Neil Jordan’s Byzantium leading ladies Saoirse Ronan and Gemma Arterton are 200 year old vampires. Just when you think you’ve put the lid back on the coffin and we are on the cusp of a new breaking dawn here we again. Yet another vampire flick. Is it good timing? Bad timing? Will this movie slip through the spaces in a set of immortal fangs since fanger fodder and vampires are played out? It was a good run, but is enough enough already?
Maybe studios had this vampire overload situation in mind when Gemma Arterton and Saoirse Ronan were cast in lead roles for Byzantium. Their names alone are enough to get me to go out and see any movie, toss in my avid curiosity and my vampire fetish and there I am with popcorn in a theater maybe even sitting next to you. Arterton and Ronan are two of my favorite female actors and both have been very busy of late. Throw in the fact that Interview with the Vampire peeps are responsible for bringing you Byzantium, and that the eclectic Neil Jordan (Ondine, The Borgias) sits at the directing helm of this flick and what can possibly go wrong?
The million dollar question remains: Will Byzantium’s Gemma Arterton and Saoirse Ronan motivate you to see vampire red one more time? Is their star power strong enough? Or do you feel like the Twilight franchise — whether you be TwiHard or TwiHellNo! — beat the proverbial horse quite dead?
Do you long for the days where vampires stayed hidden, concealing their true selves and their undying thirst for human blood, and all the while looking stylish in their immortality and staying forever young? Or does the thought of being sixteen forever send you diving for that legendary coffin like a classic fanger (pardon the True Blood reference but I can only say vampire so many times and ‘immortal one’ just sounds so pretentious) desperate to escape the sunlight?
So are you going to see Byzantium? Only you, me and the popcorn need know, unless of course you want to share your opinions of the film on The Scribe’s Desk.
Byzantium hits theaters tomorrow.
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