Is The Twilight Saga The First — or The Last — of The Anti-Hero Vampire Movies? Not Even Close.
The head vampire of Twilight Edward Cullen is different, my friend’s teenage daughter Tia informed me. He’s a sympathetic vampire and most other vampires are evil! And Edward is a young vampire — and all other vampires were “old guys.” At least, these are the beliefs of Tia and her Twilight fan friends. When I pointed to the TV series Vampire Diaries, she claimed that “everybody knows” the TV show ripped off the youthful vampire idea from Twilight.
I had good and bad news for Tia. And if you agree with her, I have good and bad news for you now.
Before the age of paranormal anti-heroes in the Twilight book series by Stephenie Meyer, there were other warm-and-cuddly vampires (“warm and cuddly” in the most abstract sense in Edward’s case). A sympathetic neck-biter is hardly a new phenomenon, no matter what the Twilight saga fan legions may think. Good fiction has always breathed some sympathy into character depictions, no matter how awful the villain. But before chief vampire of Twilight Edward Cullen came to be, there was the Inverness-caped crusader Barnabas Collins who ruled the airwaves on the old TV soap opera Dark Shadows. Barnabas began on the series as the villain but soon evolved into the hero. He was every bit as “sympathetic” as Edward.
Since it seems one brand of immortal arises only to resurrect older ones, the Twilight Eclipse movie arrives as a big-screen adaptation of Dark Shadows (Barnabas Collins being portrayed by childhood DS fan Johnny Depp) is in pre-production. But before the fans fear the Twilight saga, Twilight, New Moon and Eclipse may be eclipsed by the old guard, they may want to consider the possible reason their moms amiably tolerate their fannish fixation. Just as there was Vampire Barnabas before Twilight Edward, there was the troubled young werewolf Quentin Collins before Twilight Jacob Black.
The new talk around the trades is that the sympathetic vampire is on its last legs as a theme. This is, of course, nonsense. The success of Twilight only underscores the strength of the concept. Anti-heroes have been among the favorite characters of drama since the very first stories were told. Vampires are a favorite ancient fable. It’s also important to point out that neither does the evil vampire archetype (Nosferatu, Dracula, et al) show any signs of going away.
Now, here’s the really bad news. I must inform the Twilight true believers that one nice day in 1990, I was chatting on the phone with my friend Lisa Smith when she told me about her new book series called “The Vampire Diaries.” We were discussing the myriad theories about vampires and the accompanying myths. In truth, the Vampire Diaries saga existed long before Edward Cullen was more than a sparkly vampiric gleam in Stephenie Meyer’s creative eye. In fact, Vampire Diaries has a good fifteen years on Twilight. No doubt the success of Twilight helped bring about the Vampire Diaries series, but I do know the book series was optioned a long time ago.
The good news, oh young victims of Twilight Moon Madness, the sympathetic vampire theme isn’t going anywhere. It has strong enough legs to carry the twinkling vampires through many more happy permutations.
Written by melodyclark
Professional writer of non-fiction, fiction, articles.
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