By establishing a loyal following of readers and by providing an acumen for discerning writing , the critic can both alter the perceptions of readers before they even read the text and determine its reception. Not only does the production and everyone involved need to worry about presenting the writer's vision, ensuring the story has value, and presenting the material in a logical way, but they also need to keep the critics in mind. Can the text make money? How can we attract audiences? How can we please the critics,aka audience, who comes to the text with predetermined expectations in mind.

With this in mind, I wanted to address the latest book-to-movie craze, Twilight. Nobody can deny its immense popularity among all age groups, and its presence in mainstream media. It's on every talk show, every newscast, it's even a Burger King commercial. The hype is astounding, especially to me, since I found nothing particularly striking in the book or movie. I found the writing to be simplistic, little to no character development, and the plot sort of glossed along without any believable rising or falling action. It seemed to rely on the themes/concept  rather than the actual written story, first love, girl falling in love with the outsider, etc. I thought ok, well books are different than the movie versions, I'll give the movie a try. Intensely disappointing on all fronts as well. Yet despite my minority opinion, the newest movie broke box office records, the actors are the most searched on the StarMeter on IMDB (1.Taylor Lautner, 2.Robert Pattison, 3.Kristen Stewart), endless talk shows are devoted to discussing it, and it's on every Entertainment News venue. But when people starting likening it to "the new Harry Potter", that's where I began to get irritated.

I've been a devoted Harry Potter fanatic since the books came out, but stepping back from that I'll attempt to compare the two series on a narrative, stylistic level. They obviously share similarities; the main character deals with supernatural elements/people, the main character is an outsider in the world they circle they run with (the books were both written by women who, before then, readers weren't familiar with), obvious complications arise from the distinction between the two "worlds" the main characters are torn between, and there's varying distinctions of "good" supernatural and "bad" supernatural elemtns (both authors addressed this: TW= good vampires versus evil, human-preying ones. HP= Dark Magic vs good magic). They both have worldwide, multi billion dollar franchises and products. Other than that, I find HP to be much more developed. Whereas Bella is dealing with the supernatural oddities in her own world, HP takes place in an entirely different magical world parallel to ours. Harry can attempt to control the outcome of events through magic and knowledge, Bella is somewhat of a bystander as drama unfolds around her. TW relies on the visuals of the story, and star power, to attract audiences (Taylor Lautner had to put on an astonishing 30 pounds of muscle for New Moon), HP relies on the story.  And I find it interesting Robert Pattison was Cedric Diggory in "Harry Potter" before he was Edward in "Twilight".

In the movie, the scene where Harry brings Cedric's body back from the graveyard (where Voldemort has murdered Cedirc) to the stadium, and Cedric's father wails in agony, was particularly gut wrenching and entirely believable. I didn't feel any such emotional reaction to anything in Twilight.

I will give Stephanie Meyer credit for envisioning a different way to view vampires as being almost vegetarians that can go out in cloudy weather, however I have to give Rowling credit for envisioning an entire WORLD of magical difference. TW seems to rely on theme of young love to carry through the whole series and fuel the narration, HP seems to rely on the theme of discovery to fuel the narration, which allows for more expansion.

Overall, here's my personal final verdict:

But I welcome your opinions. What do y'all think, HP or TW?