There are as many types of vampire as there are disease; some are virulent and deadly, and some just make you walk funny and avoid fruit. – Terry Pratchett

 

I am assuming that if you are a man, and have at least some female contact, you will have no doubt heard of a popular little movie series that seems to be all the rage at the current moment called the Twilight Saga. This is a pretty big ass assumption (heh heh, ass assumption, heh). You could be, for all I know, an asexual trogolodyte who lives on a cave on Mars with your hands over ears, but it’s no matter, as I’m gonna tell you all about it anyway. Recently my girlfriend, gawd bless ‘er, made me sit through all these films, and I have a few thoughts – and not all of them negative, so any fans, please don’t spit liquid lava  from your bowels at me.

This is a bunch of flicks with a very high female demographic. And it really goes through all the ages. I’ve never had the pleasure of seeing a film in a theatre (which will be remedied this week) but apparently you could teeny boppers sitting next to middle aged married harridans who are just as in to it as they are.

Now, I’m sure there’s many ladies out there who don’t like these films at all. Certainly feminists out there have decried the series, but there’s far more women who’ll just say they’re bad films, along with a HELL TON of men (Twishite, anyone?), but it seems that you’re just as likely to see men in a cinema watching it these days as women, whether they enjoy the emotional lengths of the film or if they just like a good ol’ vampire flick.

I won’t bore you all with the full details of the story, because ; a) It’s boring for me to write. b) it’s a simple enough flick. Basically, a teenage tart pretentiously named Bella moves into a new town, falls in love with Edward Cullen, a young man, who is paler than UHT milk, Bella discovers Edward and his folks enjoy a little bit too much of the Red Stuff but don’t go for humans, various fights with nasty vampires, edward fucks off, bella strings along a native american werewolf called Jacob yadda yadda yadda.

Now these do work at times as Vampire films. The trio of ‘bad vampires’ who attack the Cullens in the first film are effective. The one who captures harlot Bella is a scary motherfucker who gets a kind of brutal death for film watched by teenyboppers. Dude gets chucked into a fire. How cool is that?  Also, british actor Michael Sheen as the the head of the Vampire Mafia dudes in Italy just about steals all of New Moon. Here, in a film frought with tedious and painful dialogue, is a rare glimpse of the old menace of the true ‘Gothic Vampire’. It’s worth seeing alone for this bit. Sheen is a creepy motherfucker. Even if he has to co-star alongside the ever annoying Dakota Fanning and her stupid dumb big eyes.

Even the fight scene between Cullens + Werewolves Vs Bad Vamp Army in Eclipse works relatively well, even if it reveals that Vampires seem to have the chemical consistancy – and are comprised of – Ice. If they had only said that at the start, I could have offered them a lend of my mother’s boyfriend’s sun lamp. Then they could have pulled out the deck chairs and watch the villains melt in the same manner of the Witch from the Wizard of OZ (one of the best film villains ever. Don’t agree? You know where the address bar is!).

You could pick on Twilight in a Nerdy way for how it butchers the Vampire and Werewolf, I guess. The whole ‘twinkling in the sunlight’, to how vampires can quite easily live without human blood. We all know that Vampires grow weak/go insane without blood,  and that the Werewolf transformation should be long and painful. But then, the monster aspect is just a gimmick to this series, something to add a bit of Gothicness to what essentially is a romance tale of doomed lovers, for which it works well.

That’s not to say there is downside to the non monster bits. The constant chats between bella and Jacob are dull as fuck. Jacob is just so boring. Ok girls, you may like his body, but he’s more boring than my high school maths teacher,going on about imprints and his native americaness and having his chest out. His long chats take up about 70%of New Moon and 50% of Eclipse, and all he while the harlot Bella is just stringing him along because she loves attention.

Bella, oh Bella, you big bimbo, you. I just don’t get her. She’s not a good role model. From the start she becomes totally 100% dependent on Edward, and is a complete douche to anyone else. She is a douche to her Dad (arguably one of the more humourous and empathetic characters), she is a douche to her human friends, and as mentioned, to boring old Jacob. Noone else registers to her except Jacob, and my my how she wants to be his slave. She’s also bafflingly fixated with becoming a Vampire; she constantly begs Edward to change her into a soulless freak, as she is so terrified of ageing. She evidently hasn’t realised the implications of watching all the people you love die, which is far worse IMO.

At the end of the day though, Twilight is a success because it grasps it’s core demographic and markets the dark, forbidden romance they want. And it does t reasonably well. It actually is a bit of an emotional rollercoaster. Well, a wooden one anyway.