Before I begin I feel as if I should put on some sort of protective gear. Because before I know it the Twilight fans will be on the attack, and I want to be ready for them.
Now I didn't precisely hate the Twilight movie, there were parts that were fairly enjoyable, but I wouldn't call it a good movie by any stretch of the imagination.
I'll admit I walked into the theater with a definite prejudice against the whole Twilight Franchise. The movie really only served to amplify the problems that I had with the book to begin with. The books were fun enjoyable reads, but there was a side to them which I greatly feared. "Twilight" glorifies a very unhealthy, codependent, and obsessive relationship. Any artist is entitled to write about what they want, even if it is about something unhealthy. What concerns me is the age of the readers and fans. I knew that most of the fans were girls in their early teens and last night when I went to the theater this was only confirmed. I was one of the few members of the audience over the age of 20, and I would say that most of the people there were girls between 12-15. Of course the movie deserved it's PG-13 rating, there was some violence but nothing too objectionable in the film. What bothers me is that just about every girl in the audience was in love with Edward, that they wanted to have a boyfriend that was just like him, and worst of all that most of them seem to think Edward and Bella have the perfect relationship.
Perhaps I should back up and go back and explain how the movie even gets to this point.
In case you have been living under a rock I'll give you a little overview of the story. "Twilight" is about a girl names Bella Swan (OMG her name means Beautiful Swan) who moves to a little hick town in Washington. She meets this guy Edward who acts very strange around her, constantly warning her not to be his friend and such. Turns out Edward is a vampire, and honest to goodness sparkly vampire. But it's ok his family doesn't bite humans, so Bella is reasonably safe with them. Bella falls madly in Love with Edward, and Edward falls madly in love with Bella. This occurs for reasons I can't fully understand mainly Edward is really hot and overprotective, and apparently Bella smells extra tasty. But not all the vampires in the world refuse to eat humans, and trouble ensues.
The dialogue in "Twilight" is atrocious. I can only assume the screen writer wanted to make the dialogue "realistic" so they made every single conversation as awkward and disjointed as possible. The conversations were downright painful, there are very few people in real life that are that awkward when they talk.
Forget Team Edward and Team Jacob, I was on Team James for this movie. The only people in this film that were capable of speaking or acting semi-normally were the bad guys. Even when they were killing people, or hunting Bella down, at least I understood their motivations for acting this way. I can't say that for any other group in the movie. The bad guys are usually cooler then the good guys, but the good guys should never be this socially awkward. The overbearing amount of awkward makes the movie is almost hard to watch until the bad guys appear. The move definitely became more exciting to watch once all the action started happening. Go bad guys!
The special effects looked ridiculous. I actually burst out laughing (much to the annoyance of the people around me) when Edward grabbed Bella and went running with her. It was a bit like the roadrunner cartoons you just saw this torso and blur of legs, it looked so fake. I think they took the money they saved from getting a second rate screen writer and put it into a bunch of completely unnecessary special effects. There was a lot of excessive tree swinging from Edward. It was kind of like a five year old going "look what I can do" the scene didn't need it. Save the impressive stuff for the fight scenes, and the baseball game.
When Edward and Bella are in the woods it would have been a lot more effective of a threat if Edward had remained perfectly still, looked Bella in the eyes and said "As if you could fight me off." Instead Edward goes all manic and jumps about randomly ripping off tree branches. It kind of ruins it.
Another special effect that was disappointing was the sparkles. In the world of "Twilight" vampires sparkle in direct sunlight. The effect in the movie made it look like poor Edward had some sort of glandular disorder which caused him to sweat like a cold can of soda on a hot day. Bella and many of the other girls in the audience seemed impressed by this, I was kind of grossed out.
Another problem was that there were too many closeups. Now I personally find too many closeups kind of annoying, but I generally let it slide. This time I couldn't. I can understand that some directors feel the need to have closeups whenever someone is feeling an intense moment (which is almost the whole damn movie) but when a lot of your actors have to wear yellow costume contacts it's a poor choice. On the big screen you could clearly see the little telltale clear rings around the irises showing that the character is wearing contacts.
For the most part I found myself laughing at the movie not with it. So many of the scenes were so over the top that it was actually funny. But now I move onto the more dramatic flaws with the movie. I had some real problems with some of the characters and their relationships.
Despite being awkward as hell, and appearing to be completely disinterested in making friends or getting to know anyone in Forks, Bella is like a frickin rock star. I grew up in a fairly small town so it was always news when someone new moved in, especially if that someone happened to be attractive. However I never saw the school paper want to run a front page story about them, have every single person turn and suddenly want to date that person, and I especially never heard of a new person arriving and already having everyone know her name. Maybe it was just as bad in the book, but I found everyones worship of Bella in the movie quite irritating.
Speaking of worship, lets move on to the character of Edward. Robert Pattinson is one good looking dude, there is no denying that. But does being hot somehow excuse a guy from being creepy as hell? He has a good reason for acting creepy at first it would be hard to be nice to someone when it's taking every ounce of strength you have not to kill them and eat them. But after that Edward continues to be creepy as hell he sneaks into Bella's room at night to watch her sleep (before they are officially together and without her permission), he follows essentially stalks (the fact that he ends up rescuing her does not make it an ok behavior), and of course he says the magic creepy phrase "your scent is like a drug to me."
I went to see "Twilight" with my good friend Grammar Girl from the Trapped in a Comma blog. During one of the scenes I turned to her and said "He is so Creepy." The girls in front od us must have overheard and they said to one another "It would be creepy if it was anyone but Edward." I'm sorry kids being hot doesn't give you a license to be a stalker, the cops just won't care.
The whole Edward Bella relationship creeps me out. Their relationship becomes so intense so quickly. Going through situations where your life is in danger will bond people together pretty quickly, but this is ridiculous. Towards the end of the movie Edward mentions something about leaving Bella. Even at this small threat Bella becomes overwrought with emotion, and it's clear that she would absolutely fall apart if he were to leave her. That should not be used as a proof of how much they love each other, it is proof of how completely unhealthy the relationship is. I am afraid that all the young fans of this book are going to think that this is how love is suppose to be. All of this "without you I'm nothing" shit is in no way shape of form romantic, it's pathetic. You never want to be in a codependent relationship. You should want to be with your partner because you like them and enjoy their company, not because you know your life would be over if they ever left you.
My advice: wait till the movie comes out on DVD to see it. It's ok, especially for something in the vampire genre but it isn't that good. Also if you rent the movie you won't have to deal with a bunch of annoying ill mannered pre-teens in the audience. I don't know about anyone else but the theater I went to had kids that were very noisy, and whenever someone shushed them they talked back, eventually the ushers had to be called. Even the nicer quieter fans were noise, I was completely right in predicting there would be at least a few squeals of glee when Edward first appeared on camera, and various squees and sighs whenever Edward did something "cute" on camera.
It was fun to watch at times, especially since I was laughing at how ridiculous the movie was not at the actual jokes. All the same I kind of wish I hadn't spent $10 to see it.
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