I'm not going to relay the plot of the Twilight Saga to you, partly because I don't care, and partly because it's a plot that can be easily summed up as, "Horny teenage girl has a monster fetish." I'm sure there is some deep, underlining message about love, trust, and protection, but I was too busy mixing Resses Pieces into my popcorn to notice.
Recently, my curiosity got the better of me, and I decided, against my better judgment, to read all four of the Twilight Saga novels. Two pages into book one, I got bored, and decided to just watch the movies instead. So, over the course of a Tuesday afternoon, I watched all three current films -- the third one having been acquired through not-so legal ways.
Lets start on a positive note with a few things I liked about the films: they are well directed, (mostly) decently acted , and I actually kind of dug how the werewolves turned into actual wolves, as opposed to the usual half man half wolf hybrid. that doesn't mean I like these films. OK, now on to the hate. These movies suck. They are poorly written, incompressible, and worst of all, offensively sexist.
Let us start with the film's "heroine," Bella, heroine being used loosely since that might suggest she does something heroic. Her talents seem to consist of getting kidnapped, failing at mind games, and feeling depressed. Oh, God, her depression. As someone who suffers from clinical depression I guess I should have some sort of sympathy for her, but damn is she annoying! I know for a fact that I'm annoying when I'm depressed, everyone is, but her depression stems from the dumbest things. She constantly seems to question why people like her and when she finally grows a pair and decides to do something, she always ends up getting kidnapped, and or being beaten nearly to death. I actually laughed at the end of the first Twilight when that other vampire (Jim, James, John?) punches her and she goes flying. The way she reacts, you'd think she was made out of styrofoam.
I cannot, for the life of me, figure out what all these guys see in her. These guys could probably get any girl they want, and yet they're fighting over this mopping bitch. The fuck?
Don't think that those two pricks are getting off the hook either. Both of them are border line stalkers, and both put their entire families and friends in danger, just to save a girl they barley know. Even worse, their idea of "protection" is basically controlling every aspect of Bella's life. Is this what teenage girls find attractive? Being locked up and told what to do by handsome men? The other characters aren't much better. Actually, I'm not entirely sure who the other characters are. They all sort of mesh together into one big, pale faced, scrawny, awkward teenager. Except for Edmund's sister, Alice. I think she's pretty hot. At least when she isn't trying to act.
This concept of protection is the thing that bothers me most about Twilight. The message of the films seem to be that you must rely on others to save you. Bella is constantly in danger, but doesn't do jack-shit about it. She's is the worst kind of damsel in distress, a bitch who relies on the charity of others. Is that the message we want to send to young women? That they are weak, pitiful, must rely upon men to fight their battles for them, and live only to be used for sex and breeding children? Well, I suppose you would if you were a Mormon, like Stephanie Myers (the one who conjured up this crap) practices. So, does that make the Twilight Saga the Mormon equivalent to Battlefield Earth? If so, Scientology wins, and I take back everything I said about John Travolta's dreadlocks.
I tried, really, I did. But... oh sweet mother of God, help me. I just can't. The concept is pretty neat, but the the plot just seems to drag on and on forever. Relentlessly shaking me awake every now and then with a few minuets of action, or a hot sex scene. And by sex I mean characters stare longingly while talking about all kinds of random emotional bullshit while I sit rolling my eyes. Nobody in these films seem capable of articulating a comprehensible sentence, which is appropriate, considering that they basically skip months worth of school.
Every character is basically just one big whiny sack of hormones, following Bella wherever she goes. Except for the parents, who are basically useless. Seriously, these movies have some of the worst parenting, ever. In one scene, Bella comes back from her first date with Edward, screams to her dad about how she hates him -- keep in mind her father doesn't even know who Edward is -- and later says she's going to Arizona, and the father lets her. In fact, her father, nor any of the adults in this film, seem interested in what these kids are up to. If Bella was my daughter I would just put her in a time capsule, bury her in the backyard, and wait ten years to dig her up.
So, there you have it. Let the record show that I have successfully watched, and survived the Twilight films. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go wash the taste out of my mouth with some Harry Potter and, Lord of the Rings, and Star Wars. Oh, Hell, better throw in some in some of The Matrix, just in case.
