Since the Twilight Saga said good-bye in November 2012, all the crazy die hard Twilight fans have eagerly anticipated what Meyers Stephenie Meyer would do next.  As a break from vampires and werewolves in between Eclipse and the final installment Breaking Dawn, Stephenie Meyer wrote a futuristic science-fiction novel called The Host back in 2008.  While she is now writing the sequel to this novel, The Host will hit theaters Friday, March 29.  Because of the success of the Twilight Saga — both in print and in film — Studio executives hope the die-hard Twilight fans will flock to the theaters to see Meyer’s first non-Twilight movie adaptation.

The Host is set in the future when humanity is all but extinct.  Earth has been invaded by parasitic, silver eyed aliens called souls who take over human bodies, but there are littlepockets of human resistance scattered all over the planet.  One soul named Wanderer is inserted into a teenage girl named Melanie. Souls are supposed to erase their Human occupants’ minds when they are placed inside them; however, the resistant Melanie refuses to be erased and stays in Wanderer’s head.  Throughout the novel, this internal battle between Melanie and Wanderer led to some unique narrative conflicts throughout the book.

For instance, Wanderer wants to use Melanie to find out where the human resistance is — but Melanie obviously resists.  While the early sections of the novel deal with the internal conflict between Melanie and Wanderer, they do eventually learn to cooperate with each other — an unlikely relationship between different species, similar to the vampire and human or werewolf and human relationships that fueled the Twilight series.

Melanie and Wanderer soon work together to find out the location of the two people Melanie loves the most: her true love Jared and her little brother Jamie.  While Wanderer (soon nicknamed Wanda) initially wants to eradicate the humans, Melanie convinces her to appreciate this other species.

Wanderer, soon nicknamed Wanda, find the humans who are hiding in the caves of New Mexico, but the humans soon want to execute Wanda because even Jared — Melanie’s boyfriend — cannot recognize that Melanie still exists within the Wanderer.

In addition to the conflict of bodysnatcher versus human, fans always know to expect romance in Stephenie Meyer books-turned-movies.  The love triangle of the Twilight Saga (Bella and Jacob or Edward) is expanded to be a love square between Melanie, Wanderer, Jared, and Ian (another human refugee).  Strangely though, while there are two boys, the one girl in this situation is controlled by two minds: one human and one alien.

The Host, has a star studded cast with the likes of  Oscar Nominee for best supporting Actress, Saoirse Ronan (Wanda/ Melanie), Oscar winner for Best Actor, William Hurt (Melanie’s Uncle Jeb), Max Irons (Jared), and Jake Abel (Ian).  The director and screenwriter, Andrew Niccol also directed the classic science fiction movie Gattaca.  Because of the importance of the internal conflict between Wanda and Melanie, Niccol had to include much of Meyer’s narration into voiceovers.  However, with Saoirse Ronan doing the voiceovers for both characters, the success of this film will largely depend on the effective adaptation of this internal conflict through Ronan’s performance.

Like West Side Story, Romeo and Juliet, Meyer knows how to nothing enhances a romance more than a conflict of two groups pitted against each other in conflict.  Whether this conflict is Capulets and Montagues, werewolves and humans, or bodysnatchers and hosts, the hatred between these groups elevates an everyday relationship into one of epic proportion.  However, unlike the more conventional predecessors about star-crossed lovers, Niccols hopes that an audience will identify with — or at least be entertained by — the unconventional love square of girl/bodysnatcher falls in love with two separate boys.  If audiences can stomach loving a werewolf or a vampire, why not add a bodysnatcher?