Twilight: Deja Vu

Twilight, pp. 179-188.

Goddamn, this book is bad.

The title of this chapter is "Theory". Seriously. Theory? What theory? Bella already decided Edward is a vampire and that she's okay with it. Stevenie Meyer is no longer even pretending there's any difference between herself and Bella. Theory don't bleedin' enter into it. Well, at least the chapter starts off with a bang:

"Can I ask just one more?" I pleaded as Edward accelerated much too quickly down the quiet street. He didn't seem to be paying any attention to the road.

He sighed.

"One," he agreed. His lips pressed together in a cautious line.

Whew, I need a minute to catch my breath. The action never stops (because it's yet to start)! I can probably think of a few worse opening lines than "Can I ask just one more?" if you give me a couple of hours, but it's still impressively bad. One more what?

Bella asks how Edward knew she went south from the bookstore since she was alone and so there was no one's mind to read. So we get more X-Men powers, in this case Wolverine's super-smell. So let's review all the powers vampires have so far. They're super-strong, super-fast, super-good-looking, super-not-dead, have super-senses, and heat vision. (Okay, I may have added that last one.) He then explains how his mind-reading power works: It's effective over some distance, the distance being greater the better he knows the person, up to a few miles, and he has to focus on a person to hear her thoughts as distinct from the background babble. Then she asks if he knows why he can't read her mind, and he says he doesn't know. If you've read the later books or seen the later movies, you know he's lying, undoubtedly to set up his next line to set insecure adolescent white girls' hearts aflutter:

"The only guess I have is that maybe your mind doesn't work the same way the rest of theirs do."

To keep myself sane, I can only respond appropriately, by paraphrasing a real vampire/werewolf movie: You and 20 million other girls.

"My mind doesn't work right? I'm a freak?" The words bothered me more than they should--probably because his speculation hit home. I'd always suspected as much, and it embarrassed me to have it confirmed.

"I hear voices in my head, and you're worried that you're a freak," he laughed.

I guess Edward hasn't been paying attention, since Bella is a clinical narcissist and so of course she's only worried about herself. If I were Edward, I wouldn't be a complete dick to everybody I encounter and involve young girls in my creepy abstinence power games. Plus, I would point out that I didn't say the word "freak" or even imply it and tell Bella to get over herself before dumping her childish ass at her father's house and getting out of there as fast as my vampire driving powers could carry me:

I happened to notice the speedometer.

"Holy crow!" I shouted. "Slow down!"

"What's wrong?" He was startled. But the car didn't decelerate.

"You're going a hundred miles an hour!"
...
"Relax, Bella." He rolled his eyes, still not slowing.

"Are you trying to kill us?"

"We're not going to crash."

I tried to modulate my voice. [What?] "Why are you in such a hurry?"

"I always drive like this." He turned to smile crookedly at me.

"Keep your eyes on the road!"

"I've never been in an accident, Bella--I've never even gotten a ticket." He grinned and tapped his forehead. "Built-in radar detector."

So you're immune to law enforcement because you can read the cops' minds, hmm? Well, I hate to drop this knowledge on you, Ed, but I don't think that's what she's worried about there, genius. She's probably more concerned with being turned into road pizza when you hit a full-grown deer at 100 miles per hour. Or does he read deer's minds now, too?

"Very funny," I fumed. "Charlie's a cop, remember? I was raised to abide traffic laws."

AAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHH! I hate this book! I hate it! It makes no goddamn sense! People don't talk like this! People don't act like this! It's not real, it's not real, it's NOT REEEEEEAAAAALLLLL!

Sorry, I just had to avoid a breakdown, there. Also, "holy crow"? After voicing her disapproval of Edward's violation of a minor traffic law, Bella finally has a glimmer of self-preservation and asks him to slow down so that he will not "turn us into a Volvo pretzel", a crash to which he may be immune, but she isn't. He agrees to slow to 80 mph, which is just as deadly a speed as 100 mph and just as much a violation of the law, so great job, Bella! You sure showed him!

Now it's time for Bella to tell Edward her "theory" that he is a vampire. Edward assumes, as you would, that this is in fact her theory, so she continually has to clarify that, well, Jacob told her each and every part of it so that it is in no meaningful way "her" theory, even admitting that her Google search told her nothing. When she declares that it doesn't matter (which is another lie, because she's been more concerned with talking about it than with the fact that she was almost gang-raped in a dark alley), once again someone else has the reaction Bella should have, as Edward comically freaks out when he hears of her utter unconcern that he's a blood-drinking dead man. Well, okay, it's not really the reaction she should've had, since he is of course "bleak", "cold", "hard", and "mocking". (Isn't he dreamy?) But it is, at least, a reaction, which is more than we can say for Bella, whose emotional EEG has yet to spike. Edward may be a walking corpse, but Bella is the soulless monster.

Bella then asks about what other powers he has and how they match up with established vampire lore. I hope you're sitting down, but it turns out they don't match up very well. He also reveals that he can't sleep. Combine that with immortality, and vampirism does sound like one of the most horrible fates that could possibly be inflicted upon a sentient being. That Bella doesn't recognize this and continues to insist Edward make her a vampire (whoops, sorry to blow that plot twist for you) could have been the basis for actual drama, but we'll have none of that.

Edward also has to be the one to bring up the question of whether he eats people or not, since for a sociopathic narcissist like Bella, "it doesn't matter". Edward never explicitly confirms that the Cullens don't eat people, but Bella is convinced and she wrote this crap, so that's enough for me. Still, Bella reminds us, the Quileutes don't want the Cullens on their land. Sounds pretty damn sensible to me.

Then it's time to rehash the "I'm dangerous, really, I so am!" thing for, what is this, the 842nd time now? Edward compares surviving on animal blood to a human surviving on nothing but soy milk and tofu, and he tells us that at times it can be difficult not to eat people. Let's all say it together now:

"Is it very difficult for you now?" I asked.

He sighed. "Yes."

Look, Meyer, if you're going to telegraph even lines of dialogue, can we just agree that I've effectively already read this entire novel and let me go do something more fun and productive, like rearranging my refrigerator magnets or reading a White House press statement? No? Drat!

"But you're not hungry now," I said confidently--stating, not asking.

"Why do you think that?"

"Your eyes. I told you I had a theory. I've noticed that people--men in particular--are crabbier when they're hungry."

He chuckled. "You're observant, aren't you?"

Brilliant observation, Holmes! Look, Stevenie, if you're going to recycle scenes, then I'm going to recycle the jokes.

At least this passage explains my earlier issues with how the Cullens can get away with living in Forks under their original names for generations (not continuously, perhaps, but often enough that plenty of people who knew them would still be living when they came back) without being noticed. The people of Forks are apparently so unobservant they don't notice the radical changes in Edward's eye color (from amber to black) and the accompanying radical changes in behavior. Even more hilarious is Edward's being impressed at someone's figuring this out. It ain't exactly brain surgery, there, Eddie. We're not talking about eyes that sometimes look green and sometimes look blue and sometimes look grey. Forks may be a town of dullards, but anyone with even half a brain could piece that together.

Of course, a meta-explanation is that Edward doesn't behave any differently no matter what color his eyes are. So far he's been the same smug, condescending asshole in every scene. You know, like Clooney.

Twilight: Psychic Surveillance

Twilight, pp. 171-178.

Bella, her hunger sated by the end of a breadstick she nibbled, is ready to get down to what's really important: What color Edward's eyes are.

"Usually you're in a better mood when your eyes are so light," I commented, trying to distract him from whatever thought had left him frowning and somber.

He stared at me, stunned. "What?"

"You're always crabbier when your eyes are black--I expect it then," I went on. "I have a theory about that."

"More theories?"

"Mm-hm." I chewed on a small bite of the bread, trying to look indifferent. 

"I hope you were more creative this time...or are you still stealing from comic books?" His faint smile was mocking; his eyes were still tight.

His eyes were still tight? Okay, help me out here, people. What the hell is Meyer talking about? I've been on this Earth a few decades, and English is my tool, and I've never once see or heard eyes described as "tight", probably because it makes no fucking sense. But at least this passage explains my earlier issues with how the Cullens can get away with living in Forks under their original names for generations (not continuously, perhaps, but often enough that plenty of people who knew them would still be living when they came back) without being noticed. The people of Forks are apparently so unobservant they don't notice the radical changes in Edward's eye color (from amber to black) and the accompanying radical changes in behavior. Even more hilarious is Edward's shock at someone's figuring this out. It ain't exactly brain surgery, there, Eddie. We're not talking about eyes that sometimes look green and sometimes look blue and sometimes look grey. Forks may be a town of dullards, but anyone with even half a brain could piece that together.

Of course, a meta-explanation is that Edward doesn't behave any differently no matter what color his eyes are. So far he's been the same smug, condescending asshole in every scene. You know, like Clooney.

The "stealing from comic books" line is of course a reference to Bella's earlier speculation that Edward might be Spider-Man or Superman (which he basically is, though since dumb ol' girls don't buy books about superheroes, Meyer made the book about vampires). Bella does have a theory, and baby, it's the stupidest moment in the book yet. And that's saying something.

I glared at him and continued slowly. "Let's say, hypothetically, that...someone...could know what people are thinking, read minds, you know--with a few exceptions."

That's...just...imPOSSIBLE. Where the hell did she get that? She hasn't had any reason to believe Edward can read minds. Come on! He has never once told her anything that anyone was thinking. As I noted last week, the film has Edward say in the car that he read the minds of the four gangers, and during the restaurant scene, he allegedly demonstrates this power by telling her what some of the other patrons are thinking. (I say "allegedly" because Bella makes no attempt to confirm that what he says is in fact what they're thinking, because of course she knows, because Meyer knows.) But at least the film threw us that bone. The novel doesn't even do that. Out of nowhere, Bella suddenly starts talking about mind-reading. That didn't even come up in her vampire Googling!

And what's with the exceptions? Why would there be any exceptions? Is that the way most people conceive of mind-reading powers? They work on everybody except Catholics, or people under 5'3", or redheads? How hard would it have been for Meyer to have Edward occasionally let slip that he "heard" something that someone didn't actually say? The answer is not at all since the film seemed to do it with no trouble. Stephenie [sic] Meyer is just that lazy.

Our leads play this game of "hypothetically" while they both know it isn't hypothetical and admire each other for figuring out their little game in the way that only annoying pretentious teenagers can. Bella outlines that she came up with the mind-reading thing to explain how Edward was there to rescue her from the criminal scum. (No attempt is made to explain where the exceptions idea came from.) Okay, that's the most plausible explanation? Not that he has some sort of danger sense (I mean, she already guessed he was Spider-Man), or clairvoyance, or psychic powers? How about this one, honey? He's stalking you. See? It explains everything and doesn't require an appeal to anything supernatural.

They go over the "I'm dangerous" thing yet again (still not buying it), and then Edward says that he was stalking her. (Bingo!) Okay, I'm paraphrasing. He says that he followed her to Port Angeles, for her own protection, of course, not because he's a creep who enjoys breaking into a young girl's house to watch her sleep. Then he reveals that he constantly reads Jessica's mind in order to keep tabs on Bella.

If you're reading this sentence, you didn't fully appreciate the last one. Go back and read it again until you get it. I'll wait.

Five. Star. Creepy. Edward constantly monitors a young girl's thoughts. It's the ultimate invasion of privacy, a gross violation of a person's most sacred space, and Jessica is subjected to it precisely because she's been nothing but friendly and welcoming to Bella, so how does Bella react to Edward's morally reprehensible act of psychic breaking and entering in the service of his constant surveillance of her whereabouts? Shock? Horror? Rage? Fear of who else he might be monitoring?

I hope you're sitting down for this, because I don't want to be responsible for giving anyone the vapors: Bella...doesn't react. At all. Edward continues speaking about how he found her after she left Jessica's awareness--by "randomly searching the thoughts of people on the street", natch--until he heard the thoughts of the go-gangers, and Bella lets it all pass without comment. Edward explains that he kept her with him instead of letting her go with her friends because otherwise he would've stalked and slain the miscreants. Finishing his story, Edward is ready to take Bella home. Her thoughts "incoherent", Bella is clear that she doesn't want to leave the presence of the ambulating cadaver who's been reading her best friend's most intimate thoughts for the past week without anyone's knowledge or consent.

Remember, girls: If he doesn't use invasive surveillance techniques to keep himself constantly informed of your whereabouts, it isn't True Love.

Aaaaaand...chapter! Yep, Edward gets the check, they get in the car about to start a conversation...and the chapter ends, right after the conversation's opening line. Were chapter breaks mandated every 20 pages or something?

So...yeah. We're done for the week, I guess. Don't look at me, I didn't insert a random chapter break. Anyhow, tune in next week for more hot talking-to-each-other-in-the-car action!

Twilight: Breaking Dawn, Part II

When I started this blog, I imagined I might deal with the Twilight film once I was through eviscerating the novel. As it's developed, I've found myself referencing the film version regularly, calling into question the need to address it separately. Writing up the other films hadn't even entered my mind, as I was not (and am not) sure I'll have the strength to dig into their respective source novels. The first one is trying enough.

Yet this blog concerns itself with two things: Twilight and terrible movies. What could be more appropriate, then, than reviewing a Twilight movie? Plus I thought, considering my love-hate relationship with this series, I ought to see at least one of the films in cinema, surrounded by Twihards. So on the film's opening night, I went eagerly to see Twilight, Part 4: Part 2.

Yes, Breaking Dawn, the epic story that could not be contained in one movie, split in two and made shamelessly cheaply to maximize profits. Warning: This review is spoiler-heavy, including the one genuine surprise at the film's climax (along with its subsequent ruination). If you have any intention of seeing this film--and God help you if you do--I strongly recommend you read no further. Those who prefer moving slowly through the novel along with this blog will also want to avoid the rest of this review, as it's sure to give away plot points from throughout the series.

Having said that, let's get into Breaking Wind. Since this is the fifth and final in the series of films that make up THE TWILIGHT SAGA (you have to say it in all caps), let me bring you up to speed on what happened in the previous four films.

Edward and Bella got married and had sex, resulting in Bella's pregnancy.

You can see why they needed four movies to tell such an epic tale. And now we have the finale, and it is every bit the sputtering anticlimax you expect from a series of novels that gave away its inevitable conclusion in the first fifty pages but insisted on dragging the story out across three thousand.

Stephenie Meyer's manipulation of her series mythology--such as it is--to suit her plot comes out in full force in Breaking Bad. Vampires don't blink, or breathe, or eat, but they do continue to produce viable sperm and the semen to deliver it, and their hearts continue to pump blood. That's an odd mix of biological processes there. Why, it's almost as if the author hasn't thought through the whole vampire thing and just makes it work however her plot needs it to work.

The fetus develops so rapidly I thought maybe I'd missed Bella drinking the Water of Life, so the newly married couple decides to conceal her pregnancy from Mustache Dad. It sure is lucky they did, because Bella dies giving birth to the half-vampire child. Edward is devastated, but then he remembers that in the Meyerverse, vampire blood not only turns living people into vampires, but dead people, too! So even though she's already dead, Edward makes like the Re-Animator, and Bella's eyes open, vampire-red. End of Part 4, Part 1.

Part 4, Part 2 picks up directly from there. The power fantasy of Twilight's vampirism reaches completion in this installment, as we're treated to annoying zoom shots of Bella Swan's (Kristen Stewart) super-human senses: She can see the tiniest drop of water, hear the movement of air, see the dust motes between the carpet fibers, smell the slightest of farts. Instead of reacting in horror and despair that she is now condemned to the same damnation of attending high school over and over again until the end of time that Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) has endured for a century, she's ecstatic to be a walking corpse that feasts on the blood of the living. Now she can live her suburban white American upper-middle-class unlife until the end of time! Plus, she can run really, really fast by way of a terribly rendered CGI effect, smash slabs of granite with her bare hands without having to, you know, put in any effort to build muscles, and have sex literally constantly since vampires don't sleep or become fatigued.

And every vampire has a special vampire power, on top of all their other powers, so that Meyer can rely on mind-reading, clairvoyance, and seeing the future whenever she can't think of a plausible way to get the characters out of a situation. If you guessed that Bella's special power (which is that other vampires' special powers don't work on her, except when the filmmakers forget and have a power affect her) is the most special-est one of all, give yourself a cookie.

So Bella's the strongest vampire of all the Cullens, and has the best-est power, and is definitely--with the Twilight vampire make-up job and those red colored contact lenses--the hottest. There's the little trouble of bloodlust, though, since newly-turned vampires in the Meyerverse are very difficult to keep from eating people. Edward takes her out to hunt an animal instead, but she gets a whiff of some poor bastard who's just gashed himself open while rock-climbing, and she's off to eat him. Uh-oh, conflict! But this is Twilight, so conflict is either never brought up at all or brought up and then immediately resolved. This time it's option b: Edward runs after her and tells her she shouldn't eat this guy, so she doesn't, and the idea that she'll eat people is never mentioned in the film again; in fact, she's allowed to meet Mustache Dad (Billy Burke), alone, the next day. Man, Edward's one minute of training sure paid off! Bella is about to eat a deer, but not only are these vampires so neutered they don't eat people, they don't even eat cute cuddley-wuddley animals. So Bella instead eats a mountain lion that was just about to eat the deer. She vampire-jumps and hits the beast from the side, taking it down and tearing its neck open with her teeth. And yes, it looks just as ridiculous as it sounds.

Speaking of Mustache Dad, he is now the only actual human being left in Twilight, since Bella's high school friends are absent this film. Progressively through the series, these friends have become more and more apart from Bella until they disappear entirely after her wedding, since her marriage signified her becoming a full member of the Mormon church Cullen clan and so she has no connection to these people from her pre-Cullen life. I don't think Meyer was going for the Cullens as a symbolic dangerous cult, but that's what she gave us. Bella's okay with the Cullens' telling her father she's dead, since she has Edward and is a vampire now and that's all that's important. Spurned suitor Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner), though, says she'll want to have her father in her life, so, in a genuinely funny scene--in part due to Burke's acting, which I've already praised elsewhere--Jacob reveals he is a werewolf to Mustache Dad. He does this by stripping off his clothes, making this the obligatory "Jacob takes off his shirt" scene, much to Mustache Dad's annoyance. Somehow this means it's okay for Bella to continue to see her father. Whew, that was...too close. Another conflict raised and immediately hand-waved away!

But why is Jacob there, you ask? Well, the werewolves have this thing called "imprinting". Long story short, it's "there's someone out there just for you" taken to its Meyerverse extreme. A werewolf sees a person of the opposite sex (despite all the shirtless male horseplay throughout the series, these dogs don't roll with teh gay!) and becomes that person's creepy stalker: He has to be with that person, and no other, and the obsession can't be changed or removed. Jacob doesn't imprint on Bella because that would've brought about a genuine conflict with no easy resolution, and we'll have none of that. No, he imprints--and I can't believe I'm going to write this--he imprints...on...the baby.

The baby.

This man witnesses a birth, and upon seeing the bloody, squalling infant, he falls in love with it.

Which means that, throughout the film, he's constantly hovering around the little girl, looking at her with naked longing in his eyes. (It's very, very odd that Taylor Lautner's best acting in the entire series is giving creepy sex looks to a 7-year-old girl.) It was disturbing every time I saw it, astonished that the director filmed those scenes and included them in the final print. I mean, it just has to be seen to be believed. Wait no, because I saw it and I still don't believe it.

The plot, what little there is, is exactly the same as that of Part 3. In that film, Victoria (Bryce Dallas Howard) and her horde of vampires were coming to destroy the Cullen family, who had to turn to the underwearwolves for help. In this film, Aro (Michael Sheen) and his horde of vampires are coming to destroy the Cullen family, who have to turn to their other vampire friends for help. Most of these vampires are just names and faces that leave no impression, and they don't have much impact on the story. I laughed when one of them proved to be the Last Airbender, and it was nice to see some of the "good" vampires being vampires (i.e., eating people) when the Cullens go to ask for their help.

Now I've beaten up on Twilight a lot. Certainly it sucks, and it deserves all the scorn that has been and continues to be heaped upon it. But I do want to give credit where I can, and two of these new vampires are fabulous. These are Hanz and Franz--I don't know what their real names are, but to me they're Hanz and Franz--Romanian vampires who used to be in charge of the vampire world until the Italian Volturi overthrew them. These guys, with their best Bela Lugosi accents and the way they finish each other's thoughts, are only matched in the shameless overacting department by Michael Sheen--yes, that Michael Sheen--as Aro, the leader of the Volturi. These three men slice the ham thick, and I love them for it. Hanz and Franz are pushing the Cullens and their friends to fight the Volturi, but nobody but Edward is having it, since the Volturi are so powerful no-one can stand against them. Edward gives a "we few, we happy few" speech (consisting of maybe three lines) that won't have Shakespeare looking over his shoulder, and they're all ready to fight. (Personally, the hell with Edward, but I'd fight for Hanz and Franz.)

Carlisle (Peter Facinelli), the head of the Cullen family, exposits that the Volturi are coming to destroy the Cullens so they can force Alice Cullen (Ashley Greene), the vampire who sees the future, to become part of their clan. To disguise this naked power grab, however, the Volturi need an excuse, and they decide to use as their pretext a report that Edward and Bella's daughter, who has the hilariously stupid name "Reneesme", is an "immortal child". That is, a child turned into a vampire, for such are forbidden by the Volturi as too dangerous to be allowed to exist, since they have all the powers of a vampire but the minds of children. Carlisle decides to gather up as many of his vampire friends as he can to "witness" to the Volturi that Alia Reneesme isn't an immortal child. No one points out that this is a fantastically moronic plan, because Carlisle just said the immortal child thing is a pretext. But they carry out the plan anyway, because it's Twilight and Meyer had to fill up four novels despite telling a story that doesn't have a shred of tension or drama.

So we're set for the final confrontation, the climax of Twilight, the showdown between the Good Cullens and the Evil People-Eating Vampires (never mind that the Cullens' allies also eat people) to close out the THE TWILIGHT SAGA. But it's Twilight, so people have to yack first. Carlisle offers Aro his witnesses. Aro's special vampire power is to look into the minds of those he touches, so he says forget the witnesses and asks to touch the child. Of course he discovers the kid isn't an immortal child. Well, she is immortal, and a child, but what she's not is an immortal child. He then declares she is to be destroyed anyway, since they don't know exactly what she is and that makes her dangerous. The Cullens react as if this is some big betrayal, but Carlisle earlier said the whole thing was just a pretext to get to Alice. What did you expect Aro to do? Say "Oops, our mistake!" and turn around and go home? What's surprising is that he's even talking about this, and that he doesn't lie after working the mind-mojo on the kid. But we have to pad, pad, pad, so now Alice shows up and says that she's seen the future and the child isn't dangerous, allowing Aro to touch her and see her visions for himself as proof. He does and sees she's right, but now he does lie about it and declares the child is to be destroyed because the whole thing is a pretext. God, this is so dumb.

The big fight begins, and something impressive happens. No, really. The fight begins with Carlisle charging Aro, and Aro kills him. That's right, in this series in which nothing bad has happened to any of the Cullens, in which no one is ever really in danger, in which none of the good guys has even been hurt except the time Bella was bitten by James in the first movie, the Cullen patriarch gets kacked. This doesn't happen in the Breaking Down novel, and let me tell you, there were gasps in the audience. This film series has so far proceeded more or less in lockstep with the books--changing minor details but forbidden from tinkering with anything important--but Part 4, Part 2 threw the Twihards a curveball, and they didn't know what to do. I myself couldn't believe it was happening (for good reason, as it turned out). Meyer produced this film, so she had to approve Carlisle's death. Not only that, they kill Harpo and some of the werewolves in the ensuing bloodbath, before finally Aro himself falls and the Volturi retreat. Finally, some actual stakes. Finally, genuine consequences. Finally, triumph at least tinged with sadness and loss. Finally, everything doesn't turn out all right in the end, not totally. Even though the good guys won, there was a cost. A price to be paid.

The entire fight was just Alice's vision, showing Aro what would happen if he fights the battle. Since the result is his own death, Aro takes his army and goes home.

Fuck. This. Movie.

The old "it was all a dream" is the cheapest and laziest way to manufacture drama in the hack writer's handbook. No artistic work has ever been improved by it. All it does is piss off the audience because it means everything we just saw wasn't real and so nothing was ever really at stake. That's what infuriates me the most about Twilight. It's lazy. It doesn't even try to be any good. It doesn't put any effort into being believable or memorable or effective in any way. All it does is pander to the fantasies of a particular demographic to rake in the cash. It's the gender-reverse of the Michael Bay Transformers series. And people buy into it. As long as your product works my fetish, I'll pay you for it, no matter how cheap and lazy and sloppy it is. People, I don't hate romantic films. I don't hate action films. I don't hate superhero films. I hate lazy films. And I hate people who don't hate lazy films. Have some goddamned standards, ya heathens! Make 'em earn it!

Some critics are praising the film for its climax, even as they also criticize it for chickening out in the end. But by making it all just a vision, the filmmakers destroy all the interest they've crassly manufactured. In the end, it's the same old Twilight: toothless, neutered, non-threatening, status quo-affirming, consequence-free.

Still, the Twihards' reactions were damn fun. I mean, they even killed Harpo!

Twilight: When an Irresistible Plot Device Meets an Emotionless Object

Twilight, pp. 53-57

I threw down a quick bowl of cereal and some orange juice from the carton. I felt excited to go to school, and that scared me. I knew it wasn't the stimulating learning environment I was anticipating, or seeing my new set of friends. If I was being honest with myself, I knew I was eager to get to school because I would see Edward Cullen. And that was very, very stupid.

You know, as I go through this book a second time, I hate it a lot more. With the tide of badness washing over you, it's easy to miss the little things. Take this paragraph here.

First, I had no idea the phrase 'throw down' referred to eating. I know its literal meaning, and I know it's a seldom-used euphemism for fighting, but I didn't know people referred to eating food quickly as 'throwing down'. I got a good laugh, though, by my literal reading of the phrase. I pictured Bella, in a chipper mood for the first time in the story, cheerfully making a bowl of cereal and then throwing it on the floor. Then, rather than throwing the carton of orange juice down after it, she pours some juice into her hand and throws that on the floor. Go ahead, picture it. Might as well get some amusement out of this thing. (No, I didn't picture her fighting with her cereal, but that would've been awesome.)

Notice how, yet again, Bella utterly dismisses people she calls friends, who have been nothing but considerate and friendly despite her generally gloomy demeanour and cutting remarks. Maybe this is an accurate portrayal of an average teenager (though I remember liking my friends, and even wanting to see them on occasion), but it comes off as a kind of psychosis. Edward is the only thing that matters, and every other contact is all but shut out. Whenever she's not talking to Edward, she's thinking about Edward, even when other people are talking to her. I don't know how she continues to pass her classes, since she treats schoolwork the same way she treats her friends (as distractions from Edward). In fact, this is yet another point at which I can see an interesting direction the novel might have taken. (Go ahead, try it yourself.) What if Bella, the socially inexperienced girl with excellent marks, falls so hard for Edward that her grades start to slip, jeopardising her future?

But no, that would introduce some conflict into the story, since Edward would then not be perfect for Bella. It really is a mark of how much vampires have been neutered in contemporary culture. Edward can lust for human blood, but he can't cause Bella to get a B in chemistry!

I'm beginning to suspect Charlie is a very private man and is also constantly busy so that Meyer doesn't have to portray Bella shutting him out as she does her friends. Throughout the book (and, I'm given to understand, in future stories as well), Charlie comes off as the most sympathetic character. We see another example of this here:

Charlie had gotten up who knows how early to put snow chains on my truck.

Chief Swan comes off as a decent, loving father, and Bella remains self-centred, deceitful, and ungrateful.

We also see also another instance of Bella's maddening contradictory traits. She breezes through all her classes, an advanced prep, straight-A student, but she is 'scared' because she is 'excited about going to school'.

And I was suspicious of [Edward]; why should he lie about his eyes?

Bella here is referring to Edward's evasiveness about his eyes changing colour--to what end, I've no idea--but I still find it amusing that his lie about not having a chance to introduce himself gets a pass. Then there's this gem:

...Mike's puppy dog behaviour and Eric's apparent rivalry with him were disconcerting. I wasn't sure if I didn't prefer being ignored.

So when Mike sat next to Bella and escorted her to her next class while Eric looked on with jealousy, 'that was flattering', but now the exact same behaviour is 'disconcerting'. What's happened here?

Well you see, Oh My Brothers, now Bella has Edward, who is higher up in the food chain. So now the other two boys' desire for Bella and their rivalry with each other is meaningless, and hence their antics now annoy Bella.

Now we get another moment that made me laugh out loud the first time I saw the Twilight film. But first, the set-up.

Edward Cullen was standing four cars down from me, staring at me in horror. His face stood out from a sea of faces, all frozen in the same mask of shock. But of more immediate importance was the dark blue van that was skidding, tires locked and squealing against the brakes, spinning wildly across the ice of the parking lot. It was going to hit the back corner of my truck, and I was standing between them. I didn't even have time to close my eyes.
But a lot of other people had time to hear the sound of the brakes, turn to look, recognise what is happening, and assume shocked expressions. Unless 'a sea of' people were already all looking at Bella. And surely that wouldn't be the case.

Just before I heard the shattering crunch of the van folding around the truck bed, something hit me, hard, but not from the direction I was expecting. My head cracked against the icy blacktop, and I felt something solid and cold pinning me to the ground.

I hope you see the romance in 'Edward violently shoves Bella into hard surfaces', because this won't be the last time we'll see it.

I was lying on the pavement behind the tan car I'd parked next to. But I didn't have a chance to notice anything else, because the van was still coming. It had curled gratingly around the end of the truck and, still spinning and sliding, was about to collide with me again.

A low oath made me aware that someone was with me, and the voice was impossible not to recognise. Two long, white hands shot out protectively in front of me, and the van shuddered to a stop a foot from my face, the large hands fitting providentially into a deep dent in the side of the van's body.

Wow, two unnecessary adverbs in the same sentence! Meyer has outdone herself. (Plus, 'providentially' is used incorrectly, given what Bella says about the dents [sic] later.) Bella is fine, of course, and there are some words exchanged to this effect, during which Edward speaks in a 'low, frantic voice' and assumes a 'concerned, innocent expression'. Some vampire. When Father Callahan lamented the world no longer had Evil for him to confront, just evil, the vampire Barlow showed him the error of his thinking in 'Salem's Lot's most powerful scene. ('Come, false priest. Learn of a true religion. Take my communion!')* One gets the feeling Callahan's faith would be more than adequate to send Edward fleeing back to his coffin--err, crypt--err, stately Cullen manor just outside of town.

Then we get the novel's version of one of my favourite moments in the Twilight film:

'How in the...' I trailed off, trying to clear my head, get my bearings. 'How did you get over here so fast?'

'I was standing right next to you, Bella,' he said, his tone serious again.

I'm not sure exactly why I find this exchange so hilarious, but I do. After Edward stops a speeding van with his bare hands, Bella demands to know...how he reached her so quickly. I can't tell you how hard I laughed once I realised she was never going to bring up his superhuman strength and durability, not to Edward or to anyone else. She will pursue him relentlessly about how he got from where she saw him standing to where she was, but she never thinks to herself that it's a wee bit strange that he was able to stop an out-of-control vehicle barrelling towards him just by pushing on it. No, the reason her puzzler hurts is that he seemed to be standing far away. He mentions that she has a concussion and that's why she doesn't realise where he was (frankly, not a bad explanation), but she's convinced.

To be fair, the novel does have Bella bring up his leaving hand-prints in the side of the van from pushing it to a stop, but only later, in the hospital, and after she's harped on the 'how were you there so fast?' bit.

I'm sorry, but I'd sooner demand an explanation of 'you stopped a speeding van with your bare hands' than 'I thought you were standing over there'.**

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*We'll just ignore Callahan's appearance in the later Dark Tower books. Should be easy to do, since after reading the later Dark Tower books, I slammed my head into the desk until I dislodged all memory of them.
**Good thing nobody notices the van has two hand-shaped dents in it, eh?