Why is Twilight so Popular? A Review of the First Movie: Twilight

I said that I'd never do it. I said I would never sit down and partake in what these rabid teenagers that foam at the mouth and go absolutely ballistic over. I said I would never watch the Twilight movies, but I did. Both of them actually. Yes, I know, I'm a hypocrite, but I feel that since I love to review things and I evidently have a need for masochism, I needed to watch these movies. This review is just a general review of the movies, and if you are a Twilight fan, I won't be changing your mind anytime soon, but to those of us that are not fans, this is to serve your need to know whether this is a good movie or not.

However bad Twilight may be, there is a bright side to this. Rifftrax. If you don't know what Rifftrax is, then I need you to return with me to the 1990's when Sci Fi had a little show called Mystery Science Theater 3000. Essentially this was a show that played old, bad movies and a man and two robots would sit and make comments about the movie. Refer: http://www.rifftrax.com/rifftrax/twilight

Fast forward a few years to 2010 and the group remains. Sci Fi (or Sy Fy, pick your choice) has dumped the show. The guys then moved on to more modern movies riffing on them as an audio file that you buy and play on your computer or audio device at the same time as the movie. The result is pure comedy gold.

I'm not here for Rifftrax though. I'm here for Twilight. I watched both Twilight and New Moon on DVD, and so that means this review is very old considering the third movie is already out and making millions. The thing that I've always noticed is that these novels and movies sell like crazy, and so in my journey to find good entertainment, I watched them. I knew that they were not good, what with the sparkling vampires and odd werewolves throwing down a century or more of folk lore and tradition right in the toilet. I'm willing to give anything a try once though, for the sake of entertainment, so I watched.

Oh yeah... Spoilers abound.

Twilight is a story about a girl named Bella and her love for a vampire in a town called Forks, Washington. Vampires can walk in the sun in this story and do not eat humans. In fact, the vampires that eat humans are the bad guys, and the ones that drink animal blood are considered "vegetarians." The plot over this four book journey is all about the love between Bella and Edward. Gag me with a spoon.

Let me break this down. Twilight is poorly written. The description of the characters leave everything open ended and you have to guess what they look like. In one part of the book Meyer writes in description of Bella "I look like my mom but younger." This answers nothing. We would need to know what Bella's mother looks like and we aren't even given that. However this review is about the movies so I'll try not to deviate.

Twilight is boring. Wait. Sorry, I was talking about the book again. Let me retry this. Twilight the movie is boring. We are given this idea that Edward and Bella's love is the main focus here, but that plot point gets solved within the first hour after they are together. The rest of the movie peters out into a bunch of random events in which Edward and the Cullen's must save Bella. There is some semblance of a plot near the end involving Bella's mom getting captured, but that leads nowhere except to a rather unremarkable fight scene where instead of people getting sliced open, killed, and guts, etc. we are given vampires that just grab each other and throw each other into everything in the room. It's like watching a wrestling match without the acting.

On top of that, the characters are boring as well. When you write a character a few things need to be done:

1. A character needs to be dynamic. They need to be multilayered which makes them interesting.

2. A character should not be boring. They should have something about them that makes them stand out. See point 1.

3. If there are two main characters, or multiple main characters, they shouldn't all be the same character. Edward, Bella, Jacob, and the Cullens, are all the same character. They are boring, dull, and one dimensional. Wait, I said boring and dull... that's the same thing. Yeah.. if you're reading the book get ready for a lot of that too. "My truck was a red color." If anyone sees the problem with this, please write it in the comments.

Which leads me into the next part: the acting. What acting? Where's the acting? If talking dead pan and monotone throughout the movie is what we call acting, then Ben Stein is the best actor in the world.

Acting aside, the visual look is also very bad. You can blatantly tell that this movie was run through some effects software to give it that overcast look. This mixed with swirling camera movements that are not artistic but more motion sickness inducing, are rampant throughout the film and do not make for a good cinematic experience.

I can't recommend this film to anyone. I can't recommend the novel to anyone. It's all so bad, and yet it still makes a ton of money. It's a phenomenon that somehow has run rampant throughout everything. Meyer has no idea how sunlight works because the vampires don't sparkle at some times and at other times they do. Here's the thing about the sun: if you can see outside in the daytime, that means that light is hitting the Earth. Light is what makes them sparkle which apparently gives them away, so why aren't they sparkling all the time? It's one thing to make your own twist on age old genres, but at least do it to where gaping plot holes aren't staring you in the face once you start the movie This sums up Twilight. One big boring plot hole. I can't believe I have to review the next one. It'll be better, right?