Twilight (2008)

So, I went and saw it JUST so I could review and explain my opinion of this genre.

I did not, and have no plans to read the series of books partly because I am not a teenage girl, and these books were written with that target audience in mind. So, let’s begin with the movie itself. My friend and I walked into the theatre and as I bought my ticket for Twilight. The guy at the booth reminded me that Quantum of Solace was also playing there, so if I wanted to change my mind I still could… if perhaps there was still hope for me. I thanked him for his kind thoughts and attempt to save my soul… or at least my masculinity. (oh, wait.)

We got into the theatre about a half hour early since the mall was closing and sat through six slides of Hollywood trivia and quotes that replayed at least twenty times. Then I watched the trailers with the vain hope that they would show a trailer for an upcoming movie that I really wanted to see. Fifteen minutes later I was disappointed. No Watchmen. No Star Trek. In retrospect I’m not sure why I expected to see those trailers since I was in effect waiting to see a movie that was written for the same audience that made Titanic the highest grossing movie of all time for a while.

Twilight itself… judging it on its own merits as a stand along feature, it wasn’t a bad movie. I found the concept of “vegetarian vampires” (they only drank the blood of animals) to be a kinda contrived reason as to why this vampire was able to go to a high school in Forks, Washington along with the rest of his “family”. But like Louis from Interview with the Vampire, or Angel from Buffyverse and Constantine from Robin McKinley’s Sunshine fame before him, Edward (played by Robert Pattinson) seems to fall firmly into the strong, silent, brooding, pretentious, conflicted with his own humanity and completely self-involved vampire stereotype that has so many teenage girls (and those that are still stuck in that mentality) pining away for that strong, silent, brooding, pretentious, conflicted with his own humanity and completely self-involved vampire. I think modern fiction is now over-populated with these guys. Whatever happened to the proper vampire? Vlad Tepes, Count Orlock, or even Deacon Frost who put it so eloquently in the first Blade movie: “[Humans are] cattle; pieces of meat. What difference does it make how their world ends? Plague… war… famine. Morality doesn’t even enter into it. We’re just a function of natural selection, man. The new race.” See, it’s gotten to the point where the ‘nice vampires’ now out populate traditional vampires in fiction. And the Louis’, the Angels, the Constantines and the Edwards all fit neatly into a nice cookie-cutter mold. Twilight could just have easily been titled: “Angel: The High School Years” had it been written with Whedon‘s particular gift for dialogue and then either Bella or Edward would likely die given Whedon’s writing style.

This brings me to an ongoing debate I’ve been having with the very friend I watched Twilight with. See, she’s of the opinion that vampires like Angel and Spike (not the actors who play them, mind you) are sooo pretty, to which my response is: ‘They’re vampires, as a rule they view humans as food.’ She then retorts with ‘Angel wouldn’t eat her’, to which my response is: Angelus would. Spike would. And Angel spent most of his unlife as Angelus. Spike spent most of his unlife as a sadistic bastard. And the debate continues with her pretty much saying she’d rather have cold-undead cock than the alternative and with me saying if you wind up dead or undead as a result of pursuing undead cock, don’t come crying to me.

Speaking of women who have next to no concept of self-preservation, there’s the movie’s main character Isabella Swan (played by Kristen Stewart) wouldn’t even have survived day 2 at her new school as a minivan skids nearly into her and her pick-up and would have crushed her in between if not for the ‘valiant’ vampire, Edward. Later as she moves to confront him about what he is, she walks right passed him and into the nearby woods… alone, knowing he’d follow. As the movie progresses I don’t think she makes one single smart decisions even when Edward tries half-heartedly to scare her off. Ms. Stewart also only manages one note throughout the entire film, and it’s “Bella hearts Edward” so much so, she comes off as an idiot in every other aspect of her life. Her first day of school she makes a number of friends and they seem like genuinely good people, but Edward is rude to her in Biology class… guess what she’s fixated on and boderline in tears over when she calls her mom later on… you guessed it! The devsatingly pretty metrosexual guy in her bio class who was rude to her.

About half way through the movie it is explained that the reason why vampires stay out of direct sunlight only because it reflects upon their skin in such a way that it looks like diamonds, which obviously Bella finds to be beautiful. Course, the sunlight could have made him look completely corpsefied and Bella would only have been thinking “I can change him!”. Nevermind the whole sunlight reduces them to so much ash as it does traditionally. I think this only served to take away the stigma of being in love with a member of the undead while simultaneously removing one of their greatest weaknesses. The writer, Stephanie Meyer has apparently openly admitted not knowing a great deal about the vampire mythos and seemingly added and subtracted from the mythos as she felt would be convenient to make her story go where she needed it to. On a similar note, Edward is able to repeatedly resist his baser desire to eat Bella despite her being his ‘own personal heroine’… there comes a point where given the previous examples of Louis, Angel, Spike, or Constantine having the conflicted vampire character be capable of continually resisting their thirst (especially in Edward’s case) seriously cheapens the addiction to and requirement of blood to survive. Eventually, it’ll become such a non-issue that future writers may forget about the thirst completely.

So, all in all… Kristen Stewart was disappointing, but that have been the script she was given. Robert Pattinson is too wooden in a ‘I’m-so-pretty-it-hurts-to-move’ kinda way. I have to give this movie somewhere between a C- to a D+. It’s very much a young adults film, but I expected more out of a film that is getting the kind praise this one is.

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