I tagged my first two articles with the tag “Twilight sucks”. It would be irresponsible of me not to explain why.
See, I’m a happily married man. As a result of this fact, I have seen most of these movies. I am not sure my wife even really likes these movies. She proclaimed reading the final book as six months of her life she’s like to get back since the book was so dull it took her that long to get through it. But I am not my wife. I have photos of the two of us in the same room to prove it. So, why do I think Twilight sucks?
OK, here’s the reason: Bella Swan is the Silver Age version of Lois Lane.
Check out that pillbox hat! That’s some quality Kennedy-era fashion.
Silver Age Lois Lane stories tend to take two possible courses. Either Lois is in trouble and needs to be rescued by Superman, or else she is looking to trick Superman into marrying her. Because, of course, marriages based on deception are a solid foundation for any union.
So, with this in mind, let us examine the second Twilight movie, New Moon. The basic plot has Edward deciding to leave Bella because she got a paper cut at a birthday party his family was throwing for her, and his, I dunno, brother or something almost goes nuts and drains her dry. Because, really, women never bleed on a regular basis. Bella mopes around the house for a few months, until she realizes putting her life in danger will allow her to have visions of Edward. So, she does stupid things for that reason, until eventually she goes to Italy, something any teenager can do without telling her parents, to save him from some local bad guys that…you know what, it doesn’t much matter. There’s some stuff in there involving Jacob, who was a werewolf the whole time and didn’t know it. Point is, Bella spends most of the movie either getting rescued or plotting how to trick Edward into coming back. Sound familiar? If not, please reread the preceding paragraph.
By the way, the movie wasn’t a complete lose. There’s, like, one scene with a young actress, playing one of Bella’s normal human friends (yes, she has some for some reason), where said young actress really lights up the screen with the charisma the rest of the movie is largely devoid of.
That’s Pitch Perfect star Anna Kendrick, and her ten seconds in that movie are about all I’d recommend. She doesn’t advance the plot one iota. She’s just charming.
But back to Lois Lane. Did Lois try to get Superman jealous by going for other available superheroes?
Did Lois have supernatural shenanigans that required Superman to intervene lest some other mystical creature get involved?
Actually, now that I look at it, Lois Lane was a heck of a lot darker there. Bella never got engaged to Satan.
What made New Moon worse, though, was that even though Lois Lane would need the occasional rescue by the Man of Steel, the story was clearly focused on his rescue of her. Not so in the world of Twilight, where Bella does need to be rescued, but she seems to conveniently leave the area whenever her savior of the day shows up, so the home viewer doesn’t actually see what happens next. Bella is being threatened by a dreadlocked vampire with a penchant for killing people! Giant wolves come out of the forest and…chase him away and eat him, I guess. I don’t really know. Bella doesn’t stick around to find out, and neither does the camera. We get a glimpse of the wolves ripping the vamp’s head off and tossing it away later, but that’s it. Bella then goes and says the giant wolves are what’s eating people, even though she knows the carnivorous vampires are in the neighborhood, because she’s that stupid, so her father, the least perceptive cop in all of motion picture history, goes hunting for them and…again, it doesn’t really matter.
Since I think that may be the only black guy with decent screen time in the entire movie series, I wonder if that was some sort of hate crime.
Now, Lois Lane has evolved since then. She’s a lot tougher and even occasionally can rescue herself. She can’t bend steel with her bare hands, but she can take care of herself a bit better than she used to, and she sure isn’t looking to trick Superman into marriage anymore. Bella discovers the ability to not have her thoughts read is actually useful. And here I thought the reason no one could read her thoughts was because you have to have a thought in your head before anyone can read it.
By the way, due to that “happily married” thing, and the fact my wife isn’t really any sort of geek, it also means I’ve seen most of Sex and the City.
I think I might be a Miranda. She was the only one that didn’t drive me insane with her plot lines.
Gabbing Geek 