Cavalcade of Awesome

For regular readers, if you recall, I watched the first Twilight movie last March and was not a fan.

However, thinking back on it, as much as I hated what Stephanie Meyer and Twilight has done to vampires (and literature in general), there were things in the movie that I didn’t hate.  Vampire baseball being one of those.  The “evil” vampires being another.  But I did hate EVERYTHING about Bella and Edward.  EVERYTHING.  The dialogue, the look, the language, the way they acted with each other.  HATED IT.  It was a bad Harlequin romance novel, horrible dialogue and all, gussied up with non-threatening “vegetarian vampires”, a weak willed heroine and an angsty, emo pretty boy (who doesn’t wash his hair) as the anti-hero.

So, being the pop culture guru that I am, I felt I needed to continue the series and watch Twilight: New Moon, the first sequel, especially if I’m going to continue talking about how much Twilight is ruining vampires for everyone.  So I got the movie from Netflix and my wife and I sat down to watch it this past Saturday.  Now, to be honest, I wasn’t exactly dreading it.  I was totally expecting not to like the movie, but I thought I could enjoy how completely ridiculous it’ll be and laugh the majority of it off.  Like watching Battlefield Earth after several shots of Jagermeister and Red Bull.  I was wrong.

This movie is so f’n bad that I am ashamed I even watched it.  I’m ashamed for the majority of the actors in the movie.  This movie makes the first Twilight look like Citizen Kane.  It almost makes Battlefield Earth look like Citizen Kane.  It is horrible in the same way that someone kicking a kitten is horrible.  And I don’t know if I should blame the director, writer, author, actors or just curse God for releasing this upon the Earth.

First of all, I was actually kind of excited to see werewolves get thrown into the mix.  The last movie was entirely too full of gay-ass vampires.  We needed some thing more awesome, like big bad ass wolves.  Well, there were werewolves in this movie.  And the wolves were big and bad ass, but look at the guys that turned into the wolves.

Tell me this doesn’t look like the cast of the floor show at San Francisco’s popular nightclub, The Manhole. Are werewolves forbidden from wearing shirts, because these guys don’t wear shirts throughout the entire movie.  And why do they all have to wear jorts (jean shorts)?  These werewolves are less gay than the vampires in the movie, but that’s like saying Elton John is less gay than Liberace.  They are both still GAY.  I don’t feel like these guys want to wolf out and murder me, I feel like they want to give me a lap dance.  So now Stephanie Meyer is ruining werewolves.  Great.

How about the plot?  It’s hard to tell because the dialogue is so damn bad I wanted to stab myself in the eardrum with a rusty letter opener so I wouldn’t have to hear it.  The movie  starts off on Bella’s birthday.  She is nearly killed by one of the “nice” vampires, which I can understand cause Bella is irritating.  Then this red headed vampire, Victoria, returns and also wants to kill Bella (someone better succeed soon)  so Edward leaves “to protect her”.  And by “protect her” I can only assume he means “protect himself”.  There is a HORRIBLY contrived scene where Edward tells Bella he doesn’t want to be with her anymore and he just wants her to leave.  It’s f’n AWFUL and completely transparent what he’s doing so why Bella doesn’t get it is beyond me (DUMB).

So now Edward is out of Bella’s life and she sits in front of her window for like 4 months and doesn’t move.  Seriously, the movie shows her sitting in a chair staring out her bedroom window as title cards flash by; October, November, December…etc.  And it feels like the scene lasts for months.  Then, Bella starts going all Point Break on us and becomes an “adrenaline junkie” because she sees a smoky vision of Edward whenever she’s being “dangerous”.  I use quotes because the most dangerous thing she does is ride on a motorcycle really fast.  Oh, and jump off a rock ledge that everyone else in the movie jumps off of also….into the water.  Yeah, she’s EXTREME.

Then, finally, we have some fairly nice and normal scenes between Bella and Jacob as they re-build two motorcycles together (well, Jacob does all the building while Bella sits there asking him stupid questions).  These scenes are slightly awkward but they are nice, too.  Then, Bella goes on a date with both Jacob and another guy, then Jacob is “revealed” as a werewolf, which is supposed to be a surprise in the movie but is anything but to the viewer.  From here on out we get ridiculous professions of love from Jacob to Bella and horrible, horrible scenes of Bella being all angsty about Edward and Jacob.  My thoughts?  Edward said he loves Bella and will protect her, but at the first sign of trouble he leaves.  Jacob also says he loves Bella and will protect her but he stands by his promise by fighting off one of his own werewolf brothers to protect Bella.  The choice is clear.  Werewolves are awesome and vampires are gay.

So, the “gripping” conclusion involves Edward hearing second hand that Bella died.  How?  I don’t know, the movie says he only contacts his family every few months, so I’m not sure who told him.  Anyway he plans on revealing himself to humans and getting killed because he can’t live without her (except he’s been living without her for the past few months).  Bella finds out, travels all the way to some far off Italian city and gets there in a few hours.  JUST in time to stop Edward from showing himself to the townspeople.  Then we get a weird scene with the vampire high council, The Volturi, which includes Michael f’n Sheen and Dakota f’n Fanning.  Michael Sheen is a great actor but will appear in anything if you give him enough money.  He’s played a werewolf in the three Underworld movies, now he’s a vampire in the Twilight movies.  He’s the Ben Kingsley of angsty gothic romance.  And Dakota Fanning was a surprise.  I didn’t expect that.  Anyway, the whole scene is awkward and they allow Bella to live if the Cullens turn her into a vampire (which Bella wanted in the first place).

It all ends with Edward getting into a staring match with Jacob and then proposing to Bella.  Fade to black.

AWFUL.  Before this movie, I watched the trailer for the third movie, Eclipse, and I was actually excited because the trailer focused on a war between vampires and werewolves and it doesn’t focus on Bella and Edward.  However, after this movie, I’m now actually back to being pissed at how bad Twilight is.  The story makes no sense, the scenes between Bella and Edward are awkward and irritating because they have this ridiculously co-dependent relationship that isn’t romantic, it’s creepy.  And vampires are these pale creatures who wear tons of eye make up and aren’t threatening as much as they are queer.

Did I like anything?  Taylor Lautner as Jacob is mostly good especially when he’s bowing up against Edward and the scenes where he’s building Bella’s motorcycle.  I actually think he can do better than Bella so Jacob should just move on.  Let Edward deal with all her sh*t.  Seriously.  If we had to pick, my wife and I are Team Jacob, but we don’t want Jacob to end up with Bella because we think he’s better than her and she has WAY too much emotional baggage.  Edward and Bella deserve each other and I don’t mean that in the nice way.  I also liked Dakota Fanning even though she is almost wasted as she has very little to do.  Hopefully she has a bigger part in the next movie.

Obviously, I can’t recommend this.  Sorry I went on and on about a movie that sucks, but I just had to get this off my chest.  Watching this movie tainted my soul and I feel unclean in a way that even a Silkwood shower can’t undo.

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This entry was posted on May 7, 2010 at 10:49 am and is filed under monsters, movies, reviews, Twilight, vampires, werewolf, werewolves with tags monsters, movies, reviews, Twilight, vampires, werewolf, werewolves. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.