Twilight and Hamburgers
By Matt • Mar 22nd, 2010 • Category: The InquisitionSo last night Derek and I watched New Moon with Rifftrax. Even with the addition of Mike Nelson and crew commenting on the film it was still a nearly unwatchable film. It’s like some kind of thing that sucks the life out of you. Now first I’ll point out that I do have two strikes against me when it comes to being able to enjoy these movies:
A. Not a woman
B. Dislike films that are condescending toward their intended audience
The biggest thing that nagged at me this time was the characters. They are boring and dull how could anyone like them or find them interesting? The answer is they are like fast food hamburgers.
You see years ago the creators of McDonalds hit upon the perfect formula for selling large quantities of hamburgers: Make the flavor relatively bland and allow the customer to add condiments to their liking thus appealing to the largest cross section of consumers possible.
In the case of the Twilight characters this also applies. They are dull and lack individualistic motivations or any kind of idiosyncrasies that would really make them stand out. They are just movie characters doing what movie characters do without any real internal catalyst. The audience in their own minds adds to this by projecting emotions, hopes, dreams and desires and fantasies onto onto them.
Each character in Twilight suffers this problem. They have no real personality, just empty archetypes you see in most films aimed at teen audiences (and people who should know better). We have the girl that is quiet but really cool and mysterious. Then there is Edward who is supposed to be a dangerous bad-boy and Jacob, the gay werewolf. It doesn’t take much to describe any of these characters.
I could go on longer but I would just end up rehashing things that other people have already said and well this whole movie makes me feel apathetic. Maybe I am missing something by not reading the books. My only hope is that the Twilight Saga is actually an elaborate satire of the teen movie genre. Alright, perhaps that is a little too much to hope for.
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Who the hell is this guy (or gal) anyway?
Matt is a relief mail driver by day. By night, weekends and other days off he is connoisseur of the finer things in life especially classic film and literature. His contributions to Dirty Sprocket include photography, sound and lugging equipment around.
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Twilight 2: Twi-Harder!