Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Twilight part 2: Rise of the Pedo-wolves or how my standards for parody titles dropped a peg or two.

After a long hiatus of seriously wondering why I do what I do for such mediocre output, I'm back with the rest of the Twilight review....
Thus we continue ripping into the writings of an author who is simultaneously pursuing an embarrassing mid-life crisis on print and setting feminism back to the days where wedding rings weren't the fashionable proposal tool, but a donkey's jaw-bone tied to a stick and the average engagement party consisted of a light bludgeoning as foreplay.
Before we move onto the Pedo-wolf himself let's talk about our framing characters, i.e. the extras with speaking parts written in/cast purely to highlight characteristics of the main 3 via reaction where it isn't shameless expository speeches thinly veiled in casual conversation.

What is slightly disturbing is that despite being so sparse in appearance I am much more invested in even the fringe characters such as Mike Newton give us a more interesting and by far a more believable character, showing off Michael Welch's ability to encompass the role perfectly compared to Pattinson's intentionally ham-fisted, constipated acting.

This said many of the living wallpaper parts in this movie were played by people who gave even less of a shit than Pattinson did and I can hardly blame them.
Some were as obnoxious as they could physically muster and this is when the plot didn't require them to be acting in a way that was bordering-to-outright illegal, which bridges over to the entire meeting premise of the series, the incident with the panel van and the near death experience in the first film/book.
We have someone driving a vehicle that in many places requires an additional license exceedingly erratically on school grounds and choosing to drift into a parking space currently occupied by an arguably living person.
This person is not reprimanded and appears later in the film without another word said about it.
This said, he did look incredibly surprised that she wasn't dead afterward so perhaps he had our best interest at heart.

The neglect of far more interesting characters only highlights the already evident egotism that runs through Twilight like syphilis in the aristocracy.
Characters that the plot affords far too much attention in the belief that they are all that matters in the world.
The Volturi encounters further this view, pitting the entirety of the top of the vampiric Hierarchy against a single vampire, his surrogate family and a woman who has the ability to evade mind control which is due primarily to the character's lack of the prerequisite thought processes.
The reason that glamorised versions of vampire stories hold up varies, in harlequin romance bodice rippers it's the sexual interaction between two characters of vastly differing levels of physical and social influence, similar to the aristocrat and the maid scenarios.
In the socially driven vampire series, such as Whitewolf's old and new worlds of darkness novels and games, the plot is driven by the politics of vampiric society and the codes by which it is maintained as a secret, usually with the main characters playing a a small, pivotal role in the set up that is manipulated by a 3rd party that wields vastly greater influence and power, primarily because a book centered around the view point of Judas Iscariot's bloody romp through modern day new york whilst being a magnificent bastard would be rather dull and end up something akin to the 3rd Blade film.

Twilight attempts to be a harlequin romance with a celibacy Aesop, which only further complicates the restraints involved with Cryptophiliac scenarios, like deep frying a stick of lard.
Later, with the introduction of the instrumentally more powerful Volturi it seems to attempt the political intrigue aspect of the vampire sub-genre only to fall on its face because the Volturi have no real goal beyond the sustenance of the masquerade, something they've already safeguarded by supposedly propagating the myth that vampires are killed by sunlight, meaning that Edward's suicide by masquerade destruction would do nothing but make him look like the worst gay raver in history.
The worst aspect however is the attempt at action sequences, consisting of cheap motion blur effects and high speed running lariats.
I thought I'd never say this but maybe Blade Trinity wasn't so bad. Sure it was a badly made action film, but at least it was an action film, it was vaguely competent at showing martially adept characters, unlike Twilight that shows a civil war veteran as someone who's idea of an ambush is an open field clothes line rush.

Thus we home stretch.
I'm really sorry for having dug up this corpse to begin with, now the site of the excavation is surrounded by wolves that need to be dealt with.

Jacob Black.
We all know Jacob.
The living embodiment of the idea of not letting a dingo play with your infant.
It's nice to know that a Serbian film was pre-empted by a tween schlock harlequin romance book in its wrongness.
To begin with we have a character with a physique that is his sole character trait beyond lycanthropy being a homosexuality analogue and that he fills the slightly less obsessive boy next door niche.
That is before several scenes, such as the spooning scene (due to a suspect lack of planning for people who were going into the mountains with a storm on the way) and the upcoming Pedo-wolf revelation.
Now, when your series already compares homosexuality to a mythical affliction that strips a man of his inhibitions and causes him to run rampant with only his animal instincts to drive him you're already on shaky ground.
Now when you introduce a character with a name taken straight out of a wish fulfilment fanfiction and give them the characteristics of both the Unborn and Look who's talking, two equally horrifying films involving intelligent infants and the possibility of bloodshed then you have some real fucking issues and need a therapist.
When this becomes the canonical pairing at the end of the book then you really need to evaluate what I just had to say, because this kind of shit I expect from the writers that only appear on Bennet the Sage's fanfic theatre and quite possibly Dateline if Chris Hansen gets up to his old tricks again.
Honestly, The person who cleared this for not only print release but a film probably met the person pitching it when they were going door to door because they are legally obligated to do so when they move to a new place for fear that children go missing and the lynch mob kills someone else by mistake.
This is honestly shit that Salo would have left out of the script.

Jacob's only real purpose in this series is to create artificial tension between Bella and Edward, because there was no way this series was intended for film, because if it were then Meyer would have had both male leads in a kiddie pool full of melted lard, wrestling before the end of the first book, probably for the right to marry Bella when it was over.

The ending of Breaking Dawn was so badly handled that it even made the majority of the gibbering horde that are the Twilight fandom do a double take and wonder if they had picked up the Joe D'Amato parody by mistake, because this is the sort of shit he used to get sued for.

Jacob also offers a two-for-one token deal in terms of cast composition, being both native American and a stand in for a homosexual if lines such as "Have you ever tried not being a werewolf?" and "What you do is disgusting and immoral" suggesting as much.

As for the handling of the Werewolf interaction segments of the film, again it falls flat when it tries to use the imprinting system, an incredibly bizarre choice for the utilisation of Lycanthropy since being a stalker has already been covered by Edward's involvement in this excuse for a plot.
A werewolf is traditionally a creature with a hairline trigger in regards to animalistic habits, again handled well by Whitewolf in their worlds of darkness with rules that indicate that a Werewolf would have trouble taking a walk in the park without losing control of their urges, and particularly in regards to going berserk when accosted, because even if you're a meek little pup you will feel some frustration or hatred when accosted, leading to unintentional metamorphosis and eventual mauling of those involved.
What's more, the more base canine instincts such as the desire to assert himself as the alpha are not really explored that much with Jacob since Edward seems to be the more territorial of the two.

Renesmee, whom I mentioned earlier, was really a very stupid idea to begin with as humans and vampires are obviously genetically incompatible and it was already established that they were infertile.
As for the human level intelligence, it makes little sense as our personalities and intellect are shaped by a mix of genetics and what we perceive.
Bella and Edward are NOT the exemplars of intellect that would produce a coherent from birth child, They would be lucky that the child was capable of higher brain function, since the allele is obvious recessive in their families.
The possibility of adult level brain activity in a newborn infant is developmentally impossible unless you include genetic memory, in which case the child would likely just be incredibly depressed at their genetic lottery results, being born to the romantic equivalent of Beavis and Butthead following amateur lobotomies or use of agent orange as a contraceptive.

With this I bring a close to this review and with it panning of it as a whole, since I'm likely the last one leaping onto this burning bandwagon.
Frankly I'm proud of myself for not giving my shotgun a 12-bore blow job after the first installment.
I could probably explore more of this series but you've heard it all before from other critics and I'm mainly finishing this two parter just for completionist's sake and that my OCPD wouldn't let me post again until I've done so.
Until next time,
The Illustrated Misanthrope,
Signing out.