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Home / Bay of Plenty Times / Lifestyle

'Twi-hard' fans breaking mould

By by Kiri Gillespie
Bay of Plenty Times·
7 Nov, 2011 02:45 AM3 mins to read

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Team Edward or Team Jacob - either way fans of the Twilight series will need to get their skates on to catch the movie when it opens in Tauranga this month.

Bay City Cinemas have already sold out of tickets to their first midnight screening of Breaking Dawn, Part One, on November 17.

The Tauranga cinema complex will now be opening up more cinemas for the midnight screening to cater for the increasing demand from what has become a surprisingly older audience.

"These films - as they have gone - just get more and more popular each year, and this is part one of the last movie so they [fans] are extremely keen," manager Justin Chaney said.

Breaking Dawn is the fourth instalment of the Twilight series, adapted from the best-selling Stephanie Meyer books. The Twilight franchise has grown into a juggernaut of today's pop culture, complete with T-shirts siding with either Twilight's love-lorn vampire lead Edward or angst-ridden werewolf Jacob - who battle to win the affection of Bella (a puny human).

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Mr Chaney expected the cinemas to be "fairly busy" for the first few weeks while the big Twilight fans got in to see the movie.

"There are some pretty hard-core fans out there. They are always dressed up and get right into it, so it's a bit of fun," he said.

Popular preconceptions view Twi-hards - diehard Twilight fans - as mostly young teenage girls with a big crush on the movie's leading men.

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Not so in Tauranga.

Welcome Bay woman Kristy Smith admitted she was a major Twi-hard and "no, I'm not a teenager either".

Mrs Smith is a 32-year-old wife and mother of two boys, and she can't get enough of Edward. She said she will be going to watch Breaking Dawn as soon as she can get a ticket.

"I saw the first movie and then right when New Moon was coming out I went and got the books... I've seen all of the movies at least a dozen times each, which is completely ridiculous and embarrassing. With Eclipse I saw it three times at the theatre."

Mrs Smith said she had fallen in love with the story's concept of old-fashioned romance, albeit with a vampire/werewolf twist.

Mrs Smith and a group of friends traditionally gathered before the release of a new Twilight movie to have "Twilight parties" and watch previous movies in the series before going to see the latest.

"But I'm the biggest Twi-hard of the group," Mrs Smith said.

Tauranga woman Karolyn Timarkos has already got her ticket to the upcoming midnight session.

"I went to the last one thinking 'how embarrassing, it'll be me and a theatre full of 13-year-old girls'. How wrong."

Ms Timarkos said she was one of many women aged in their 40s who packed out the cinema.

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"I even caught up with a chick I went to school with I hadn't seen for 20-something years, who drove up from Taupo with a mate because our cinema is better than theirs."

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