The Twilight Saga – An Autopsy

Easy is nice.  The world is difficult and indifferent, and as such there’s nothing wrong with opting for something easy when you can.  I get that.  I’m not against that.  But there’s “easy” and then there’s “easy”.  The Twilight Saga film franchise has, it turns out, been easy in a way that’s so unbelievably lazy and dull that I can’t imagine how a thinking human being can find it entertaining.  People talk a lot about liking films they can just “turn their brains off” and watch, but surely there are some basic elements of storytelling that require at least some semblance of a conflict to make it work, even if it is perfunctory or dumb or obvious.  I finally watched the final part of the series, Breaking Dawn Part 2, and I have come to the conclusion that nothing at all of interest happened in the 9 or so hours of time I spent watching them over the years.  Of the many, many problems that have plagued this $3 billion franchise, the worst is quite possibly that it plays like a young child’s imagining of a narrative for his toys.  My incredible, adorable nephew was once playing with some toy cars and figurines, and was explaining to me, “this truck has to get over here so he can see the cows!”  “That’s great”, I said, “but where’s the conflict? The truck just has to get over there to see the cows, and that’s it.”  He was all of five years old at the time, so what did I expect?  I should add I said it in a playful way and I’m sure he didn’t pick up on my criticism, so I didn’t rudely offend a child.  Still, there’s nothing to what he was trying to achieve, and that, in a nutshell, is what The Twilight Saga has turned out to be. 

The Hunger Games

The difficulty in approaching any film, especially one based on a popular book, is that of knowing and understanding history and where it might fit in.  It’s almost impossible to watch John Carter and not think of all the similar elements it shares with a host of popular movies from the 20^th century, and yet it was published far before those works and is clearly an influence on a number of them.  It is probably best to disregard the notion of ‘authenticity’ as being crucial to enjoyment when possible – though that gets tricky when you think of the number of films and TV shows that function almost entirely on the audience’s preconceived notions of a particular genre (think of everything Joss Whedon has done).  In a perfect world, pure originality shouldn’t matter.  After all, it’s the specific approach to an idea that pays dividends, or else you’re left with nothing but an idea.  In that spirit of generous critiquing, I can’t blame Suzanne Collins for writing a hugely popular book and then having it adapted into a successful film even though Battle Royale has existed for over a decade now.  That’s not to say it doesn’t matter, though.

Sunday Morning Movies: The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1

The most insipid of romances continues plodding along towards whatever conclusion Stephanie Meyer has cooked up in the first part of the finale to the outrageously titled Twilight Saga.  This segment, Breaking Dawn, picks up where Eclipse left off with Edward Cullen (Robert Pattison) and Bella Swann (Kristen Stewart) getting ready for the big wedding.  Then they have the big wedding, and it is tedious as hell.  Then they have a honeymoon, where beds are broken and they run around and hilariously play chess – as though they ever stopped making moon eyes at each other long enough to work that out.  This might be the only time we’ve really spent anytime with them as a couple, and it comes in the form of a brisk montage so our understanding of how their relationship functions and what they actually see in each other is never advanced one iota.  Not that it’s a big deal or anything.  I gave up on that aspect of the story a long time ago and now simply accept that they Are.  

The Twilight Saga: Eclipse

Having seen the first two Twilight films, I figured despite their horrendous nature I might as well see it out as we’re so close to the end.  Unfortunately Hollywood has decided to capitalize on the phenomenon, I mean, give the final book and all its nuance what it really deserves by splitting it into two films, so it turns out I’m just past the halfway point.  With Eclipse we have, yet again, a new director in David Slade, the not untalented man behind the suspenseful two person drama Hard Candy and the perfectly reason vampire-action flick 30 Days of Night.  Faint praise it might be, but it is the best of series so far, though not by much and it still doesn’t approach anything resembling ‘passable.’