Day 100: Twilight (2008)

Being of sane-mind and being at least half intelligent, I have avoided all Twilight related books and films like the plague. I have a friend, Mal, who, for some inexplicable reason, finds the books and films not only enjoyable but utterly fascinating and spent a serious amount of time researching and writing about the series. This led, with good reason, to much ridicule of her on my behalf. In her defense, she often mentioned that as I had no read the books or seen the film I couldn't talk. When I started this 365in365, I asked people for suggestions on films to watch, and, of course, Mal was quick to suggest Twilight. I figured I might as well finally watch it, so that I could criticize it fairly and accurately. I decided to make it my 100th film, in order to ensure that this milestone post would be at least somewhat lengthy. So, Mal, this post is for you.

I don't think the film requires any explanation. Basically there's a girl, Bella, who falls in love, rather inexplicably, with a vampire named Edward in the small town of Forks. Bella spends most of the film trying to find out what makes Edward different - hint: he's a vampire. Edward is unusually attracted to Bella, and is unsure if he can control his urges around her. These are not the normal teenage male urges, but rather the urge to drink her blood. Despite his clear indication that he wishes to fatally drink her blood, Bella inexplicably decides to ignore this and they start to date. Shortly after dating, Edward invites Bella to come play baseball with his family, at which point three nomadic vampires show up, one of whom, James, is a hunter and decides to hunt Bella for sport. Edward tries to hide her, and in a somewhat anti-climatic fight, Edward and his family manage to kill James and save Bella. Bella and Edward happily attend prom together. Throughout the film another guy, Jacob, shows up who also has some weird fascination, though so does everyone in the town, for Bella. This fascination, like Edward's, is never explained. It can't be looks, because she's not that good looking. Her friend Jessica, Anna Kendrick, is clearly much better looking, yet none of the guys seems interested in her. Now that I've gotten the plot out of the way, let me explore how ridiculous it is.

First of all, the film spends the first 50 minutes doing nothing! Literally all that happens is Bella attempts to find out what Edward is. It takes her almost half the movie to do this. The worst part is that she Googles something, and instead of reading the numerous search results that clearly provide the answer to her question, she finds a book about it and goes to a local bookstore that sells the book. She reads maybe two pages of the book before going back online to research a word that tells her Edward is a vampire. In the next 40 minutes, nothing happens, except Bella and Edward are super awkward around each other. Literally by the 90 minute mark, nothing of any real consequence has happened. Two people have been murdered by three unknown vampires, but this takes up maybe 2 minutes of that 90. The other 88 minutes are spent providing terrible cliche and corny dialogue between Edward and Bella, and the occasional awkward scene between Jacob and Bella. Some things that I didn't understand. What is so fascinating about Bella? Also, why can't Edward read her mind? I can accept them not explaining how he can read minds, and how his sister can see the future. Neither of these are classic vampire skills, but considering how badly separated these "vampires" are from classic vampires, I can let that slid. But why introduce the fact that he can't read her mind and then not explain it. I don't think I have to mention the sparkling, but really, isn't the line "It's like diamonds. You are beautiful." a bit much? I almost threw up in my mouth. Horrid, horrid, writing.

Anyways, ok, so around the 90 minute mark something finally happens! Can you guess what it is? The Cullens, that's Edward's vampire family, decide to go play baseball! That's right folks - a family of vampires that are over 100 years old inexplicably love baseball. But, there's a catch! Because they are super strong, whenever they hit the ball it sounds like lightning, so they can only play during thunderstorms. They make a big deal out this fact, though it never comes to any fruition. So, they are out there enjoying some baseball action, when out of nowhere the three nomadic vampires show up. They have a bit of standoff, then decide to play some baseball together. I guess that's another rule about vampires I was unaware - they all love baseball. Just as everything seems fine and dandy, the wind changes and, oh my god, Bella's scent gets blown over to James who is a hunter and wants to kill Bella for sport. So, here, finally, we have the point of the film. Edward must save Bella's life. Shame it took so long to get to this point. Following this, in some rather inexplicable series of events, Bella ends up alone in her old dance studio with James. Now, if I was to write a vampire film, I wouldn't set the final fight in a room filled with mirrors for one simple reason - vampires don't have a reflection. But wait! What's this? Apparently in Twilight, vampires do have a reflection! WHAT?!?! Ok, so they can go in daylight, they have a reflection, and they have no fangs... so what exactly makes them a vampire? Anyways, moving on. So, there's a fight, James poisons Bella, but Edward drinks the poison from her, and in some miraculous moment of personal strength stops himself from drinking her dry. They end up at prom together, where Bella asks him to turn her into a vampire, to which Edward refuses. A 2-hour film that only had maybe 5-minutes of action, and terrible action at that, in a mirror-filled room between vampires! This is like the worst possible imagined ending to a vampire movie. I can't get over it. It's like having Superman fight in a room made of Kryptonite and not be hurt.

As for the film itself, apart from the story, it was pretty terrible. One of my pet peeves in films is narration, especially when used to provide the audience with information that they are too lazy to film. Narration is one of the laziest forms of narrative film-making, and Twilight opens with 4 minutes of nothing but narration. Bella continues narrating throughout the film for no reason. The acting is terrible. The terrible acting is only outdone by the terrible dialogue. I really couldn't find any redeemable quality to this film. All I can is that all my thoughts on the film before watching it were proved correct.