Saturday 3 December 2011

REVIEW: Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 1


There's a scene in True Blood where Vampire Pam says " Fuck Sookie. Fuck her and her magic fairy vagina". Until I get an equivalent in the Twilight universe, there'll be no doing.

I was going to bring out the bells and whistles on this one. I spent much of the six months leading up to the release of the latest Twilight movie assessing the various different ways and gimmicks with which I could be a cunt to this movie. There were plans and there were schemes. But when it comes to do it, when I'm sat in front of my laptop at whatever-the-fuck in the morning preparing to actually write this bitch. I have no vitriol to spew. No energy left to hate the way it certainly should be hated. Y'all have plenty of places to find that. This is incompetent story-telling on almost every level, the writing is deftly cowardly and deafeningly stupid, a story about sex that's terrified to speak it's name and there's a scene where someone admits to someone else they love that they killed people, and is met with an answer that can be distilled to 'Yeah whatever, how's my hair?. Ergh.

The frustrating thing about Twilight is that there's probably a great, fucked up movie about twisted lust and love here beneath all this Christian repression, and every time the movies edge closer to it, or even to something else interesting, say the Jasper Flashback in Eclipse or the terrific Victoria chase sequence in New Moon, it retreats, running back to what it's 'supposed' to be. I think the treatment of Jacob sort of quantifies what's wrong with this series. For the character to work, to exist as anything more than the shit on Bella's heel, he needs to be allowed to tell her to go fuck herself, he needs to be empowered in some way shape or form within their dynamic. I think it would have made much more sense to make Jacob the villain in this finale to the series, to react to her rejection with something other than subservient grace, if only to make everything that came before worth something more than simple stalling.

But that's the scratch. The series one and only concern is giving Bella everything she wants and more, and anyone who disagrees or gets in the way is a bad person. So says Stephanie Meyer. The thing is, at its best interpretation, Bella's behavior is that of a remarkably self-absorbed person, ignorant to the feelings of others and viewing everyone in terms of how they can make her happy and fuck everything else. At it's best interpretation. And if it makes me a bad man feminist or whatever I can take it, but I've never known a supposedly sympathetic character be so utterly reprehensible in her behavior. It borders on the sociopathic. But thankfully Bella is deity Meyer's chosen daughter, so there is no consequence to her cuntishness and poor Jacob, well he has to thank his stars to be rejected by such an amazing person. Edward meanwhile, continues to be a whole lot of nothing. The male version of the girlfriend role that exists to oppose but ultimately be repeatedly pushed over by their significant other.

Ultimately though, I wouldn't care about the marginalization of 2/3 of the leads if Bella herself was a compelling character, but she's achingly boring until the universe is willing to acknowledge what a terrible person she is, and since that will never happen, Twilight becomes Eat Pray Love with vampires. The whole thing works only under the assumption that you think that the protagonist is awesome beyond reproach, and thus when they use the world and other people as their own personal pic N' mix stall, taking what they want and throwing away what they don't. We're supposed to be behind them. But if you're going to ask that of me, you better be fucking entertaining. Yet alas, Twilight continues to be a handful of fuck all, and boring as is humanly possible. See you at part 2.

Rating: 3/10

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