So due to the begging of my sister and nieces I ended up going to see Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part II. To keep it short, the movie was just atrocious. I’d have no problem saying if it was otherwise because believe me I like my share of bad movies, Sucker Punch for Example, the first Resident Evil for another. I know they suck and I’m good with that. A three course meal is layered, complex, and delicious but sometimes some simple cotton candy is just right. That quickly gets to the whole point of this essay, the Twilight Saga is the girl’s equivilant of Ninja movies, nunsploitation, kung fu theater or any number of other similar male oriented fantastic garbage. I actually just realized via conversations with other contributors here at CineGeek what bothers me about these movies.
The Twilight Saga is this generation’s Pretty Woman or Dirty Dancing or Ghost. These movies all have many things in common but the most obvious commonality is that they all suck. That’s a little bit of a sweeping statement and I could defend it or define it with deeper writing or discussion if asked but to do that would diverge from what this particular amalgamation of words is about. The first thing is to cut to the chase and say it’s ok to like stuff that sucks. A steady diet of sucky stuff is a bad thing, whether it’s food, books, movies or whatever but once in a while it’s just fine.
The real point of this, and the real issue I have is that the majority of fans all of these Twilight fans I know, and the ones I’ve read on the web love these films and believe they are well acted and well made. Let me reiterate, THEY BELIEVE THEY ARE WELL MADE AND WELL ACTED. I couldn’t truly comment on the franchise critically until now because I hadn’t seen any of the films. Well, now I have and I can easily bullet point the problems with the film; Kristen Stewart is a terrible actress who’s expression changes about as often as Joan Rivers post plastic surgery, The same goes with the main male actors, they act with their teeth, hair and abs. It’s not all their fault though, the writing here is amateurish at best with cardboard cutout character development. There’s no real depth here, you have a female heroine whose goal is to help a troubled guy. The most amazing thing is the stereotyping of women is so intense here that I can’t believe that women aren’t outraged at the films rather than love them. This final film purports to be action packed but it attempts to be gritty and gratuitous but in its need to stay PG-13 the lack of blood in bloody scenes makes the action laughable.
I can actually understand young girls loving these films and thinking the actors are amazing. They’re young and don’t yet know better. The thing is that girls and women of all ages feel the same about this film. The fact is some young women who I normally respect for their intellect and appreciation of much more complex films have told me that Kristen Stewart is amazing in these films and the stories are brilliant. Again I say, it’s ok to love these movies I just take issue for not loving them for what they truly are. The movies could be so poorly made that the actors are hampered in them. Julia Roberts proved she was a better actress than you might have believed her to be in Pretty Women but at the same time Patrick Swayze ended up being pretty much what was expected of him post Dirty Dancing (although he was fine in Point Break). So tell me this, what is the power these films have over normally reasonably intelligent girls and women? Sure Revenge of the Ninja is a pretty crappy film but I do still love it. Is that so hard to admit when it comes to Twilight?