Twilight: New Moon.

Recently my girlfriend’s 16 year old sister had her birthday.  In celebration of one of the most popular ages to celebrate, we decided to drive the hour and 10 minutes to go celebrate with her.  It was nothing fancy, lunch and a movie.  “What movie?” you ask.

Twilight.

Now, I already have a overt disdain for the entire series.  The stories themselves seem incredibly silly and full of holes.  I have read many reviews online and I find there is little redeeming quality to them, except of course the universal obsession with it.  So naturally, I screamed when I first heard I might be forced into seeing it.  BUT, this was a birthday celebration, and it meant a lot to my girlfriend, so I decided to suck it up and go.  Plus, I could use this as an exploratory opportunity.  I would be able to experience New Moon first hand and during that time I may actually discover what was so enthralling about the story.

We arrived to the theater on a saturday afternoon.  The movie theater was of course filled – with about 80% girls – and finding a seat was hard.  Blah blah blah….The movie started.

During the opening screen, a yellow moon was shown that filled up the screen.  ‘Neat’ I thought.  The dark yellow color seemed an interesting choice.  The moon waned to reveal the words “New Moon” underneath, retaining the dark yellow color.  ‘Interesting’ I thought.  Perhaps they will use this color throughout the story to signify some sort of theme.  I was intregued.

This was the first and only time I thought that.

Here is what I thought coming out of it:

Story:

You have got to be kidding me.  This isn’t about ‘well, it’s a movie, so it has holes’.  This isn’t about the holes.  This is about the God-awful story.  Bella wants to be a Vampire, something that the Vampires all say ‘sucks’ (no pun intended) but from an audience standpoint I can’t find a single fault in.  They drink blood, but they’re all nice vampires, so they control it.  They can’t go out during the day because they sparkle, but that can be turned off by Edward because we watch him walk into school during the day just like everyone else.  But on the plus side, they run super quick, they can read minds, and tehy all have their own super powers (just like the X-Men).  Who WOULDN’T like that life.  I was never convinced.

So, Edward leaves her because he’s trying to ‘protect’ her.  So Bella broods for something close to ridiculous and then decides to start trying to kill herself so she can see Edward.  So, she hangs out with Jacob.  And then….what?  She falls in love with Jacob but not really because she’s really in love with Edward?  It was the message of ‘well, you’re nice and everything, but you’re not the perfect one who I dated and then GOT DUMPED BY’ (I’ve even heard this one in real life).  So she tries to kill herself.  And then Edward thinks she’s dead so HE tries to kill himself but she’s not really dead so she goes running up to Edward surrounded by people in red (it would’ve been cool if the idea were original) so Edward doesn’t die.  And no one can read her mind.  Which is for some reason arousing to all the Vampires.  And then the Vampire mafia leaders or whatever they are are somehow bad because they suck REAL peoples blood.  I would agree with the accusation that they are indeed ‘bad’, except they’re VAMPIRES.  THAT’S WHAT THEY DO.

And then there’s the ‘love’ of Edward and Bella, something I just cannot find plausible.  Bella is a brooding, angsty teenager.  Edward is about as emotionally vapid as a bowl of soup.  Anyone can quote Shakespeare.  He is also 109 years old.  She is 18.  What would Edward possibly find in her?  This would be like if I were 48 year old elementary teacher and I decided that the 6 year old girl I teach is the one for me.  And I get aroused by her.  That’s not love, people.  That’s called pedophilia.  It’s gross.  I never during the entire movie had any reason to believe they were actually ‘in love’.  ‘In lust’, yes, all the time, but lust doesn’t make you brood for 3 months.  You’re sad for a week and then you find a new body to lust after.  By the way, the ‘replacement’ (Jacob) is a complete jerk.  So I guess Bella has a thing for pretty boys who are also jerks.

Cinematography:

Very pretty.  We can tell it’s been super digitally remastered.  There seems to be very little thought devoted to actual USE of the camera, other them to get closeups of Bella being sad (again) or Jacob’s ridiculous abs (again).  There were a couple really cool effects that were accomplished, but I came out the other side asking ‘why’.  The big bad werewolf dude jumps off the cliff and takes a dive into the ocean.  In an interesting feat, he jumps over the camera, and instead of the camera righting itself once it had flipped over, it remains upside down.  Why?  What was the point?  I found this throughout the entire movie.  Lots of glorified shots or shots with no point other than to show someones face.  Oh, and there was the scene where the camera spun around Bella as she mourned the loss of Edward.  Yes.  She apperently sat there for 3 straight months.  No potty breaks.  No food.  Just sat.

Acting:

Horrific.  I thought George Lucas can direct feelings better than that.  I thought the best acting job was done by Michael Welch, the friend who throws up during the action movie.  That’s because he wasn’t a useless pretty boy who actually had feelings in the movie.  About 90% of the lines said by the main actors were just that, said.  There was no feeling, no internalization of the words.  I felt a detachment every time Jacob talked about how manly he was or Bella mentioned how sad she felt.  I could hear it, but I never actually saw it.

Soundtrack:

Pretty, but vapid.  There seemed to be little thought given to theme or some sort of motivic device.  It was filled with crowd pleasers (pop songs) and pretty piano with string accompaniment.  It seemed to take the mood of the entire movie (sad) and go with it.

Side note: another thing about the movie: How boring!  Only one mood?  There’s an entire human element that was completely forgotten because we were too obsessed with seeing Jacob take his shirt off.

Themes:

This is the big one for me.  We have a couple here.

Romeo and Juliet.  The movie made an incredibly half-hearted attempt at trying to bring Romeo and Juliet into the mix to validate the story line.  Two young lovers how against all odds fall in love and commit suicide after knowing each other for less than 48 hours.  There’s only one problem with it: THEY DIE AT THE END!  If you’re going to have a theme as obvious as Romeo and Juliet, someone has to die or else the theme feels FORGOTTEN, not used.  You can pull bits and pieces out of stories to create your own – which is what she did, because when has a Vampire sparkled or a Werewolf been friendly?

Time.  They made it sound like Bella aging would be the worst thing ever, but she’s 18 and she’s worrying about turning 60.  They touch on this a couple times at the start, and once at the end, but more or less forget about it by the time Jacob takes his shirt off*.

*I seem to be obsessed with that particular scene.  No, I was not impressed with his body.  I was alarmed at the level of squealing that reached my ears when it happened.  I felt from there the movie lost all integrity and sought purely to entertain from that point forward, although how that was attained I have yet to determine.

Female Equality.  I’ve had to battle this one since birth.  I am a man.  Ergo, I’ve spent my life walking on eggshells trying my best not to anger a girl because I was being ‘unfair’.  I don’t mean this in a bad way – most of life is like this for me about everything, and I am a firm believer in female rights.  I don’t like how incredibly patriarchal society is and how women have very little chance at ‘winning’.  So now we are glorifying a story where the heroine is useless without a man? She’s ‘alive’ in the story when Edward is there.  She doesn’t do anything for 3 months while he left.  And then she gets out again so she can watch Jacob work on her bike for her.  She takes no initiative, she allows the male role to ‘dominate’ her throughout the story, and now THIS is what we want to teach our children, our daughters?  So women equality is nice, but if the guy is really ‘sexy’ then it’s totally okay to give in to male ‘superiority’, to let the men control our lives and feelings?  NO!  This isn’t how it was ever supposed to be. I was also alarmed at the number of Equal rights ‘activists’ I know who went to see the movie and were never bothered by this fact.  Maybe it was okay because they’re adults and they can’t be affected by the themes of the story.  How selfish.

With all this being said, I came out of the movie shocked.  I alarmed my girlfriend – I looked like I had been to war.  I had no idea how to handle this.  Twilight is affecting this generation almost as incredibly as Harry Potter, and I cannot understand why.  I found nothing – nothing – in this movie that was something I could take home with me, nothing I could dwell on and learn from later.   I pride myself on my ability to listen without bias, to go into situations with very little preconceived notions, to look at all situations critically.  So please, PLEASE, could someone put my thoughts to rest and explain what is so amazing about these stories?

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