Well… we all knew this review was coming. When a film franchise makes a crap ton of money and generates as much hype as the Twilight series it’s only a matter of time before I’m pretty much forced to see what all the hullabaloo is about. I tried to put it off, I tried to pretend it was just a fad, but it didn’t end so well this way. It was like seeing all the signs you had cancer, but putting off going to a doctor out of fear of what he would tell you. You knew putting it off was only going to make things worse, but you just didn’t care, you didn’t want to face the truth. Well, I finally went to the doctor, and I’m actually glad I did, because now I can comment on one of the biggest film franchises of this generation... I'm here to break the news to you about your cancer.
And for the record, this review is going to be honest, in depth, and sincere, I’ll point out anything in the film I actually liked, and I’ll back up things I didn’t like with actual reasons why I felt that way, not just “sparkling vampires are GAY!”. A lot of you will say I’m a sparkle-hater, and while the idea that this film franchise pretty much obliterated the mythos of the vampire for an entire generation doesn’t exactly sit well with me, it’s something I can deal with under the right circumstances and I won't even bring it up in the review. After all, this is the guy who defended the idea of the “running zombie” in 28 Days Later. An original take on a classic creature is acceptable, as long as the idea is treated sincerely, seriously, and creatively. Was this spin handled that way in Twilight: New Moon? Well… let’s get started on the review shall we?
The first (and biggest) problem I had with the film was the characters, namely the protagonist Bella Swan. For a character who was supposed to be portrayed as a strong, independent female lead, Bella sure fails to have any sort of likeability in this film. Instead, she’s a petulant, selfish, self-destructive, shallow, manipulative brat, often leading guys in the film on for the sole purpose of crushing them later just because she suffered a little high school break up. The opening scene of the film revolves around her nightmare of growing old while her immortal boyfriend Edward stays young, instantly portraying her as a shallow, beauty obsessed emotional train wreck who is more concerned with her looks than the true meaning of love. If a film like Highlander can have a well done, powerful message about love spanning lifetimes and beyond amidst its large number of swordfights, then surely a film like this with NO ACTION can squeeze something like that into its two + hours running time.
Now this is where “twi-hards” will instantly defend the film by saying “Well it was written that way in the book!”, but that’s sort of the entire point isn’t it? This franchise has effectively created an emotionally damaged, anti-social, apathetic stereotype of what a strong woman should behave like when facing a break up, made even worse by the horrific writing and dialogue saturated throughout the movie. Sigourney Weaver couldn’t even make this character likeable, and Kristin Stewart is no Sigourney Weaver. Her emotionless delivery of the lines and horrific wooden acting turn the protagonist into a joke. She may as well be made of cardboard, and her portrayal of the character completely destroys decades of progress made with well written, strong female leads. How are you supposed to like a character like Bella Swan when she gives you every reason to hate her?
When writing an independent, strong female character there are so many simple ways to do so that I could make a list. In fact, let’s do that right now shall we? Pretty much all likeable and strong female fall into three main categories they are:
1. The Tough, Strong Willed Charmer (i.e. Marion Ravenwood)-This is your basic, go-to archetype when trying to create a female character. These characters typically make up for their lack of physical strength with an independent, emotional strength. Take Marion Ravenwood from Raiders of the Lost Ark for example. Marion is a tough, no-nonsense woman who can out drink any man on Earth and loves a good scrap, but also has a soft side to counterbalance her sharp tongue. Her dialogue is written to appeal to both male and female audiences by making her an independent role model for females, and a funny, sarcastic, firecracker of a love interest for guys. Her character is so likeable in fact that an entire generation of men fell in love with a female lead that managed to look like Kristy Allen.
Seriously… her
As strong and likeable as she was though, her strength never laid in her physical abilities. Yeah, she punches Indy, but he brushes it off like someone who just sneezed really hard. We never see Marion kung fu fight a Nazi because we know the Nazi would win unless Marion had an unfair advantage, or took him by surprise. No, Marion’s appeal lied in her inner strength instead of her musculature, and by doing this Marion became a woman who the audience knew could handle herself in a tough situation. She showed the world that you didn’t need to kick-ass to be a kick-ass heroine, and with Marion Spielberg created a female lead that was universally praised as the epitome of what a strong, female lead should be in a film. Unfortunately, he completely undid all his hard work with his next portrayal of a female lead.
Seriously… her
2. The Strong Minded Moral Compass (i.e. Donna Noble)-Having a female character who can fight her way out of a tough situation is classic, but how about a character who can talk a person into taking the harder, morally higher ground? Enter Donna Noble, one of the funniest characters ever written and hands down my favorite Doctor Who companion. Donna Noble was the Doctor’s companion for the fourth series of Doctor Who, and while the Doctor had already been well travelled with Rose Tyler and Martha Jones, Donna was the first of his new companions whose sole purpose on the show wasn’t to make googly eyes at him while he did all the work.
The REAL Noble Squad, Halo: Reach can eat its’ heart out
You see, The Doctor is a strange exception to the action hero image. He’s the hero in an action/sci-fi television show, but he never really engages in any sort of physical violence during his travels. Instead, the Doctor relies on his wits and intelligence to defuse a hostile situation, and in this respect he's a great role model for adolescents and kids to look up to. He loves non-violence, and he’s always at his happiest when both sides can walk away from the conflict unscathed. He’s a peace lover first and a soldier second, and during his travels his companions always relied on him to get them out of a bad situation, often becoming the very essence of the “damsel in distress”. His repeated and repeated habit of bailing them out led to him growing an inflated ego, sometimes even becoming conceited and making travels to simply sate his ego… until Donna entered the picture.
Where Rose and Martha were seen by the Doctor as something akin to kids who needed his help, Donna took on the persona of his big sister. She would talk him out of ideas that were flat out stupid, she would perform dangerous tasks if it meant getting him out of hot water, and on more than one occasion she would put him back in his place after his ego grew out of control. It was never castrating, in fact the Doctor seemed to revel in having a companion who had the guts to reel him back whenever his aspirations exceeded his reach, and despite the constant sharp banter between them they absolutely loved each other and knew they were perfect together. The Doctor was heartbroken when he had to let her go, and despite their lack of any physical attraction to each other Donna held him in the highest regards, often volunteering to follow him into hell itself.
Donna was a female heroine who, like the doctor, relied on her sharp wit and intelligence to become a strong, independent moral compass that the doctor truly needed in his journeys. She wasn’t afraid to get her hands dirty, but her physical prowess was never over-exerted to the point of being unbelievable. I’m not trying to be misogynistic, it’s just simple physics and logic that a small woman isn’t going to be an action star. Playing this card is always a tough journey, but if you really, seriously, ABSOLUTELY need to go this route for a film, then you had better…
3. Have a Damn Good Reason For it (i.e. River Tam)-There are few things in a movie theater more uncomfortable than having a skinny, underweight Hollywood actress accomplishing flat out ridiculous feats of physical strength.
Seriously… her
Yes, that is from the 2001 film Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, and yes, that is a 110 pound Angelina Jolie punching a fifteen foot tall, two ton murder-bot to death with her bare hands. To make matters worse, just twenty seconds prior to this picture Jolie held its robotic claws from crushing her face with nothing more than a strained face and her fragile human wrists. For a period in the early 2000s scenes like this were becoming more and more common as the “girl power” craze gained a lot of momentum in Hollywood. Before we knew it we were being bombarded with countless films starring Michelle Rodriguez and Angelina Jolie as ass kicking female leads who kung fu fought hordes of men twice their size.
This may be well and good for the directors who are making these films as a simple cash grab, but for the audience it’s a big difference. I remember seeing these films, and feeling, actually FEELING the uneasy squirms from both men and women alike as these heroines managed to shatter our suspensions of belief, hearing chuckles and groans as Rodriguez punched out a guy standing over two feet taller than her and uttered a cheesy one-liner. Having a tough woman who is a crack shot with a gun, or good with a sword is one thing, but making them able to overwhelm muscular adversaries in sheer strength is flat out silly to watch, no matter how much kung fu is involved. Luckily, there are a lot of ass kicking heroines out there who are believable in their roles as powerhouses, but it isn’t because they can simply make a sour face and spout expository dialogue.
Enter the plot device, a simple idea that can transform a ninety pound Milla Jovovich into the supernatural supreme being “Leelu” in Fifth Element. With a simple explanation of how these apparently small women are superior to their counterparts we the audience can once again get behind the idea of them performing these incredible feats, and I didn’t hear any groans or snickers while Leelu was fighting off waves of Manglors in Fifth Element, just entertained silence. Combine these explanations with even half decent acting and a lack of cheesy one liners and you have a believable, strong, ass-kicking broad on your hands. While these explanations can be seen as weak attempts to drive the plot forward, a respectfully and carefully handled explanation can make a world of difference. Leelu was the supreme being of legend, a sort of demi-god created to protect Earth, and they went into detail about how she is genetically superior in countless ways to a regular human. Alice from Resident Evil was the result of cybernetic augmentation, and River from Firefly/Serenity, was an experimental subject of genetic alterations and virtual flash training.
Now again, I can’t stress enough that these devices aren’t nearly as complex and difficult to write as a genuine, strong, female heroine, but if handled correctly they can re-integrate a feeling of believability into a character. Leelu was shown kicking a lot of ass, but shortly after the fight the film made a point of showing just how vulnerable she really was. Serenity took a different approach and gave us the best of both worlds, a strong, independent sharpshooter and tactician with Zoe, and a plot device driven super soldier with River. Each one filled their role perfectly, as we saw plenty of instances of Zoe masterfully driving behind the wheel of a vehicle, making good command choices, and shooting the s**t out on anything in front of her, but the second she tries to take on a Reaper she nearly gets ripped to shreds in less than a second. River on the other hand is an unstable wreck due to years of experiments and brain tampering, but in her moments of lucidity she’s shown believably fighting off swarms of Reapers with weapons, grace, and her enhanced humanity, something a normal woman like Zoe could never do.
Oh come on, you know it’s true! And before you say I’m going all misogynistic again remember that this rule works for men too. Not to compare him to a ninety pound girl, but do you really think Luke Skywalker, a hundred and sixty pound or so farmboy from Tatooine could take on a seven foot tall, four hundred pound cyborg with years of combat experience on him in the real world? Hells no, Luke would get squashed like a bug, but Luke has the greatest playing field leveler of all time, he has the Force as his ally, and a powerful ally it is. This transforms Luke from a regular person into a sort of super soldier, and because of this never once does the audience think the lightsaber fights between him and Vader are far-fetched.
Now while Bella is clearly never supposed to be an action hero in these films, she IS supposed to be a representation of the female sex, and apparently (according to the author) the logical thing for the female sex to do when a guy breaks up with her is to manipulate any guy who likes you, become an emotional train wreck, and then jump off a cliff. Even more insulting is the fact that this idea, however ridiculous it is, actually works! After her sad little attempt for attention falls short and she is rescued, Edward finally decides to try and get in touch with her again. Does anyone else find this premise insulting? Marketing this idea to a group of impressionable tweens still trying to figure out what to do with their life is flat out stupid, if not incredibly dangerous.
I wish I could say that she was the only weak point of the film, but it’s only the beginning. Pretty much every character is a weak stereotype coated in sticky bad dialogue and dipped in horrendous acting flakes. The only two people in the film who seemed to be doing ANY sort of acting were Billy Burke as Bella’s dad Charlie and Michael Sheen as a member of the Valtari named Aro. This film seems to drain any ability of anyone involved in its’ making, the exceptionally competent Anna Kendrick has become a caricature of buffoonery, the always entertaining Graham Greene is now a boring wheelchair bound waste of time, and the immensely talented Dakota Fanning is now nothing more than a creepy, obnoxious tween queen.
The direction, cinematography, and sound direction reeked of MTV tainted awfulness, and after seeing the brand new trailer I’m a little surprised they aren’t calling the upcoming installment Twilight Saga: Teen (Vampire) Mom. Weak camera tricks (usually involving flat angle shots shot in slow motion) are mixed with teenage angst music with hilarious results. The lines of dialogue and metaphorical allusions are so horrifically written that I don’t even think subtlety is in the directors’ mind. We all get that becoming a werewolf is a metaphor for male puberty, but I remember falling down laughing at a line Jacob says when Bella confronts him about being a werewolf, something along the lines of “I didn’t choose to be like this, I was born this way”. Gee, I wonder what he could be talking about…
Where do I begin with the writing? The lines of this film are so bad that they sound like they come out of a South Park satire of the franchise, and one line (I s**t you NOT) was straight out of Austin Powers. When a film has to use dialogue from Austin God Damn Powers, you know you are in some serious trouble. Some lines that really got me laughing, even months later, include:
“Who let the wolf out?”
“We won’t bite… hard.”
“Hundred and three degrees over here!”
“Oh my Jacob, you’re burning up!”
“So… you’re a werewolf?”
“The only thing that can hurt you is me.”
“Marry me.”
“They’re like hall monitors gone bad.”
As awful as the writing was though, it did have one redeeming factor. Unlike most Hollywood movies these days it had a beginning, a middle, and an end, and each part of the film more or less led to the next part. I had no idea who that red headed chick and the dreadlocked guy were, but I’ll forgive them because I think it was explained in the first film, and the important thing is that every action usually (I said USUALLY) had a purpose behind it. Most summer films jump from scene to scene with no transition, people are one place, and suddenly they are the next, but luckily here that is not the case. I also liked how Edward’s intentions were kept secret until the end, since most movies would show him having THAT conversation so the audience doesn’t see him as a jerk. You know the scene I’m talking about, a scene after he leaves her where he explains away all his bad decisions, and it would go something like this.
Vampire: But why Edward? Why did you leave her?
Edward: Because I love her so much I don’t want to hurt her… trust me, it’s for the best.
Now I’m not going to pass judgment on the books or the rest of the films because of this one bad experience I had, but it certainly tarnished my future expectations of the film. When a character is as unlikeable and disgusting as Bella Swan was in this film, I have trouble ever believing that any amount of film or wood pulp can ever redeem her. Add poor direction, bad acting, awful cinematography, and flat out hilarious portrayals, and you have a recipe for what tween audiences now have as a benchmark for what they expect from movies.
3.5 out of 10
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