Twilight: Boogie's Take

*WARNING*

THIS WILL BE LOADED WITH SPOILERS. IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE MOVIE, OR READ THE BOOK, THIS POST WILL RUIN IT FOR YOU. IF YOU DID SEE THE MOVIE, AND ACTUALLY ENJOYED IT, WELL THIS POST WILL STILL RUIN IT FOR YOU. APPROACH WITH CAUTION.

Twilight is not a film I've been exactly looking forward to. And this may surprise several of you, since it's a well established fact that Stephanie Meyer, the author of Twilight, is an alumni of Utah. Well, I've never been one to support the hometown heroes, and less so when it comes to my favorite supernatural escapes.

I like vampires, I admit it. Granted, I don't invest a lot my time dressing up in frilly garb, painting my face white, and shucking around folks with fake, oversized incisors, but as a form of entertainment, vampires are great. The Lost Boys was practically life changing when I was a kid, and Bram Stoker's Dracula probably forever screwed my noodle by the time pre-adolescence came around. I cannot even begin to express the amount of joy the series True Blood has given me these past few months. So yeah, Boogie likes him some vampires.

That said, I was fully prepared to be disappointed by Twilight. Now, I have never read the series, nor had I taken much time to find out what the whole thing was really about. My first real glimpse into the film was from the numerous posters that were being sold at bookstores and Wal Marts across the globe. Just seeing these things made me uncomfortable.

All the male vampires were too pretty. And I know, vampires are supposed to be all gorgeous and androgynous, pushing the limits of man-pretty, but this was too much. These posters were uncomfortably pretty, cringe-worthy even. It was like every teenage girl's hot, but slightly affeminate dream guy, painted up in glitter. Not really how I take my vampires.

So, I was already grouchy when I got to the theater. Overly pretty men creatures, all created in the mind of someone who practices a religion I'm not super fond of. And add to this bitter stew the fact that the first season of True Blood had just ended, which set the bar high for any vampire entertainment that was coming down the road. My expectations were rock-bottom by the time I took my seat and watched previews.

So, now with the film behind me, I can finally think about it and the mild phenomenon that it has caused. And there's one thought that keeps coming back to me. One element of this whole storyline that I can't seem to get past, no matter how hard I try:

Damn, Bella's a complete and total bitch!

Seriously, is there anyone in that goddamn movie she's nice to? She pisses on her mom and step-boyfriend guy to run away to daddy's house. She walks all over daddy like he's nothing, simply because the man is too hurt and fragile to talk. And as for all those high school buddies of hers? Despite the fact that they were nice, kind, and overly (in my opinion) enthusiastic about the stupidest shit, she still paraded this whole "you're too dumb for me" attitude for the duration of the film. I mean seriously who in the hell would want to be immortal with that shallow piece of crap? I sure as hell wouldn't.

And once that became my focal point, the rest of the film went straight downhill. Edward goes on talking about how he can read every one's mind except hers, and I'm sitting here thinking, "Well gee, maybe that's because too goddamn shallow to have actual comprehensible thoughts?" And then there was Edward going back and forth between wanting to be with her, and needing to be away with her. How does she react? Mostly, by looking dumbfounded no matter what happens. In fact, the whole film is her looking varying degrees of dumbfounded.

I think the true stupidity of this film came right around midpoint, when Edward finally revealed that he was among the undead. They were standing on a well lit mountaintop, and Ed was telling her all his baggage. The boy was literally confessing all his vulnerabilities to her, openly admitting that she was the most tasty-looking, desirable human he had ever encountered, and that he was having a hard time controlling himself from digging teeth into neck and ravaging her dry. And what does she do? She continually walks up right into his face, and tells him, "It's okay you feel that way, I trust you."

What the hell? Normal people don't do this shit. We don't jump into lion cages and tell the zookeepers, "No no no, don't feed the lions today. I trust them not to eat me." I don't care how man-pretty the predator is, this just goes against common-fucking-sense. I mean, at the very least we process the information handed to us, we take a few minutes to contemplate our options, but we don't just run willy nilly into something so left field like that. Well, normal people don't I guess. Bella the dipshit does.

And the whole time I'm watching this scene, I could literally see Bella dancing in front of vampire Edward and singing in a operatic soprano voice, "I'm a steak, I'm a steak. I'm a tasty tasty steak. Eat me, I'm a steak, There's no witnesseses, have a steak......" So much so, that I'm literally singing this in the theater, ruining the movie for a bunch of people who are actually impassioned by this whole bit of nonsense.

So, Bella pretty much sunk a barely passable vampire flick. The vamps weren't any cooler than they've been in past incarnations. In fact every vamp had this uppity, wheatgrass drinking, tennis playing elitest thing about them. And it's hard to be intrigued by that. These are people you hate in the modern day world, it seems like making them immortal would only make you hate them worse. As for the bad guy vamps, they all looked like has been celebrities from the 80's that were on some VH1 "Where Are They Now?" marathon. Try looking at them and not seeing Axl Rose, Vernon Reid, and Molly Ringwald respectively. You can't do it can you? The one saving grace from the whole mess was this: Alice Cullen was pretty hot.

So if you are readers of this blog, or fans of the vampire genre, I cannot recommend this movie to you. It's bad, and not even laughably bad. This is no horror film that is so cheesy, that you can't help but laugh at it. No, this a test of one's frustration levels. Love and lust between a mortal and an immortal has been done tons of times before, but the level of chaste and boredom that accompanies this is enough to make you want to hit the person sitting next to you repeatedly. So for your own sake, and the sake of those you share your theaters with, walk away from the ticket booth, go home, put some popcorn in the microwave, and put the Lost Boys in your DVD player. You'll thank me for it later.