I saw the new Twilight movie yesterday with my mother and two teenage brothers (a mistake), and I can confidently say that it was the worst movie I’ve ever paid money to sit through.
And I don’t think it’s the filmmakers’ fault. The storyline is just… so offensively and violently weird that it’s almost to difficult to stomach. Almost. While my eighteen and fifteen year-old brothers groaned and writhed in pain throughout the entire film, nobody got up and left (though there were threats). When the two hours finally ended, we walked into the sunlight, blinking gratefully, completely unable to find the words to describe what we’d just seen.
Breaking Dawn: Part One opens with the ever-bland Bella rejecting a pair of truly gorgeous shoes because she’s above learning to walk in heels for her wedding. As something of a shoe-freak and heel-lover, this made me audibly scoff over and over. I was essentially infuriated from minute 1. They were such pretty shoes, white with silver detailing, and REALLY BELLA? Can’t stoop to such a materialistic level and class it up at YOUR WEDDING? Ugh. Anyway.
It’s time for The Wedding. Bella’s dressed in a Star Trek Next Generation-type shiny skintight number with a very pretty hairdo. Edward looks like a wax figure that’s been airbrushed. Every guest got the memo to wear neutral golds and lavenders, and there are flowers everywhere. It’s very pretty to behold, and it’s over-the-top-ness prompts some great banter from the adorable and witty Anna Kendrick et al, Bella’s high school friends who are in the same boat with me on the ridiculousness of the scene. And THANK THE LORD that some characters seem wise to the craziness of the storyline: Bella is marrying at eighteen years old in a ceremony more elaborate than Kim and Kris and Kate and Wills’ combined. There are a few tender moments between Bella and her dad that really get the waterworks going (my mom was like a hosepipe throughout the entire scene), a vomit-inducing five-minute long make-out scene at the altar, and some fairly cute toasts at the reception. Everything seems to be going perfectly until Preteen Werewolf Jacob shows up, eliciting heavy amounts of cheers and sighs from the group of middle school girls in the row in front of us.
Jacob decided to make an appearance at the wedding even though he’s all depressed because he’s in love with Bella too (again, WHY?) and proceeds to get WEREWOLF ANGRY when she informs him that she and Edward are planning to consummate their marriage on their honeymoon. He hulks out and turns into a wolf and runs away, and Edward had to pick up the pieces. It is at this point that I realized Bella was wearing white sneakers under her wedding gown, and I became about as angry as Jacob.
Bella and Edward go off on their honeymoon via private jet to a pretty large island that the vampires just seem to own. Edward and Bella finally Do It and apparently it’s great for her but his super-vampire-strength causes him to break the bed and bruise her up a bit. I’m actually not sure because I was pretty focused on covering my baby brother’s eyes, but folks, it ain’t much to write home about.
Edward doesn’t want to Do It with Bella anymore because of the bruises, so for the next few minutes the audience is treated to a montage of Bella attempting to seduce Edward whilst engaging in honeymoon-type activities like cliff diving and chess. Her wardrobe is splendid, and Edward looks more handsome than creepy despite the glittering skin. And then, in the plot twist of the century, we discover that Bella is With Child. Enter the awkward political debate. I don’t even want to get into all of that because there are so many seriously-skewed messages being sent by this plot line, but Bella makes her own choice to keep her Vampire Fetus, and Edward is enraged.
Cut to two weeks, and Bella is so gross-looking I almost barfed. They’ve really outdone themselves in making her look awful, and her pregnant belly is covered in bruises because apparently the Vampire Fetus is as strong as Edward. There’s a lot of discussion between werewolf and vampire alike about terminating the Vampire Fetus, but Bella will not hear of it and there’s a lot of anger and wolf-fighting and hilarious stuff that made me laugh. Whatever.
Bella finds out she’ll probably die because the Fetus is taking all of her nutrients, and somehow it’s decided that she should drink some O- out of a sippy-cup. IT’S SO GROSS. She’s all skinny and the blood is in her teeth and I DON’T KNOW WHY I PAID TO SEE THIS. So Bella’s chugging blood at this point and she and Edward are starting to get excited at the prospect of their Vampire Baby.
Bella stands up and I guess the baby kicks her in the spine because some really disgusting body contortions happen and I covered my face for most of it, but Edward essentially eats the baby out of her, and she names it Renesmee (for time’s sake I won’t discuss the name). Edward shoots Bella up with vampire venom to save her life/turn her into a vampire, and Jacob decides to kill the CGI baby as the wolves gather to help take it out. But in another Shocking Plot Twist, Jacob looks at the CGI baby and falls madly in love with it, which the werewolves define as “imprinting,” resulting in a really weird montage of the CGI baby growing up and spinning in a forest. Jacob kneels in front of the CGI baby, and the wolves have to call off their attack because they can’t harm the subject of an “imprinting.”
This movie is not worth paying to see in a theater. I can’t believe I did. It’s so offensive and you can tell that the filmmakers TRIED THEIR DARNDEST and I really pity them because they were making a movie out of a book that contained all of this material. It isn’t at all reminiscent of how real relationships work and everybody looks so weird all of the time! Why aren’t the people of Forks wise to this? I’ll probably end up seeing it on DVD at some point, but as my baby brother said, “The only good thing that came from seeing that movie is I’m 100 percent sure I’m not going to see Part 2.”
Olivia, Fordham University 2012
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Earlier this week, when I saw the very new, very ambitious, and very polarizing Terence Malick film, The Tree of Life, with a couple of friends, I did not know what to say, beyond “what just happened?” More than any film I’ve ever seen on the big screen, The Tree of Life defies not only explanation but even plain description. It is the kind of movie that your most pretentious friend would love, and marvel that you didn’t enjoy, while your friend who likes Transformers would likely fall asleep in the first half hour, or leave. It includes (so far as I can tell from reading a few reviews and seeing the film itself) the beginning of the universe, and its end; dinosaurs; dinosaurs being merciful; Brad Pitt being an emotionally abusive Southern father; lots of mysterious new age-y religious narration; and Sean Penn as a depressed modern day architect, on screen for about ten of the film’s 138 minutes.
