When Joel Schumacher took over directing The Lost Boys, he made some big changes to the initial idea including making the vampires older, making them sexier, and, by extension, making our heteronormative, boring suburban family protagonists the “others.”
One thing you overlook in your discussion of the protagonists’ family is that they aren’t quite the Reaganite ideal: they have a single-mother (and I invite you to look up polls on the voting patterns of divorced vs married women). They aren’t made a “whole nuclear family” by the end (the presence of grandpa would actually make them an extended rather than nuclear family at any rate), because not only is she still single but the seemingly normal guy interested in her turns out to be the evil leader of the vampires, who our heroes destroy.
Rather than Lost Boys, I think Twilight owes more to Near Dark. There’s a more feminine sensibility to that and investment in the relationship between the vampire girl & guy. There’s also a lot less Goonies to it.
I think grandpa’s line at the end has to be read as a joke (not exactly that the character is joking but that it’s in the film as a joke). Up until that point the Frog brothers seem to be oddball weirdos for being the only non-vampires to believe there are vampires around. It really doesn’t make sense that grandpa wouldn’t have warned his family about the vampires in town. As TV Tropes would put it, we have to accept this nonsensical reveal due to the Rule of Funny.
Yeah, I had totally forgotten about the suburban nuclear family element. I was thinking about it while watching it – especially because Terry mentioned it during our conversation – but then it just slipped my mind while taking notes and recording.
One thing you overlook in your discussion of the protagonists’ family is that they aren’t quite the Reaganite ideal: they have a single-mother (and I invite you to look up polls on the voting patterns of divorced vs married women). They aren’t made a “whole nuclear family” by the end (the presence of grandpa would actually make them an extended rather than nuclear family at any rate), because not only is she still single but the seemingly normal guy interested in her turns out to be the evil leader of the vampires, who our heroes destroy.
Rather than Lost Boys, I think Twilight owes more to Near Dark. There’s a more feminine sensibility to that and investment in the relationship between the vampire girl & guy. There’s also a lot less Goonies to it.
I think grandpa’s line at the end has to be read as a joke (not exactly that the character is joking but that it’s in the film as a joke). Up until that point the Frog brothers seem to be oddball weirdos for being the only non-vampires to believe there are vampires around. It really doesn’t make sense that grandpa wouldn’t have warned his family about the vampires in town. As TV Tropes would put it, we have to accept this nonsensical reveal due to the Rule of Funny.
Yeah, I had totally forgotten about the suburban nuclear family element. I was thinking about it while watching it – especially because Terry mentioned it during our conversation – but then it just slipped my mind while taking notes and recording.