Big, Bold, and Beautiful

I saw the Twilight movie on Friday with about ten people, never a good idea. Anytime you get a big enough group of friends together then just about any movie becomes funny at all the wrong places. The only exception to this is probably the Harry Potter movies just because we’re such diehard fans.

My friends and I have all read the Twilight series so we knew what was supposed to happen and believe it or not I don’t think our expectations were that high, and yet it still managed to disappoint. None of us could take it seriously; we laughed at all the wrong parts and knew it.

It wasn’t just silly though there were legitimate issues we had with the movie, and I am going to outline them for you all.

1) What is up with Edward’s hair? I’ve overheard a lot of people complaining that Robert Pattinson isn’t attractive enough for the role of Edward, I think that’s kind of silly because he’s very attractive and was so in Harry Potter 4, but when you see his ridiculous hair it’s no wonder people think he’s ugly. The guy has longish hair and the stylist took it the front and made it go up and back so it’s like five inches high. See? He looks ridiculous.

2) Speaking of strange looking, Carlisle, Edward’s “dad,” looks really weird when he first shows up in the movie. It looks like they were still experimenting with how much makeup to use and really overdid it at first. Carlisle is a doctor and when we first see him he’s wearing a lab coat, I kid you not; his face was the same color as his coat!

3) Another weird thing was how all the vampires moved. We’ve all seen movies or shows where a character is supposed to move so fast that you can’t see it, usually they just have the character be in one place one second and then another the next second, in Twilight they showed Edward all blurry motion, but only on the bottom, so it looked kind of stupid. Also, when the vampires are crouching, especially during the fight seen with James (try to look in the background where they’re setting the fire) they kind of sway back and forth and they look like monkeys, not vicious predators.

4) Some of the cinematic choices were also dumb. The whole movie, though you get used it, is put through this odd filter that makes it look like they filmed it on the wrong light setting. I get why they did this though, they were trying to make it look even more over cast and gray. In the flashbacks, they used a sepia tone and made the film look grainy. This made it look like a fake old western instead of a flashback. In the book Edward just tells her what happened, they didn’t show it, and they didn’t need to show it in the movie. On top of that, the flashback with Edward being bitten by Carlisle comes off looking more than a little homoerotic, not the best idea for a father/son dynamic.

5) It didn’t feel like a movie. It felt like the pilot of a TV show. It’s clear they’re just setting up for the next movie, but each movie should be able to stand on its own. Another friend said she felt it was really choppy and that if she hadn’t read the book she wouldn’t know what was going on. Oddly enough my mom, who has not read the books, saw it and liked it a lot, and was able to follow it, so who knows.

6) I did not like the actress playing Bella. She’s very pretty and definitely looks like what I pictured Bella to be, but she is not a good actress. She didn’t have much range of emotion. She seemed to portray kind of angry and in pain and that’s it. I think she cracks a smile like three times the whole movie.

7) You don’t feel that they’re falling in love. Above all this is a love story and the movie just doesn’t make you feel that. There are a few scenes I think that if they had included them or improved them you would have felt them falling for each other a lot more. They just seem like two teenagers flirting in this movie.

I’m sure I could come up with more if I think about it but I think that does it for now. I would like to see it again, maybe by myself, to try and just take it in without judging it, if that’s even possible.

As a final note, if you don’t know what Twilight is then first off, you’ve been living under a rock, and second, here’s one of the movie trailers to give you an idea.

Twilight Trailer in HD