Awhile ago, Ryan requested that I watch more 90's action movies and write about them. HA! Who has the time? Instead, I've done the opposite and watched Twilight. Have you seen this movie or even heard about it?
Kidding, of course you have. The world has Twilight Fever, which is funny because vampires are cold to the touch. Just tonight I was at a Battle of the Bands at the Hayloft in Mt. Clemens(lovely place) and Twilight was the name of the game, with more than a few "Team Edward" shirts, which means that in the war between the white vampires and the Native American werewolves, the Indian's lose again. First the Trail of Tears, now this? Some guys have all the luck. But I'm getting ahead of myself, which is easy to do since Twilight takes forever to get going. If Ed Cullen is 114 years old, then this movie is approximately half his life.
Bella(Kristen Stewart) is the new girl in town, moved from sunny Arizona to rainy, cloudy Forks, Washington. To remind us that she's new in town, one character insists on always calling her Arizona, which is always annoying and never endearing. When this douche asks Bella to prom later in the film, my first thought at her refusal was not because she's in love with an undead slab of hair, but because this ass kept saying things like "Hey Arizona, how about this weather?" and "Wazzup Arizona, the Cullens be mad crazy wack." Speaking of the Cullens, hilarious. Whoever did the makeup for Twilight, woof. I get it, they're pale. And if you're going to pile on the Mac concealer, make sure you don't miss any spots. When Doc Cullen walked in, there wasn't a dry eye in the house, on account of the laughing.
The Cullens are introduced in a clunky scene(all the scenes are clunky) where they enter the lunch room at the school, in two's so that Bella's new friends can easily introduce them. When Ed sees Bella for the first time he does something interesting that I don't think was the filmmakers intention. He makes a "gotta poo" face. Later, in science class he looks ready to shit his pants and ends up missing school for a week. Of course, the problem is that Bella smells great(of course she does, ALL girls do) and it was driving him crazy. This behavior isn't isolated to just vampires. In 9th grade French class a girl sat next to me in a see through top with a bare middriff and I think I imploded. And the next day they banned bare middriffs. This is a true story. Ask Justin. About the ban. He doesn't know about the first part. Of course, since he's a vampire, Edward just really wants to eat Bella. And she basically says, "Cool, let's do that." And Edward says, "No, I sparkle in the sunlight." and I went Not Vampire. I'm pretty sure there are some set down rules involving vampires, best layed out in Bram Stoker's Dracula and in Garth Ennis's Preacher. Details have been fudged and changed in various pieces of fiction, but sunlight has always remained a constant, on account of it making vampires blow up. In Twilight, sunlight it makes them look like a drunken night of out of control Bedazzling.
So instead of hiding during the day to avoid death, it's really to keep from being embarressed.
The film takes its time as Bella and Edward proceed to play a game of "let's be together/we can never be together", which is probably thrilling on a personal level, but as cinema is just boring. Think about every shitty relationship you had in high school. Now imagine it was with a vampire. That's Twilight. Oh, and these other vampires show up during this vampire baseball game(I know!) and at first everybody is cool and then the new vampires are all, "We wanna eat this Bella chick" and the Cullens are all "No way! Everyone run away!" It's a lame conflict, about on the level of someone crashing your barbaque and trying to eat all the dogs and burgers you've layed out on the grill. Except you're dating the burgers. Once again, Twilight, the phenomenon that is sweeping the nation!
Bella flees and the Cullens devise a completely hackneyed plan to hide Bella from this hungry vampire. They're assisted by this villainous vampires former friend, who actually says "Yeah, I was with him, but I wasn't with him. Dude was an asshole. And an amazing tracker. Later."
So we get some scenes of vampires rubbing Bella's clothes on trees, which doesn't work. Spoiler.
Big fight in Bella's old dance studio, and then all the other vampires show up because. Doesn't matter. Bella gets bitten by the evil vampire and Edward has to suck out the poison. Because vampires are poison. Right. I wish I could just make up rules too. Anyway, while Ed sucks out the poison, the camera bobs and weaves and shakes so we can't really tell that the other vampires ripped the evil vampire apart and threw his body into a fire. That's how you kill a vampire. New rule.
Then everybody goes to prom. But the evil vampire's girlfriend is mad! So, sequel. As snarky as the above has been, Twilight wasn't as bad as I hoped. Kristen Stewart wasn't too bad, and there was one scene with Bella's dad that was intentionally funny. I would like to think that they'll learn from their mistakes when making the next one, but since it's being rush released in November of this year, expect it to actually look even worse. And make a billion dollars. I'm on Team Don't See It.
Bad Guys Win 