Mormon Vampires I Have Known: This Year In Chaos

In writing about a film, I usually start with my experiences with it or a summary in brief of where the review is headed or the most prominent quality of the film or…something. The problem I’ve been dealing with in this particular case for weeks now, in fact, is just where the hell to begin. You see, today we’ll be talking about Twilight and its sequel New Moon, two of the more uninteresting yet bafflingly popular movies today. Perhaps even more confusing is that the movies come from a series of staggeringly unreadable young adult novels. Like The Da Vinci Code before it, Twilight capitalizes on the public’s apparent willingness to read fucking anything that gets a passing grade from reviewers…or your sex-obsessed 12 year old daughter. Now The Da Vinci Code got something like comeuppance in that the movie and it’s prequel Angels & Demons were made into some of the most unforgivably dull and critically panned movies of the last ten years. The Twilight movies have a leg up on the Ron Howard movies, however, in that teenagers don’t exactly pay attention to the conventions of filmmaking in deciding what to be excited about, which almost ensures a long and healthy life for these movies. Now, Twilight isn't precisely what you'd call a horror film, what with it not trying to scare you for fear of losing your money, but you know what? Who fucking cares. They mentioned vampires, which means they're on my turf so they're gonna get what's coming to them. Fuck with vampires and werewolves, don't act surprised when you get your shit wrecked. I'm not really worried because my readership has been pretty steadily some friends and people who stumble here by accident. But if I manage to incur the ire of teenage girls, at least I know someone's out there reading my reviews, right? HAHA! Anyway, what I find most strange about the Twilight movie's popularity is that aside from money-shot esque close-ups of Robert Pattinson’s face and Taylor Lautner’s chest, I can’t for the life of me figure out what the fuck is so enthralling about these movies: they’re awful!

Twilight
by Catherine Hardwicke

Bella is the child of the kind of people you’d find in other films by Catherine Hardwicke (Thirteen, Lords of Dogtown), which also shamelessly forget to tell a reasonable story about the people it pretends to empathize with. Anyway, her space cadet mother and new husband decide that while they find themselves on some nonsensical honeymoon road trip to go buy weed, they’re going to leave their gloomy daughter with her über-serious father Charlie in the one-horse town of Forks, WA. One gets the feeling that Charlie was a much more likable person before his marriage to Bella’s mother. Anyway, Charlie’s the sheriff of their small town and so not the most sympathetic or natural of dads, but he tries his best. He and his friend Billy Black give her an old truck refurbished by Billy’s son Jacob as a welcoming present. On her first day of school Bella meets a bunch of totally vacuous kids called Angela, Mike, Jessica, Eric and Tyler who insist that they’re all friends now. The one kid she’s most interested in is that creepy pale boy who comes from a family everyone swears is incestuous. His name is Edward Cullen and for whatever reason Bella becomes totally obsessed with him. It’s not like he does anything to earn her affection. When he sees her walk into biology class, passing in front of a fan, he looks for all the world like he’s just ejaculated and spends the rest of class grabbing the desk for support – afterwards he promptly asks to be moved to another class. Now, whereas you and I might cut our losses and not give the prick another moment’s thought, Bella decides to spend weeks trying to figure out what his deal is.

The problem with that is that though Bella is willing to believe fantastical things about Edward, it takes her the first two thirds of the fucking movie to realize he’s a goddamned vampire. It’s only after he stops Tyler’s van from crushing her to death with his bare hands in the parking lot one day that she gets that maybe Edward and his posh family might not just be way too elegant and undead for their surroundings, and even then it still takes her a while to get the full picture. Anyway, he’s a vampire and the reason he tried to distance himself from her is not because he’s a mouth-breathing asshole who likes porn and video games, but because he just didn’t want to kill her and drink her blood. That’s all! Yeah, so they start doing the courtship thing despite that being a horrible idea. Things go great at first: he breaks into her bedroom in the middle of the night to dry hump her, takes her flying through the forest a few feet off the ground, shows off his disappearing and reappearing a few feet away skills and makes her lie to her parents constantly. But it’s not all goofy flying sequences and bitching about how delicious she’d be. One day during a baseball game (which is about as ludicrous a thing as you’re likely to ever see) a pack of vicious vampire killers show up and get thirsty for her blood. Edward and his family then have to squirrel Bella away and plant a false trail for the killers to follow. Things come to a head and Edward has to decide whether to suck out some vampire poison from Bella’s wound or make her a vampire. But, there were three more films to be made after this, so who gives a shit what decision he makes?

I take issue with Twilight on a couple of grounds, some moral, some rooted in my deep-seated nerdiness and lifelong addiction to horror films. As I said, Twilight ain't exactly a horror film; it’s effectively a Young Adult movie in the same way that Twilight was first a Young Adult book or anyway that’s the section where I found the copy I located in the bookstore I’m sitting in as I type this to peruse some of its 500 pages for particularly good bits of ‘prose’. Now, the first thing to address here is the popularity of Twilight, both movie and book. I get the enjoyment in reading about people preparing for sex, that’s why erotic fiction exists, a genre I wholly condone, by the by. I’ve never read any but if given the choice between throwing my support behind say hardcore pornography and erotic fiction, I’m going with the one that requires brainpower enough to read rather than instantly downloadable subjugation. Porn as an idea doesn’t bother me, it’s the thousand years of explaining to women that any notion of independence and freedom that comes from getting paid to have sex on camera is comparable to the kind that men get from telling you that all these years that make me cranky. We invented the system by which a pornstar is both an acceptable and indeed even enviable occupation and the locus of campaigns by religious groups looking to tell the world its business. It’s no one person’s fault but taken as a whole it makes my skin crawl. What I’m saying is I understand the need for people to want to read about people having sex. What irks me is that Stephenie Meyer donates 10% of her profits from all Twilight-related shit to the Church of Mormon. I wish I could prove that stuff I heard about her donating to a homosexual re-education camp. I can't but I'ma go head and say it's distinctly possible.

One can talk day and night about the fact that Twilight’s about abstinence. I don’t particularly care but I believe the fact that there are currently websites and forums filled to bursting with women talking about how obsessed they are with both the character Edward Cullen and Robert Pattinson who plays him in the film is a little ideologically problematic. She had said in an interview that the Book of Mormon has had among all other books the "most significant impact" on her life. And I get that, really I do. If the book of Mormon didn’t speak to her so loudly and clearly, how else could she have crafted such stunning prose as: “I don’t think I can. I’ve told you, on the one hand, the hunger – the thirst – that, deplorable creature that I am, I feel for you. And I think you can understand that, to an extent. Though” – he half smiled – “as you are not addicted to any illegal substances, you probably can’t empathize completely. But…There are other hungers. Hungers I don’t even understand, that are foreign to me.” See, you can tell it’s written by a mormon cause no one does drugs, has sex, smokes, drinks, laughs, smiles, likes coffee, masturbates or has any fucking fun at all. Or how about this piece of simmering authorial ascension: 'He lay perfectly still in the grass, his shirt open over his sculpted, incandescent chest, his scintillating arms bare ... A perfect statue, carved in some unknown stone, smooth like marble, glittering like crystal.' Quick word here to authors-to-be, just put in a shit ton of halfway applicable adjectives into your sentences and that makes you a good writer. Hence why when Bella says she’s “unconditionally and irrevocably in love” with Edward despite not knowing how “dominant” the part of him that wants to fuck and kill her is, you really feel for her. Or, if you’re like me, you wonder how this book made it to shelves. Now, the world is full of stilted and awkward prose (there’s another famous horror writer I’m thinking of…oh what’s his name. Something King. Anyway he sucks, too) so why bother trouncing Stephenie Meyer? Cause she’s a goddamned hypocrite and a liar, that’s why!

Time Magazine has said that “the characters in Meyer’s books aren’t Mormons, but her beliefs are key to understanding her singular talent.” So let’s take a look at those beliefs shall we? The book of Mormon, the church founded by notorious liar and criminal Joseph Smith (I’m not editorializing, he was a liar and a criminal….it’s public record, not my opinion), is one of the most self-serving pieces of fiction ever concocted. It spells out that people who believe in god have been persecuted for centuries for doing so. Gimme a fucking break! You people have run things for fucking ever, so quit whining. And if Smith was so convinced that he had god’s truth, how the fuck come he spends so much time asking people to repent and join him? You’ve got the word, already, what difference did it make if everyone had it and if God gave it just to you (by placing golden plates a couple of blocks from his house) why bother sharing it and demanding people cede to the word of god? Plus, wouldn’t you be worried that they’d just persecute you for your belief in god, like they’ve been doing? Well you would if it weren’t all bullshit and you weren’t a money-grubbing asshole. I don’t care what you believe but don’t pretend that fundraising is spreading the word. If Joseph Smith wasn’t a con-artist on his way the poorhouse in desperate need of a mark, maybe I’d take his bullshit seriously. But he was and I don’t. So for Stephenie Meyer to have this in her resume is automatically a red flag. Especially because, regardless of her intentions, she wrote a book which has bored women fantasizing about a non-existent vampire during sex (again, I’m not making that up. Go to Twilightmoms.com if you’re looking for something to lose sleep over). Stephenie Meyer, like Joseph Smith before her, gets that people are just dying to commit to something. So for all her commitment, it doesn’t mean shit because I’m sorry, if you write about some guys sculpted chest and scintillating bare arms, guess where that drives people? Not to the goddamned book of Mormon, that’s for sure. People love reading about sex. That’s fine; what's not is pocketing 90% of your profit and giving the rest to a committed hate-and-money based religion, the same people who were the catalyst for Prop 8 yet have no statute regarding polygamy. That's disingenuous and makes me blind with rage.

It’d be one thing to write a book that is purely about functioning in a Mormon community but anyone who’s seen New Moon can testify that the reason you wanted to go see it was because Taylor Lautner takes his shirt off and you want to rub your face all over what he reveals. Again, nothing wrong with desiring a teenage boy, but when you’re drawing people into your film by having a teenager take his shirt off and then giving your money to the Church of Mormon, that’s where I call you a hypocrite and a money-hungry warthog. For example, did you know that in South Wales a movie poster featuring the shirtless Native American boys (seen below) from the movie was removed from a cinema because it was considered homoerotic. And this from a series who proposes that their totally straight hero who is just dying to fuck his pale girlfriend would say things like: “Just because I’m resisting the wine doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate the bouquet…You have a very floral smell, like lavender … or freesia.” Fuck you and your fucking mormon vampire bullshit, you hateful cow! But I’m getting off topic (you can read all about it in my upcoming biography Stephenie Meyer: Mormon Asshole, St. Martins $69.99; thank you to Nathan Rabin for inspiring that title and thanks of course to the big guy for inspiring my every word. Thanks for making me, a single mother of seven kids and committed scientologist a millionaire. You’re the man, god!).

The film itself is pretty goddamned hysterical. First of all, Catherine Hardwicke was apparently too busy enjoying the hell out of the landscape to tell her two leads to do more than mope like kids who’d pissed themselves the first day of class who then sat there all day wishing they could go home. Kirsten Stewart, who was great in Panic Room, is dreadful. She blinks a lot and seems like she’s been hit on the back of the head with a 2x4 with a nail stuck in the end. She always seems ready to pass out from either boredom or overstimulation and refuses to show emotion. Robert Pattinson’s performance is fine, but hamstrung by the material. On the con-side, he appears to be contemplating whether or not he should pretend he has vampire teeth or not so he has a retainer-half-in lisp that comes and goes and looks sweaty and unwashed for most of his screentime. He's clearly trying and for someone that handsome to try is admirable because he didn't have to and he could have phoned it in, like Stewart appears to have. But he's too intense to be lovable. Tomas Alfredson did a splendid job with the unkempt appearance of his vampire in Let The Right One In, Catherine Hardwicke just refuses to explain it, thus Edward is just generally creepy. He does nothing to make himself appear desirable in the slightest, making Blinky’s (supposedly) relentless affection all the more perplexing. I also find it hard to believe that this guy, who’s supposed be a hundred year old vampire, has never found anything more enticing than a dour teenage girl who enjoys asking him what his deal is. Seriously, a hundred years and this is the most passionate you’ve ever felt towards anyone? Really? This points out a larger problem I have with the plot. THIS IS NOT HOW VAMPIRES ACT!!!! The whole point of entering into an existing paradigm is to use it to illustrate your point. Meyer and Hardwicke’s point is that teenagers shouldn’t and don’t have sex. So instead of using the literally hundreds of years worth of existing Vampire lore which say exactly the opposite, Meyer tossed it aside and made her own user-friendly vampires who don't want to have sex with you. These vampires can go out in daylight without bursting into flames, they care about human beings, they move at the speed of sound, they never sleep, and they each come with their own unique superpowers. In other words they’re not fucking vampires! My question is if you plan on completely disregarding the guidelines, why fucking bother? It would have been interesting to see how to get around all the universally accepted facts about vampires but you just got lazy! Seriously, she can’t figure out how to send a Vampire to high school, so she just makes some shit up! She can’t figure out how to arrive at a conclusion, so she gives one of the vampires the ability to see the future? That’s what Stephen King does! Do these guys think readers are afraid of good writing or something?

One final point about the whole vampire thing. Clearly the changes were made because otherwise no books, but the whole thing with Edward pisses me off because it sells girls on the idea that boys are worth all the trouble they’re going to bring you. That goth kid makes you cut yourself? It’ll be fine, he really cares. That quarterback wants to get into your pants on the first date? I’m sure he has a good reason. Gail Collins of The New York Times has said that “Edward is a version of that legendary, seldom-seen male who won’t take advantage of his date even if she rips off her clothes and begs him to take her to bed.” In other words imaginary. I’m not gonna say that all boys are dying to get women into bed…but a lot of them kinda are and applying Twilight’s logic to real life is gonna get you pregnant or in the hospital. The way I see it this guy throws her around, brings her to the tops of old growth trees to scare her, nearly gets her killed during a game of baseball and rarely if ever shows anything like actual affection (and just wait till we get to New Moon. He really ups the fucking ante there).

The script is problematic beyond all that stuff. Time passes just as arbitrarily as it does in 30 Days of Night. Bella meets Edward, they hate each other, they’re lab partners, they’re together for approximately a week, then it’s prom and school’s over? Where’d the year go? When was winter? The performances run the gamut from non-existent to scenery-chewing with few exceptions. Billy Burke as Charlie Swan I buy because he pulls off being put-upon in more than one way. I’ve actually been waiting for him to get work ever since he was in the straight-to-DVD Komodo, which I really liked when I saw it ten years ago (They sent me a certificate a few years ago for being the only person alive who liked it). But look for nuanced performances outside of his and you’re shit outta luck. The effects are uniformly terrible and suck the tension out of every scene I imagine was supposed to have some. Watching people zipping about with shadows of where they were a few seconds ago reminds me more of Looney Tunes than of Blade or 30 Days of Night, especially when they’re digging into the floorboards to make themselves slow down like in that ending fight scene. Was I the only one reminded of Wile E. Coyote and The Road Runner during the scenes with James? And what the hell is with that goddamned baseball scene? The way that Alice lifts her leg before pitching is ridiculous enough for a few movies nevermind the other guys flipping around and knocking into each other. That was the one time I was glad that my sisters had put the movie on, because I realized that Twilight is in fact just as bad as I had always pictured it.

Ok, so I can predict your next question. You hate this movie so much why’d you watch the sequel? Would you believe me if I told you that one of my professors, a professional screenwriter no less, made viewing it an assignment? Yeah, I know. I just about threw up when I got that piece of homework. Well, far be it from me to give the church of Mormon ten percent of my 10 dollars or Stephenie Meyer and the Twilight franchise any of it, so I watched it illegally. So while I’m missing a significant portion of my dignity I sleep easier knowing that no one in that camp has my hard-bilked money.

The Twilight Saga: New Moon
by Chris Weitz

So Bella’s starting to get that the whole dating a Vampire thing is a shitty idea (and like immediately, too, they’ve only been dating for like three months...or is it the better part of a year? The last movie played fast and loose with its timeframe). She has nightmares about growing old while Edric Diggory stays young. She while Bella sorts out her concern Edward picks up on his own set of red flags. When he and his family try to throw her a birthday party a paper cut sends Ed’s brother Jasper after her blood resulting in a lot of broken furniture and wounds in need of stitching. So seeing that dating him is going to seriously fuck her up, Ed decides to quit her cold turkey without explaining himself. This doesn’t exactly help her nightmare situation; she wakes up screaming most nights which makes her already stressed out dad consider sending her to live with her mom. In order to prove that she wants to stay Bella has to go back to the friends she’s all but abandoned since dating Edward. Her attitude towards them is something akin to “Those fuckers? I must be desperate.” Personally I don’t get why any of them tolerate her, now or before hand. She offers nothing but a set of constantly closing eyes in the middle of a dour face yet they can’t get enough of her. If you thought those kids were hung up on taking her to prom in the last film, wait until you see how quickly Mike asks her on a date when she finally rejoins them at lunch. Incidentally, I think it’s supposed to be funny that the film they go to see is called FacePunch but…what’s the joke? It just draws you out of the totally believable movie when that shit happens. I swear they’re daring you to stop watching.

In trying to reconnect with her friends she discovers that what brings her joy is trying to and failing to kill herself because when she does a spectral Edward shows up to tell her to knock it the fuck off. Does she, though? Nah. In fact she enlists the help of Jacob Black to help her rebuild some motorcycles so she can drive them into canyons and shit. Jacob's gotten sexy since the last film. We know that this is a big part of selling this film because Bella will occasionally take time out from moping to tell him just how hot he is and then resume her olympic champion moping. Seriously, it's just "Christ, I'm sad! Where'd these muscles come from, pal? I'm not gonna lick 'em cause I love Edward, but shit man, those are fucking impressive. Where was I? Oh, yeah, moping." Predictably Jacob falls for Bella (by predictably I mean everyone else is doing it so he will, too and it’s always opposite day in Forks, WA) and when she has to turn him down he takes it pretty badly. He stops talking to her, cuts his hair off, gets a tattoo and starts…hanging out in the woods with a bunch of shirtless guys who exclude girls from whatever they’re doing? Ok, so ordinarily I’d look down on generalizing and stereotyping based on behavior but I have to say it: There is plainly no way to see the cult of Werewolves as anything other than homoerotic. I mean clearly this was a way to attract teenage girls and young gay men in equal measure. From someone like Meyer who gives money to the group trying to outlaw gay marriage, the awful big emphasis on shirtless dudes in her big movie adaptation is ridiculous, but not funny enough to negate the tragedy inherent in young gay men supporting the Twilight franchise. Anyway, Jacob’s turning away from girls has nothing to do with discovering he’d prefer roughing it with a bunch of guys with six packs; he’s a werewolf who’s job is to kill vampires who break ‘the treaty!’ “What’s the treaty?” I yawned. Apparently it’s a set of rules keeping vampires and werewolves from engaging in hostilities. But forget that for a minute. So a year goes by again (the montage they use to show the changing of time is even funnier than the shrunken century of the last film) and soon Bella is wondering if she should commit to Jacob instead of Edward. But then Alice shows up after Bella’s latest attempt to not-off herself by leaping off a cliff. She thought Bella was going to kill herself; remember her X-Man power is to see the future and Edward’s is to read thoughts like Dr. X, so ipso facto Edward thinks Bella is dead. So they then have to fly to Italy via Virgin Air to stop him from asking the vampire council (a little Underworld, a little Harry Potter, a little Blade 2) to kill him.

So follows a totally exciting and heart-wrenching conclusion that’s neither exciting or heart-wrenching. So Bella stops Edward from killing himself but the vampire council (Michael Sheen, Dakota Fanning, Jamie Bower…yeah, that’s who I think when I think Kings and Queen of the vampires) still want a word with him. After determining that Dakota Fanning’s mindpowers don’t affect Bella (“You’ve got to mean it, Harry”) they decide that they have to make her a vampire cause she knows too much. Bella’s all for it because all the humans she knows inexplicably love her to death and that shit can get so annoying. Oh and Edward only left her because he wanted her to have a normal life, not because he was afraid of commitment or anything. Ok, so I don’t know why he might have otherwise left her but his "You're everything to me" speech feels like so much bullshit after failing to make a grand gesture. Like "oh shit, killing myself didn't work...well, only cause I wanted it not to....umm, cause really I never left you at all...but only if you've already moved on." Melodramatic pretty boy! Anyway, will she or won’t she become a vampire? Turn to movie three for the answer and in the meantime buy some a pillow with Taylor Lautner and Robert Pattinson’s faces on it, buy the soundtrack, a Volvo, fly Virgin Air and buy the first movie on bluray all with your parents money! MERCH FOR EVERYONE!!!

You know, sometimes I wish I were a recreational drug user because I feel like New Moon would have been hilarious on weed. The product placement's a good example; it's pretty egregious but also hysterical. Note that when Edward disappears in one of Bella’s daydreams, his Volvo disappears with him. Yeah, cause he’s not a real man without the wheels to prove it. Also, they do that aggravating thing where they interact with songs on the soundtrack written specifically for the movie which by definition couldn’t exist without the characters on screen. That shit bugs me, especially because the music is actually pretty good. When Bella asks Jacob to turn off the radio, which is playing a Magic Numbers song, I just about lost it. Yeah, Magic Numbers on the radio! Maybe later they'll play Woolly Leaves or Vic Chesnutt. Somehow (money) the producers convinced Grizzly Bear, Thom Yorke, The Killers, Band of Skulls, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, St. Vincent & Bon Iver to write some of the best songs of their career for this movie’s soundtrack. And following some flap about a Paramore song not being used in the last movie, they are all used to ‘heighten’ the drama, rather than scoring the credits. Seriously, where does Paramore get off complaining about anything? They’re the poor man’s Evanescence at best so just calm down, you’ll get your royalty check. Anyway, the soundtrack coupled with the sort of rhythmic arbitrariness of the action gives the film the feel of one long music video. Sometimes, as in the bike building montage and the wolf-hunting scene where Graham Greene gets his (poor Graham Greene…he didn’t ask to be relegated to minor roles in teen movies) it’s just distracting and weird. Other times, like when Bella jumps off a cliff (and don’t I love typing that) it works. Actually, let me say that that scene where’s she trapped under waves and hits her head on a rock culminates in the film’s best moment. The shot of Kirsten Stewart between a ghastly Edward just before being pulled from the water while the chorus to Grizzly Bear’s “Slow Life” plays is legitimately very well done. But that’s kinda it.

The performances haven’t improved much. Kirsten Stewart's expression and tone of voice still communicate that special mix of flatness and frustration, like someone who just woke up from a nap to her first round of contractions. Robert Pattinson looks twice as sulky, though now he dresses in designer suits for young men. The script is still problematic as shit: why is Bella so committed to Edward? (They haven’t been together more than three months and he up and splits for no discernable reason? Fuck that, says I) And the werewolves are a fresh bit of blasphemy. The effects are terrible and they never look like anything but cut scenes from a Narnia-based video game. They also, like vampires, have no regard for daylight. They change whenever the hell they want to. What is this horseshit? Nope, sorry. You fail your monster movie appreciation test. The effects of being Vampire and Werewolf are there to be worked with, not ignored, ok? It’s not like religion, you can’t just turn it on and off whenever it suits you. And these guys seem like the least likely candidates for serious werewolf business; they act like they were plucked from Ridgemont High: “we can hear each other's thoughts and stuff...” Also, they say it’s their job to kill vampires but the only vampires they encounter are the two left from the last movie. Are there two vampires in all the fucking country? Where are all the others? The Pacific Northwest is in dire need of some more vampires! Also, Edward can heal himself like magic? When did that become a thing?

One thing I’ll say about this movie: it’s depressing as shit. Everything from the cinematography to the endless round of heartbreak for Bella to the music to the conclusion is all super murky and seems designed to make you sad about the future. The movie is so grey and so hopeless that I wonder how anyone could have left the theatre feeling good about themselves or romance as a concept. When Edward asks Bella to marry him just before he bites her and makes her a vampire I got flashes of a supremely empty and horrid existence for both of them, then credits roll. I felt like I’d just been to a joint funeral, which is, doubtless, not what they had in mind. And yet despite it’s flaws (and Christ has it got them) I didn’t hate this as much as the last one. It’s a touch more competent and doesn’t feel quite so silly; Chris Weitz has a bit of experience with silly action films (his Golden Compass was embarrassingly received). The one thing that stopped me from hating it is embarrassingly personal. I’ll spare you the specifics but let’s just say when I wasn’t asking Taylor Lautner just where the hell his shirt went, I was shouting things at my computer screen like “where’s your self-respect, you wombat?” and “Stop being so fucking pious and dramatic, you shitheads!” But really I was talking to myself. Being able to mope in unison with Kirsten Stewart, the queen of stammery moaning and looking doleful was unexpectedly therapeutic if for no other reason than I finally saw just how pathetic I’d become that I now sympathized with characters so broad and insulting that every movie cheerleader in history had organized a letter-writing campaign asking them to stop being such stereotypes.

The whole ordeal of watching and researching these movies has left me sad and tired. Sad that better movies are overlooked in favor of these two very silly and very sad affairs and better books are overlooked in favor their despicable inspiration and tired of telling people not to support anything bearing the Twilight name. How they’ve enchanted so many people to the point of unhealthy obsessions is really beyond me. I remain totally immune to the supposed charms of the books and films and have begun using them as personality red flags. Perhaps I’m being unfair,but you weren’t going to like me, anyway so I’ll just keep on telling people that not only are there better movies, better vampire movies, better vampire movies about the frustration of dating and teen angst, but there are better vampire movies about the frustration of dating and teen angst that don’t totally disregard every piece of fiction ever written about vampires and which center on kids not yet old enough to articulate half the shit the kids in this film do. I hear your “only a movie” argument and your “I just want to stare at beautiful guys” argument too, to which I say “bullshit” and “google image search.” Do not support something based on a fundamental hatred of humanity and a preposterous concept of superiority based on a set of beliefs a child might dream up. Supporting Twilight is allowing yourself to be counted as complacent and supportive of a manipulative and deceitful bunch of people who not only want your money but want it to make sure two people who love each other can’t get married. But in the meantime don’t fuck anyone and boys who throw you into walls and leave you with no word really love you!!! Did you even consider your abusive boyfriends feelings when you tried to kill yourself? For shame! No but seriously don’t support this franchise. If you have to watch it, steal it or you’re part of a machine powered in equal part by hate and your money lobbying to take away personal freedom from kids growing up scared that moms using Robert Pattinson to turn up their libido will then vote yes on Prop 8. Fuck you, abstinence. Sex is being used a weapon to take away freedom so I say to you, kids living under oppressive religious households, have sex freely and with whomever you please, boys and girls, just be safe and don't have kids! Viva La Revolution!