If cut-off jean shorts are “jorts,” are cut-off khaki shorts “khorts”? The Twilight hating continues below the break. Very mild spoilers and a feminist rant ahead.
In all honesty, I really didn’t plan to start my hate-fest of Twilight 3: The Squeakquel with a question of such philosophical intrigue and existential depth, but verily, these are the questions that plague our times. Questions that also plague our times are “If their clothes rip off when they turn into werewolves how come when they change back they are always in Adidas, socks, jorts, and boxers?”, “Is Kristen Stewart made of Botox and cardboard?”, “Why aren’t these kids in school? Don’t they have parents?”, and, of course, “Um, didn’t anyone making this movie notice the faint green outline from the green screen around the characters whenever they’re in that inexplicable wildflower meadow?” I tried coming up with answers but ended up jabbing a spoon into my ear just to make the pain stop. So instead I decided to write about how this movie is a sign of the apocalypse and that we should all start planting our crisis gardens and move into our doomsday bunkers before Obama’s communist dictatorship takes hold.
Genevieve Valentine has done a bang up job discussing Eclipse under the scope of the trilogy/quartet as a whole on her wonderful post here, and there are some great comments going on below. I, however, have not read the books (you can’t make me!) and spent the entire two previous “films”—and I use that term in the loosest possible sense—screaming at my computer screen when I wasn’t falling asleep during the incessant overly dramatic pauses. So I wasn’t exactly chuffed about seeing the Robsten Mooney Eyes Chat Show. Ah, the things one must sacrifice.
I honestly don’t know how long this movie was. I was 27 when I entered the theater, but when returned to the outside world my Corolla had been replaced by a hover car and Malia Obama was on the radio giving her State of the Union address. The movie wasn’t all bad, though. I’ll politely disagree with Genevieve and say that while I was bored to tears with Hardwicke’s direction, I thought Weitz’s was far more cinematic than the film deserved and that Slade made a pretty decent action/horror movie that was totally ruined by the interminable talking.
The few actiony respites between the endless blathering were entertaining enough and Taylor Lautner didn’t entirely suck (or maybe I was just lost in his abs). But that’s like saying I like Torpid Fever better than Typhoid Fever because of the fun yellow color your skin turns. The only times I almost got lost in the story were the vamp/were fight scenes, the tension created in the flashbacks, and when I was hoping they might decide to use the cliff as a nifty way to kill Bella. Spoiler: they didn’t. In fact, I’d like to suggest something for the director’s cut DVD: edit out all of Edward + Bella + Jacob crap and bing bang boom, you’ve got yourself a scary short film about vampires battling werewolves. And the Oscar goes to…
During all that tediously wooden acting I somehow managed to take notes before I passed out from strangling myself with my shoelaces:
- Safe to say that sparkling is the least attractive quality a man can possess
- Blandest Scoobies ever
- Yay for color correction!
- Is the whole jorts thing a rule? Did they take a vote? Would you be thrown out for wearing a suit? Or a shirt?
- Vamps can enter a house without permission?
- Dakota Fanning, Anna Kendrick, Bryce Dallas Howard = slumming. Blackmail?
- Why would a vamp get scars?
- He’s Texan? Since when? Since now? Oh, fine then.
- How convenient, having a vamp who knows EXACTLY how to kill your enemy. Problem solved!
- People did have premarital sex 109 years ago, you ain’t that old
- Those werewolves suck as warriors
- That’s because you came up with the stupidest plot possible. Idiots.
- Climactic fight scenes shouldn’t be this anticlimactic
Generally speaking I’m fairly tolerant of most pop cultural ephemera. I long ago accepted that tweens and teens have atrocious taste in pop culture and, for the most part, I’m pretty good at ignoring it all. I keep forgetting Gossip Girl is still on the air and Daniel Radcliffe and I were both convinced Justin Bieber was some sort of Pokémon until it came out that he was really a Keebler elf with a lesbian haircut.
But Twilight is just too much. It isn’t the story itself that I hate. Yes, it’s melodramatic in the worst way, poorly acted by everyone on screen, and poorly constructed by everyone off screen. What really infuriates me is the demented nature of the relationships between Bella and Edward and Bella and Jacob. The series teaches girls that it’s okay to be passive and let your jerkface boyfriend literally throw you around, dictate the entire nature of your relationship and otherwise emotionally abuse and psychologically manipulate you. That you should accept his abuse because you “love” him even though no teenager anywhere in the world is even remotely capable of having true mature love.
Jacob is only marginally better, but even he ends up taking the power he helped Bella develop after Edward decided to be a douche canoe and break up with her in the worst way possible. Jacob routinely crosses into rapist territory with lines like “You love me, you just don’t know it yet,” while Edward spends most of their relationship lying to Bella and bossing her around under the vague guise of wanting to protect her. Not that Bella is worthy of the love or protection of two selfish jerks. She’s vapid, self-obsessed and self-absorbed. They all are. Stephanie Meyer has populated a miserably world full of horrible, horrible people. There isn’t a single human or supe in the whole of Forks who doesn’t deserve to be wiped off the face of the Earth. Preferably by Buffy.
Alex Brown is an archivist in training, reference librarian by day, writer by night, and all around geek who watches entirely too much TV. She is prone to collecting out-of-print copies of books by Evelyn Waugh, Jane Austen, and Douglas Adams, probably knows far too much about pop culture than is healthy, and thinks her rats Hywel and Odd are the cutest things ever to exist in the whole of eternity. You can follow her on Twitter if you dare…
