Twilight ...

[The Toyroom]

wow... Really ? I don't see it, but now that sounds Interesting...

[toys2cool]

http://twilightbookaddicts.files.wor...joan-jett1.jpg

very cool

[ctc]

>Lugosi never sparkled. Neither did Lee.

The biggest thing that bothered me about the whole Twilight setting was the vampires. They're very.... disingenuous. They got all the emo swoon of a modern vampire with none of the downside. It's a pretty typical story with the barest trappings of "vampire" slapped on.

Don C.

[toys2cool]

>Lugosi never sparkled. Neither did Lee.

The biggest thing that bothered me about the whole Twilight setting was the vampires. They're very.... disingenuous. They got all the emo swoon of a modern vampire with none of the downside. It's a pretty typical story with the barest trappings of "vampire" slapped on.

Don C.

aren't Vampires suppose to blend in

[ctc]

>aren't Vampires suppose to blend in

....only at the coffee shop and creative writing classes....

Don C.

[ctc]

So;

The film was on today; and I decided to watch it all the way through. (Mostly ‘cos I wanted to see how accurate the Cracked.com articles were.) Ultimately I didn’t like it. (And before I hear any “but you went IN not liking it!” retorts, please note that I’m giving REASONS. If you want to critique my critique address those.) The story hits two of my personal peeves:

-“Show Don’t Tell”: The idea of letting us know what’s happening by demonstrating it instead of outright telling us
-Reasons. Stuff shouldn’t just happen ‘cos the plot demands it. There SHOULD be in-continuity reasons. (Even if they’re not immediately obvious or require some thought from the viewer.)

The first thing I thought odd was the main character. She’s presented as a typical somewhat introverted, slightly awkward type; but EVERYBODY loves her right off the bat. (She HITS a guy and he falls in love with her!) Er.... okay. You’d think “Backwater USA” was the lovingest town on Earth, except that they explain how everybody DIDN’T like the vampire kids when they showed up. I thought this was strangely overstated. I was expecting the whole school to go “Carrie” on her at the end. But alas, no pigs blood.

The vampires bothered me. Not the creepy “May/December” ...er... “May/LAST December” romance, or the family being paired off as siblings/mates, or “Dad” collecting a retinue, or Ed sneaking into the house. Vampires aren’t human; they’re SUPPOSED to be weird and creepy. But like the Cracked article said, being a vampire is like being an X-Man: you get neat powers and people kind of don’t like you. The DOWNSIDE of vampirism was played WAY down. Even the idea that Ed KILLED people sort of goes away right after it’s mentioned. Hell, the idea that he wants to KILL THE MAIN CHARACTER goes away after one sappy speech. (“It’s the skin of a killer!” Or a club kid.) Doing that removes most of the drama of a vampire/human romance. And what we’re left with is LESS than Bridget Jones’ Diary, ‘cos “Mr Wrong” gets about 6 minutes of screentime! This sort of thing gets under my skin ‘cos I see a lot of it these days: appropriating the trappings of something without the difficult parts. Thus making it more generic and like everything else.

One thing that bugs me about movie romance is that there’s never a reason for it. WHY are these characters attracted to each other? Ed wanted to kill her, and then it goes away. Why? Just ‘cos he couldn’t read her mind? And why did she fall for him? ‘Cos he’s the bad boy? Okay; but what in her psyche makes that attractive? (Other than “That’s how it ALWAYS works.”)

...and for hundreds of year old vampires they do a pretty poopy job covering their tracks. Public identities, acting all weird, constantly on the move.... (And on the OTHER side; why did the hero have to look up vampires? Sure, it lets the AUDIENCE know what’s going on; but do you really have to explain it to us?) And when the angry prettyboy goes on the warpath, they display a SEVERE lack of tactical thinking. Not necessarily a flaw (we’re not all Patton) but you’d think after a few hundred years they’d come up with a better idea than “Okay, Shaggy and Scoob go hide. Velma, Daphne; we’ll stay here and try to catch up with the ultimate killing machine who has a head start and is gonna home right in on the squishy so it’d be better if we’d stayed together and presented an amalgamated front....”

The part where werewolf kid explains the rivalry hit another weird nerve of mine. Back in the late 80's a company called White Wolf published the “Vampire: The Masquerade” Role-Playing Game. Since then it seems like EVERY VAMPIRE ANYWHERE is like the ones in the game. (As I recall, the guys who did Underworld got sued ‘cos of this.) The Twilight vampires ARE RPG VAMPIRES! The werewolf thing is ALMOST RIGHT OUT OF THE GAME! (Werewolf kid is a Uktena, I’m guessing.) While I’m not necessarily blaming the author of plagiarism, I find it weird how ingrained into pop culture the RPG has become. (The Camarilla even show up later in the Twilight series!)

Well.... except that the RPG vampires don’t sparkle. They burn.

And Vampire Baseball was PAINFUL to watch. Partly ‘cos they don’t give us any idea WHY they’d risk so much for a game. Yeah; the artsy kids are ALWAYS sports fans. (Actually, baseball shows up a lot in the film. The main character’s step-dad is a semipro, people are always talking about it in the background. Do they explain this in the books?)

So, yeah; I wouldn’t recommend this film. Unless you were REALLY into chick-flicks, and I mean REALLY into them, since it lacks a lot of the .... complications of a regular chick-flick. (I guess that’s in part 2.)

Don C.

[BlackKnight]

Well Said Don. I couldn't agree More.
Being into Chick Flicks doens't cut it with this Movie..., You gotta Be Stoned On PCP and can't move for the Life of yourself to even make it to the end,.. let alone like it. To Be Honest..., I quit Watching when Edward was trying to suck the Venom outta that chick.

As I wrote Before. This Crap has gotta be this Biggest BS of Allure and Falsified Mystique in Recent times... It's Truely Horrible, Not Innovative, Nore Captivating at All.... , They Destroyed The Idea of Vampires that has been Told for the Last,.. well since ever. The "Chick Flick Love story" coulda still been told, as well as have something,.. without all that other Crap,.. and a Better Explaination as well as Plot, as to Why.

[toys2cool]

Can't be that bad when it's still making so much money

[BlackKnight]

Can't be that bad when it's still making so much money

That just Proves People will Buy anything. Look At Kiss.

[thunderbolt]

Can't be that bad when it's still making so much money

I had the money equates with quality arguement before. Doesn't fly. There are lots of stupid people that buy into the heard mentality.

[Meule]

I had the money equates with quality arguement before. Doesn't fly. There are lots of stupid people that buy into the heard mentality.

So very true

[ctc]

>Can't be that bad when it's still making so much money

Under THAT logic Dragonball is the greatest thing humanity has ever concieved.

>This Crap has gotta be this Biggest BS of Allure and Falsified Mystique in Recent times...

It suffers from a strange phenomenon I’ve seen a lot in the last 15-20 years: appropriating the trappings of something without applying all the resultant constraints and circumstance. And by doing so you end up with something.... well, my buddy Rob would call it “empty.” A BIG part of ANY story is the bad stuff; the circumstances that the characters HAVE to deal with, the setbacks, the challenges that test the characters and reveal who they REALLY are. In Twilight you lose a lot of that by making the vampires so.... safe. And ignoring the unpleasant parts. (Really? Ed KILLED somebody....?) It leads to really shallow stories.

But I’ve seen lots of it over the years. Superhero comics are rife with it; as are the current wave of “superhero but not” movies and TV shows. (Unbreakable, Heroes, Smallville.) We’ve had a few sci-fi shows with diminished sci-fi-ness too.

Don C.

[toys2cool]

I had the money equates with quality arguement before. Doesn't fly. There are lots of stupid people that buy into the heard mentality.

yeah but they're still banking and while most guys talk crap, they're still making money off of you with your daughters and wives

[DocDrako]

Me and 6 friends got together and watched this just so we could MST3K it. It was the best movie party I have ever been to. I especially love the dramatic staring scenes...all 32 of them. I really don't like that movie but there was no chance that I would. I was hounded into reading the book and after 1 chapter I asked, "Are you serious?" I knew right then that it was NOT FOR ME. The premise alone should have clued me in to that though.

[thunderbolt]

yeah but they're still banking and while most guys talk crap, they're still making money off of you with your daughters and wives

Not my wife, she's beyond the Harry Potter/Twilight easy reader mentality. She reads books for big people.