Twilight Mania

For those of you who are not Twilight fans (or have a life), there is a new Twilight movie, Breaking Dawn - Part 1, that premieres next week.  Utah takes the Twilight fandom to stratospheric level of crazy.

For the non-fans, Twilight is a series of books and subsequent movies based upon the books.  They are in the young adult fiction category and are horror/romance novels (heavy on the romance, light on the horror).  The author is Stephanie Meyer, a Mormon who attended BYU.  These books have made her a legend in Utah. The sales figures for the books and movies in Utah are so high that the production company does a few special things for the Utah fans that are normally reserved only for NYC and LA.

The first item is a display of costumes from the movie's wedding scene. The only U.S. cities with such a display are NYC, LA and Sandy, UT. It is located at the Megaplex 17 - Jordan Commons.  The "Exclusive Movie Display" includes the dresses, tuxedos, shoes and jewelry of the following characters: Rosalie Hale, Alice Cullen, Jasper Hale and Emmett Cullen.  There is also framed copy of the wedding invitation.  The display is behind bulletproof/shatterproof glass to protect it from theft. The aspect I found interesting is the size of the costumes.  The dresses are size 0, thus displayed on a little girl's mannequin.  The tuxedos are displayed on boy's size 10 mannequins, which shows you how small these actors are and the creative camera angles necessary to make them appear larger.

On premiere night (Friday, 11/18/2011 at 00:01), there will be a "VIP Party" at the Megaplex 17 - Jordan Commons.  There will be goodie bags similar to those handed out at the world movie premiere on Monday at the Nokia Theatre LA.  However, the contents are from local businesses and there may or may not be some of the actors in attendance. If there are actors from the movie, it will most likely be secondary characters but I could be wrong.  Musicians who have music on the soundtrack will be performing as well. I have no idea which musicians.

Businesses all through the state have purchased entire showings of the movie on premiere night.  They give the tickets to customers and employees as well as friends and relatives.  Only one theater in the area had tickets left this morning and I am sure they are gone now.

I do not really understand the craziness surrounding the Twilight phenomenon since I am not a fan.  Sparkly, angsty vampires and romance novel plots are not really appealing to me. I prefer the Southern Vampire Series universe (Sookie Stackhouse) of author Charlaine Harris.  However, this movie is Breaking Dawn - Part 1 so I am assuming that the craziness will return with Breaking Dawn - Part 2.