Been almost two months since my last last review! Why? Life, really. Uni is the time to be getting drunk, hanging out with friends and finding nice women. Or men, depending on who is reading this. Of course I've never stopped watching and never stopped reviewing, it's my passion. But I rarely have the time to sit down and review anything. And I am self aware that returning with the review I am about to write may be the stupidest move I've ever made, but here goes. Enjoy!
I'm a film student, it's my 'job' (so to speak) to spend hours upon hours studying obscure foreign movies trying to find meaning between the nonsense until I have nosebleeds. So sometimes it's nice to come home to something entirely built around wish fulfilment, to escapism.
Are the Twilight movies well made? No. Are they even particularly good? Not really. But first and foremost Stephenie Meyer went away and wrote her ultimate fantasy. No the book isn't particularly well written either. But when I spend my time wading through such heavy shit all the time, I can really get behind a movie like Twilight that is just there to make its intended audience happy. And don't worry movie, you are never going to please the 'books are always better, adaptations suck' crowd.
I think a movie that really isn't there to stand on peoples toes, even if it is a little self indulgent on Meyer's part (which my distaste for grows as the series goes along, so expect me to get into that more as I go through the movies), doesn't deserve to be met with such burning hatred. It's kinda like Bieber, aside from a fashion crime haircut and making incredibly bland pop music, he hasn't hurt anyone, yet I see more people getting riled up about him than Hitler (and really after what Chris Brown did he is still allowed to make records? At least hate an actual cunt) and it just makes me wonder what the fuck is going on in the world.
Okay everyone knows by now Twilight is a story of how one day Meyer decided to write a story about a vampire falling in love with her. Well really, everyone falling in love with her. She tries to sell this story about how much Bella's life sucks and all that crap, but I wish I could be that bland and uninteresting and still get male attention from basically EVERYONE. She started on the infamous sparkling scene and wrote around it hence some rather wobbly narrative progression. The middle is the most action packed, important part of any story so I guess it isn't that illogical she started there.
There are some sense of other characters than Meyer and the monsters who fall in love with her, the film is entirely folded in her bitching and whining about how much high school sucked for her. It isn't really anything new but it's worth mentioning that Twilight is a little more than just Bella and Edward furiously spitting teenage sexual frustration and angst at one another. Twilight at least tries to construct a believable teenage world for this teenage fantasy. As if Meyer went out of her way to tick every box in her story.
And yeah I know I've been referencing this as Meyer's this and that, honestly, how many people even know who directed this? I didn't until I looked them up on IMDB. Normally I have no idea a film is an adaptation until someone says, but this time I think Meyer and her work are much more important than the creative team behind the film.
The main problems with the movie are this; firstly, these guys aren't vampires. For all their contact lenses (which are much shittier in this film than the others for some reason), pale skin and blood drinking they come across more as a group of teens with super powers. Which Bella even points out during the film. I know vampire lore seems to change in every story they are featured in but come on Meyer, you just totally rewrote pretty much the entirety of vampire lore to the point where you could call them something else entirely and it'd fit just as much. And I know this is just nitpicking but if you sell your story on being a vampire love story than I expect actual Vampires. Weird enough anyway that she even chose Vampires since you know, Dracula was designed to be an allegory for rape and all. But I guess 90's had already taken angels. And considering how generally creepy Edward is throughout the movie it really makes me wonder if Meyer is calling out to us about something dark in her past.
Secondly 95% of the Twilight book is made up of Meyer talking about how 'perfect' Edward is, so I find Robert Pattinson an odd choice. Pattinson is by no means a bad actor, or ugly. And I'm guessing that Clooney was too old but really, he was your first pick for your perfect vampire, Edward? His face is only made to look stranger when you white it out and put those cheap shitty contacts in. But in comparison to the guy playing Jacob...I mean seriously? He looks like a bulldog in a wig. Unless that was on purpose because he's a werewolf and all...ha...ha....
And really aside from that, I don't know what needs to be said. Really it's just your bog standard teen romance movie it just happens to have superhuman teenagers and even that doesn't make it particularly new. Meyer's original story of self indulgence created into a two hour long movie. A movie not particularly well put together and apparently was on a budget of peanuts, but for any fan of romance and escapism you could do HELL of a lot worse than Twilight.
And yeah I recognise I said POSITIVE review but honestly, I don't HATE these movies but I still recognise their flaws and enjoy them anyway, so I honestly didn't plan for this review to sound quite as negative as it does, but honestly don't take me as just another hater. I've tried to be as positive as I can while staying constructive.
So do I recommend it? Well, didn't I kinda already? I doubt any of the irrational haters will be particularly sold if they actually watch the bloody movie but for anyone who has been put off of Twilight or any one living under a rock, give it a go. Don't expect to be blown away but you'll find it is a lot less shit than you were lead to believe.
Think About It!
-Locke.
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