The first full-length
trailer for the adaptation of Stephanie Meyer’s novel, The Host, has been
released. The trailer reveals more than the teaser, giving us a look at some of
the characters and some key elements in the plot. Interestingly, the trailer is
told from Melanie’s perspective whereas the novel is almost entirely told from
the perspective of Wanderer (the alien). And the trailer still leaves us mostly
guessing as to how the film will handle the heavily internally first-person
narrated novel.
In
spite of the novels weaknesses, I thoroughly enjoyed Meyer’s story (the first
published, I believe, after her Twilight series). The novel is told from the perspective of Wanderer, a
thousand-plus year-old alien whose species invades Earth and takes over the
human population. The aliens, called Souls, are inherently altruistic and abhor
violence; their preferred method of invasion is a gradual and quiet take-over
of individuals until the entire population of a planet is inhabited by Souls.
Earth is the ninth planet for Wanderer, who has been on more worlds (and thus
inhabited more species) than most Souls, who tend to settle on one of their first
several planets and live out the rest of their lives there. But Wanderer soon
discovers that humans are different than any other species she has
inhabited—most particularly in that her host (a girl named Melanie) refuses to
surrender herself to Wanderer as all her other hosts have done. As Wanderer
spends time on Earth and forms a relationship with her host, she starts to
rethink her species’ philosophy and intent for the planet.
In
addition to the twist on alien invasion stories (by telling it from the
perspective of the alien), I was particularly intrigued with the themes related
to altruism and how this story invites us to examine our own understandings of what
is in the best interest of others—and challenges us to be open to allowing
those understandings to change as we engage with and listen to the stories of
others. (You can read more about the novel and my take on it here.)
It’ll be interesting to see how this theme—which is fairly major in the novel—translates
onto the big screen.
The film is slated for release on March 29, 2013.