Friday, July 24, 2015

Better Late Than Never?: Twilight


Ok, I'll admit to being curious all these years. How could I not be? When 85% of the female population is swooning over a book it's hard not to take note. Especially when it's met with such horrific critical reception. Either the ladies are crazy or it's another Lord of the Rings type event, where the critics hate it because it goes against their ridiculous materialistic ideology so hard their genetics prevent them from liking it, even as us unwashed riff-raff praise it for being true. So, out of curiosity, I watched the first movie. 

Heh, go figure. They're both right. Bloody fantastic.



I'm not going to do everyone reading this blog post the indignity of telling you what Twilight's about. If you don't know by now you've been living under a rock and this blog post won't really apply to you anyway. The point that I want to make is that, had this thing actually been taken seriously by the author, it would have been a really good tragedy. Bella was bored with the inanity of this life and thus wanted something real. And can you really blame her? Highschool isn't a real place. What works there sure doesn't work in the real world. I'd even go so far as to say that movies are more realistic than high school. So, Bella being bored was pretty easy for me to sympathize with.

But... vampires? Really?

Of all the places to go?

She's running for her life while her highschool acquaintances are out having a good time, and for what? So she  can be part of something that's real? How is running for your life more entertaining than highschool? (11 Bravos be quiet) In her wish for something not quite so mundane Bella mistakes the terror that is dating a vampire for something real. It's a pretty sad look at our society, isn't it? That what our culture offers is so bad that dating a vampire while staying human is preferable. Does that make anyone else sad? Cause it does me. 

Something else that maddens me about this movie is Edward's attraction to Bella. Now, Bella's attraction to Edward makes sense to me, as I've already spelled out. But Edward is 117 bloody years old. That's more insight than the oldest person alive currently by a long stretch. This guy has probably seen it all. So what makes Bella so unusual? The movie never explains it. Bella and Edward are shown talking for hours and hours but you have no idea what they're talking about or why they click the way they do, you're just told that they do. That's not good enough if you want me to buy in, which I unwittingly found myself wanting to do!


Excuse me. There's some wine in my kitchen that demands my immediate attention. I'd go get something stronger but I'm broke.

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