Twilight: Teen Nuthouse
A recent conversation about New Moon, the newest in the Twilight franchise, made me like it a lot more. Simply, all the teenage characters in the movie are nuts: Jacob (Taylor Lautner) needs anger management, Bella (Kristen Stewart) is psychotic, Edward (Robert Pattinson) is suicidal — and all their friends seem to have severe personality defects.
Kristen Stewart, Awkward Star.
Kristen Stewart, the oft-ridiculed star of the Twilight film franchise, is the subject of a NY Times Arts feature.
Life as a teen idol has never been easy. But navigating the obsessive attention of young fans amid today’s media landscape — all Twitter, all YouTube, all TMZ, all the time — can be particularly harrowing. And Ms. Stewart in some ways has it even harder. Because of the grip the “Twilight” franchise has on young girls — the first movie raked in $384 million at the global box office and the books, by Stephenie Meyer, have sold over 70 million copies — she is not just an actress playing a popular role. Instead “Twi-hards” have come to project their version of romantic love on her; Ms. Stewart’s shyness and hints of awkwardness make her accessible to fans in a way Megan Fox is not.
That’s exactly it.
Goddamn Freaks
When I was a kid, I used to watch these movies where people gave out their phone number as 555-yada-yada-yada-yada. It seemed so dumb to me, because ‘555′ makes it so obviously a fake number. (I kinda felt sorry, however, for Jenny, at 867-5309.) It’s sad that it has come to this, that we must protect our fictions from seeming too real, because so many are dumb enough to readily call up your number and tell you what to do (”Don’t go up the stairs you dumb bitch — the killer midgets are waiting there!”).
In Twilight, Bella (the angsty protagonist) moves to tiny Forks, Washington, where she falls for Edward Cullen, an angsty, guilt-ridden vampire. It seems natural, then, that Forks would become a major tourist attraction.
Over the last year or so, Forks (population 3,120) has morphed into a mecca for Twilighters, or Twihards as they are sometimes called. Visitors to this rainy town, whose main industries are logging and two correctional facilities, have more than tripled for the first eight months of this year, compared with the same period last year, according to the local Chamber of Commerce. Lodging occupancy is up, and local merchants sell little-vampire pacifiers and Bella and Edward action figures.
“You used to say you were from Forks and people would stare,” said Marcia Bingham, director of the Chamber of Commerce, referring to the “B.T.” (“Before ‘Twilight’ ”) days. “Now when they hear where you’re from, they’re breathless.”
Just fucking shoot me. Seriously.
(Though I must say the accompanying slide show makes La Push seem like a nice place for a picnic.)
Guillermo’s Vampires
Guillermo del Toro contemplates vampires in this op-ed piece for the Times. Prescient in a way, with Daybreakers and New Moon coming out:
Twilight
I just saw Twilight three times. Why, might you ask, would I devote so much time to a movie so fantastically bad, with acting so poor I’m sending Robert Pattinson (right now) a single dollar so he can buy a clue, when I have so little time as it is? Well… work. I wanted to know how Summit pulled this caper off, why it got so lucky (Twilight did massive box office).
Now I know.
Twilight tries to be neither slick nor smooth. It’s awkward and angsty and clumsy all at the same time — the epitome of high school. This is how people relate to the movie, pimples and all. Most people think it takes lots to impress teenagers, that you need fantastic special effects and incredible graphics. Not true. Apparently, all you really need is to tell a story that they can relate to — and they will, no matter how fantastically bad.