He seeks companionship from time to time, and loves many things, but nothing like how Bella and Edward are in love.
I’ll give points to Twilight for at least having a character for teenage girls to relate to. I’d bring up Claudia on the Chronicles side, having been played by a very young Kirsten Dunst, after all, but she was a child, and more so the vicious killer along with the other vampires.
But do I really want to give points for the existence of a Mary Sue in regular fiction?
Definition: Mary Sue (or simply Sue) is a usually derogatory expression for a fictional character who is an idealized stand-in for the author and/or reader.
Both of these franchises resort to fanfiction, to be fair. Meyer went there right away, basically writing Bella as her in a vampire world she can fantasize herself a part of. At least Anne Rice wrote something good before she started writing crossovers of her work and went crazy.
CONCLUSION
Well, we’re dealing with two insane authors with two well-known series about vampires. They have similarities and some vast differences.
Lestat is Edward’s grandfather, if you will, the precursor to it all (or maybe Louis is if we’re sticking with the brooding bits) but Twilight is the fan phenomenon of today, with the whole series being made into movies instead of just one good adaptation and one flop. Anne Rice set the standard. Twlight is the fad that just won’t go away.
I hate it. Lestat is cooler in every way. Anne Rice’s books are supremely well written, blowing Meyer right out of the water, and still relatable for youth.
I was 12 when I started reading them, though I admit I am a strange case. I still stand by my bias, however. Allow me to leave you with the final clip from the Interview with the Vampire movie to truly show why Lestat is superior.
Notice how he doesn’t freaking sparkle.
~G³
Last of the versus series is next week, the big one, “Marvel vs DC”. There may be blood.
Thanks for tuning in.
Images taken from:
http://whi.s3.leg.entries.lg1×8.simplecdn.net/20081021071303.jpg
http://www.sfgate.com/c/pictures/2006/01/10/dd_lestat13db.jpg
http://blogs.abc.net.au/articulate/images/2008/12/18/cruise_lestat_2.jpg
http://media.filmschoolrejects.com/images/twilight-cast.jpg
http://gryphon08.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/the-twilight-saga.jpg
http://www.yeahdave.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/vampire.jpg
http://www.stuffwelike.com/stuffwelike/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/vampires_4.jpg
http://www.cantnotshop.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/edward-sparkles.jpg
http://www.hyperborea.org/flash/bigimages/flash-vs-quicksilver.jpg
I can’t agree with you more. I would enjoy ranting about my distaste for Twilight, but then I would have to make my own blog and be done some time in 2046. Instead I leave this for those of you who haven’t seen it:
Game Trailers – E3 2010 – Comedy
…..that didn’t work so here:
http://g4tv.com/videos/41784/Kevin-Pereira–Olivia-Munns-Twilight-Spoof/
@Janskoller: Yes! Great spoof, that, I love G4.
@Janskoller: We really could fill libraries with the amount of ranting hatred we could let loose if allowed.
You know, this reminds me of something funny I saw on the internet once. It was a Venn Diagram (you know, those graphs that have that have two circles overlapping to show the similarities) and one of the circles was large and said “All the world’s great literature” and the other was small and said “Sparkly vampires.” Guess where they overlapped. (they didn’t.)
Vampires hold a special place in the hearts of many people, most of them nerds. (If I were good ol’ Yahtzee Croshaw, I would say, “Vampires join Ninjas, Pirates, and Zombies in the special group of things nerds like and need to shut the fuck up about.”) They are a common element in horror fiction, and that really is their rightful place because of what they represent. In vampires, people find a way to defeat mankind’s oldest fear: death, and in such a way that allows them to be young and powerful forever. But this, as with everything, comes with a price. A vampire can only sustain themselves by feeding on the blood of the race it used to be in life, in cannabalism, another one of humanities nightmares. In order to live forever, we have to become part of the dark, become the thing that goes bump in the night, just one more thing in the dark that symbolizes the end of everything, unavoidable death. That’s why vampires are (or at least were) such common, relevant horror staples: not only do they represent unknown horrible predators that most humans can’t stop, they also represent the fear of assimilation, of loss of control, that if we’re caught, we will not die, but lose control of ourselves, become not ourselves, become like the monsters that attacked and killed us. Some people like Joss Whedon in his landmarked series Buffy the Vampire Slayer portray this assimilation as immediate, that when a person is caught by a vampire and turned, when they rise again there are no more feelings to the person. They knew what the person knew, and knew that they should be feeling certain ways about things on some level, but they no longer have the capacity of feeling or empathy, a moral autism as it were. This seems like cheating to me. I find a better model in the themes of the vampire in the great late Masquerade books from the now defunct Old world of Darkness (I just can’t get into the new stuff. Yes, it’s better from a Gameplay perspective, everything fits together nicer, and I like what they’ve done with the other races, funnily enough, but vampires are just so dry in that settin. So no thanks.). In that setting, the person is still the person, with all the emotions and stuff he started with, but as a vampire. Here the loss of control is a slow, arduous process; the vampire tries to be himself, tries to not become like the old things which have been around for thousands of years, but the world changes. Everything the person knew and loved in life drops away, the world becomes unrecognizable, and people become the same no matter how you look at it. Plus, the older you get and the more horrible things you’re forced to do, you lock yourself away out of fear of death. Thats the wonderful thing about V:tM: you can be an all powerful badass, and there are still things in the night that can destroy you, you don’t know if the world will end tomorrow, and you don’t know what comes after death. See that’s the heart of horror: not blood or monsters, or slashers or magic or hollywood glitz, but just the three little words of “I don’t Know.”
And then the young adult fiction came and ruined all that. All the stuff to do with vampires in the young adult section is lacking, shall we say. They either provide hope to the story by offering a way to reverse vampirism or reincarnate, or become continuity messes dealing with time and space and all manner of things including different breeds of vampires, like Cirque du Freak, or you have things like Twilight, in which only the glamouros side of vampires is presented. Seriously, do vampires have any of the traditional flaws? I don’t think they do. They’re just pretty sparkly people who apparently don’t have anything better to do thanj goi to hiugh school and look at people with limpid eyes. Oh, and going into their love interests rooms at night and watching them for hours on end. I am so amused when the mothers of the fans congregate and say how the books are so lovely and the relationship so good because there is no sex involved. As if that was all a relationship needed to be good. but from what I have seen or heard, this relationship is pretty much a stream of melodrama dealing with sexy biting (“No! I cannot bite you and confine you to this existence! I’d rather die!” “Bite me, my love! I want you to bite me! I should rather die than be parted from you!”) peppered with mormonism, a hint of pedophilia at the end, and sparkies. It isn’t horror, it isn’t even Young Adult fiction, it’s melodrama porn. Worse it’s melodrama porn dealing with obsession and posessiveness on both parties, ehich is the opposite of wholesom. Hell it’s the opposite of love! I read some chapters of Vampire Knight, which is pretty much the Japanese Twilight, and on the whole, I think I liked that better.
So yes, in conclusion, Fuck Twilight. We should all go see good vampire fiction, like Let the Right One In.
@Sean R.: I couldn’t have said it better. Let the Right One In gave me chills in realizing that that adorable boy was doomed to the same existence as the man who had been with the vampire girl before, and yet he would be content with that to just be with her until he realized all he had really lost later in life.
I liked overall Cirque du Freak, however, though I was disappointed in the separate vampire ‘races’.
Masquerade will always have a special place in my heart, ever since the TV series Kindred, and I wish we actually would have gotten to our campaign that we had envisioned once in college that never took off. I miss what vampires used to be in horror culture, what Bela Lugosi to Gary Oldman could present, and what Anne Rice still maintained even if there was the classically brooding vampire of Louis to go with the more horrific Lestat. That gave it dimension though, and Lestat is not without emotion entirely of course. Twilight offers nothing like that, and the relationship is borderline abusive in how it is indeed obsessive and controlling on both parts. I long for when the fad is over and we can return to something good.
Mary Jane can suck it. While I didn’t get into Interview and the Anne Rice novels nearly as much as you did, I will – without qualm – concede that she has superior writing (at least until she turned into a raging psychotic bitch). And though I will watch the remaining two Twilight movies – if only for closure and to see how they work out some of the more interesting plot holes and imaginings – I will forever be scarred by the Call of the Cougars… you know what I mean.
@Megali: Call of the Cougars, Ha! Yeah, a little too disturbing for me, though I certainly didn’t think the first movie was at all bad within itself. Still, I’m happy to keep my distance to the ever-increasing crazy.