On the eve of the release of the final Twilight film, just as thinking people everywhere are rejoicing at the news that we will never have to suffer through another one, a new trailer comes along to say "not so fast."
Yes, for those who had forgotten, Stephanie Meyer did in fact write something non-Twilight related: The Host (Not to be confused with the Korean monster movie). The story concerns a post-apocalyptic world where the human race has been possessed by body snatching aliens called "Souls" (gee, how long did it take you to think of that name, Stephanie?) Possessed humans are identifiable by their glowing iris's, because we all know how Stephanie Meyer loves her superhumans with weird eyes. Saoirse Ronan plays the heroine Melanie, one of the last remaining unpossessed humans, who is captured and possessed, but for some reason (if she's anything like Bella "you can't read my mind" Swan, those reasons will go unexplained) she alone is able to put up any kind of resistance.
I will admit, the premise is vaguely interesting. The basic idea is these two beings, one human the other alien, fighting each other inside the same body, and eventually finding some empathy towards one another through contact with each others memories & emotions.
Of course, being a Stephanie Meyer book there are two love interests, the twist apparently being one is in love with Melanie, while the other falls in love with "Wanderer" (the alien). This is of course downplayed in this trailer, the thinking supposedly being that Meyer's readers will show up no matter what, and making this seem as little like Twilight as possible will hopefully lure in any curious sci-fi fans.
The big tragedy here is the director of this project is Andrew Niccol, the man behind Gattaca who you'll remember me expressing a certain amount of admiration for in my review of In Time. He does have writing duties as well so maybe he was able to hammer out a decent script from Meyer's childish drivel*. But having talented directors didn't help the Twilight saga, and anyone who's seen S1m0ne knows Niccol isn't immune to failure. We'll see.
At any rate this is unlikely to be the second Twilight franchise they're doubtlessly hoping it will be. Meyer has yet to pen the promised sequel to The Host, and Taylor Lautner's failure at launching an action career indicates even the Twihards won't mindlessly follow anyone associated with Twilight wherever the go. I predict this one will quietly underperform and we'll never hear from Stephanie Meyer again...God willing.
*In the interest of fairness, I have not actually read The Host, I'm merely assuming it's childish drivel. Tried to read Twilight once, didn't make it past the first chapter before I quit in disgust.