Twinkle twinkle little vamp…

They made me watch “Twilight” last weekend.  I had no desire to read it and even less desire to watch it.  I only thumbed through the first book and perused a few chapters here and there back when Becca was reading them.  From everything I’ve heard, it was a lucky chance that the first book got picked up and that her writing is pretty bad in all the subsequent books.  Same story as most of the one-hit-wonder bands.  You have all your life to perfect the first one and all the rest are written under a deadline.  I still don’t know if her writing is any good, you never can tell these things from big Hollywood movies.  But based on the pace of this movie, the book must have been a slow, boring and painfully obvious ordeal.

The thing that really bothered me about this movie is the “Edward” character.  Manipulative and selfish, all the girls love him and his entire character is based on greed and sadism.  He is nothing more than a depressed stalker.  He watches her while she sleeps, he follows her everywhere she goes, all without her knowledge.  And when she does find out, rather than being creeped out and angry, she’s smitten by his concern.  So our “strong female” lead is reduced to nothing more than a weak-willed damsel who falls in love with the first boy that pays attention to her.  Not only is she “in love” with him, but she wants to die for him.  Obsessed young girls across the country are learning that first love is true love and that when that love is threatened, death is the answer!

And just about the time I really get a high rolling boil rant about this I hear the voice in my head speaking, “A glooming peace this morning with it brings. The sun for sorrow will not show his head. For never was a story of more woe than this of Juliet and her Romeo.”  Is Stephanie Myers on par with Shakespeare?  Not by a fucking long shot.  The movie was boring and easily predicted.  I can’t imagine the book was any better.  But the point is, Shakespeare created a character in Juliet that was weaker than Meyer’s heroine.  Juliet actually kills herself, Isabella is (regrettably) still alive at the end of this movie. Yes, I know her nickname was “Bella” but I REFUSE to acknowledge ANY vampire story that uses the word Bela without following it up with Lugosi!

It comes down to the fact that the movie wasn’t made for me.  I am not in their demographic.  “Twilight” was made for 13-year-old girls just like “Harry Potter” was created for 13-year-old boys.  Children’s fiction like Potter/Twilight shouldn’t be knocked by people like me.  I am not in their target audience, I am not a lonely child waiting for the fantasy world to come and sweep me away.  I like reading Sci-Fi and Fantasy but these particular franchises were written in dull, easy to read sentences, suited for young readers to feel superior about reading one of “the thick books”.  Five hundred pages of simpleton language does not impress me.  It only impresses your fellow virgins.

Before any of you adult Harry Potheads and Twihards get all upset, I didn’t say adults can’t like it (I may have THOUGHT it but I never said it…) I only said that adults like me that don’t like it, shouldn’t criticize it.  I’m sure the target audience loved it, I’m happy for all of you.  Me?  I thought it sucked in ways that made “BloodRayne” and “Queen of the Damned” look good by comparison.  The real shame here is that it will obviously cause a flood of imitators and bandwagon jumpers.  It is already a weak imitation of other stories, how good can the copy of a copy be?

The only way it will affect me is the release of the third “Night Watch” movie.  I like these movies and have been waiting for this third one.  The sequel was “Day Watch” and the upcoming release is scheduled to be called, “Twilight Watch”.  I can’t imagine they’ll let that title stick with the success of “Twilight” and both movies dealing with vampires…  A simple name change should fix it but in the words of Michael Bolton (software engineer, not singer), “Why should I change MY name, he’s the one who sucks!”

But with bandwagon jumpers comes the inevitable opposite, the bandwagon-avoiding cynics.  Becca loved the books.  She was excited to hear they were making a movie.  By the time the movie came out, she was sick of all the other kids with all the Twilight gear and all the hype surrounding the books.  She’s too much like me in that respect.  I wish I knew a way to teach her not to abandon something she likes just because everyone else discovered it after you.  But I can’t really tell her that when she sees me doing the same thing all the time.  Popularity can really ruin something special.  But Becca still liked the movie.  Enough to the point that I started pointing out the anachronisms throughout the movie and she yelled at me to be quiet and watch the movie.  Everyone’s a critic…

I started to think that maybe I’ll just never be young again and I’ll never be able to suspend my disbelief to the point that stories like “Twilight” and “Harry Potter” seem like good stories…  But then I looked around and took inventory of all the stories I do like and realized that it’s not my inability to enjoy a good fantasy tale, it’s my unwillingness to give mediocre fantasy tales more credit than they are due.