H
Hachi
Guest
I recently saw the current teen fad movie Twilight after finally building up the curiosity to see what the hell all the female members of my school were swooning over. In the words of my brother, "I went in expecting it to be bad and what a surprise! I came out thinking the same thing..."
The movie really had a number of issues that were fairly obvious. I'll begin with the camera as it became very irritating very fast. Basically instead of having the camera focus on a scene from a fixed (or nearly fixed or slowly moving) position it had to either transition in the blink of an eye to another view or do unnecessary random acrobatics. Basically the camera sometimes spun around or flipped over slowly for no reason. It also made every single transition appear like an attempt to rush the film to a less awkward scene.
I guess I'll go on to the acting... very mediocre at best. You could easily see this in the hospital scene at the end when Bella just keeps on stuttering for about 10 or 15 seconds. There was no shortage of awkward moments in the film in which I almost felt embarrassed for the actors. This also may have had something to do with the writing for the movie being really bad.
Now the writing for the script was really awful. It basically had the bad actors spouting laughable lines that... well you just have to see the movie to feel how awkward it is. (I know I use awkward a lot in this review, but that's the one word that seems to sum it all up).
Now on to the visual appeal of it all. The vampires and Bella the main human character seem to have exactly the same skin color despite vampires supposedly being pale. It also didn't help that Bella had dyed black hair accentuating her white skin. Also, only some of the vampires were really pale and all of the male vampires had randomly messy hair (with an exception). Now Edward had severe makeup problems. All of his makeup was easy to see and accentuated by countless close ups on his face and dear god I could not stop staring at his eyebrows. You could hide a small nation in them. I was just really bothered by his ridiculously over sized eyebrows. All of the fights and jumping was obviously done with a harness. You could see it quite easily in the film and it was truly hilarious when James (the "bad" vampire) jumped at Bella doing a weird flying crouch-grab.
The plot... I have never read any book in the Twilight series, so this is just from what I saw in the movie. Everything felt rushed as if they were trying to cover some huge expansive plot, but couldn't leave everything in, (which is to be expected in any movie adaptation from a book) and this led to some really bad time transitions. Every single transition took a split-second even if it was a month’s long chase or a passage of two minutes. This made it feel like the whole movie took place over the time span of a few days. It also doesn't help that all the romance in the movie really looked like a normal awkward teenage relationship changing from mutual dislike or hate into strange love. I also didn't really get anything like an attraction to Edward by Bella in anything but her words and obvious actions. No subtle hints or anything remotely close to that.
I really can't sum up all of the things that were flawed in the film, but I can tell you of my personal bias against it from before I even set eyes on it. I knew that the vampires wouldn't act like vampires. Do vampires no longer need to subsist on human blood now? Can they just take down elk instead? And why must they sparkle in the light as if they have glitter all over them? I also noticed a distinct lack of any real actions that would make them appear actually older than they look. I wouldn't expect a 100+ year old vampire to act like the 17 year old he appears as when he doesn't need to protect his identity. When I think of vampires I think of darkness, coffins, bats, gaseous forms, supernatural powers, and ancient brooding intelligence and wisdom, not a bunch of regular people with magical strength and speed and a need to live on blood. Oh and why the hell were they playing softball? That was just odd.
Like I said I just can't describe all of the movie's flaws, but trust me, they never seem to end. I give it a 3.5/10 because it did just barely manage to hold my attention to the end. It really was aimed at an audience of teenage girls, but the result looked like a beanie bopper's vampire movie. Oh, and is it odd that watching Twilight made me want to watch Hellsing OVA again?
The movie really had a number of issues that were fairly obvious. I'll begin with the camera as it became very irritating very fast. Basically instead of having the camera focus on a scene from a fixed (or nearly fixed or slowly moving) position it had to either transition in the blink of an eye to another view or do unnecessary random acrobatics. Basically the camera sometimes spun around or flipped over slowly for no reason. It also made every single transition appear like an attempt to rush the film to a less awkward scene.
I guess I'll go on to the acting... very mediocre at best. You could easily see this in the hospital scene at the end when Bella just keeps on stuttering for about 10 or 15 seconds. There was no shortage of awkward moments in the film in which I almost felt embarrassed for the actors. This also may have had something to do with the writing for the movie being really bad.
Now the writing for the script was really awful. It basically had the bad actors spouting laughable lines that... well you just have to see the movie to feel how awkward it is. (I know I use awkward a lot in this review, but that's the one word that seems to sum it all up).
Now on to the visual appeal of it all. The vampires and Bella the main human character seem to have exactly the same skin color despite vampires supposedly being pale. It also didn't help that Bella had dyed black hair accentuating her white skin. Also, only some of the vampires were really pale and all of the male vampires had randomly messy hair (with an exception). Now Edward had severe makeup problems. All of his makeup was easy to see and accentuated by countless close ups on his face and dear god I could not stop staring at his eyebrows. You could hide a small nation in them. I was just really bothered by his ridiculously over sized eyebrows. All of the fights and jumping was obviously done with a harness. You could see it quite easily in the film and it was truly hilarious when James (the "bad" vampire) jumped at Bella doing a weird flying crouch-grab.
The plot... I have never read any book in the Twilight series, so this is just from what I saw in the movie. Everything felt rushed as if they were trying to cover some huge expansive plot, but couldn't leave everything in, (which is to be expected in any movie adaptation from a book) and this led to some really bad time transitions. Every single transition took a split-second even if it was a month’s long chase or a passage of two minutes. This made it feel like the whole movie took place over the time span of a few days. It also doesn't help that all the romance in the movie really looked like a normal awkward teenage relationship changing from mutual dislike or hate into strange love. I also didn't really get anything like an attraction to Edward by Bella in anything but her words and obvious actions. No subtle hints or anything remotely close to that.
I really can't sum up all of the things that were flawed in the film, but I can tell you of my personal bias against it from before I even set eyes on it. I knew that the vampires wouldn't act like vampires. Do vampires no longer need to subsist on human blood now? Can they just take down elk instead? And why must they sparkle in the light as if they have glitter all over them? I also noticed a distinct lack of any real actions that would make them appear actually older than they look. I wouldn't expect a 100+ year old vampire to act like the 17 year old he appears as when he doesn't need to protect his identity. When I think of vampires I think of darkness, coffins, bats, gaseous forms, supernatural powers, and ancient brooding intelligence and wisdom, not a bunch of regular people with magical strength and speed and a need to live on blood. Oh and why the hell were they playing softball? That was just odd.
Like I said I just can't describe all of the movie's flaws, but trust me, they never seem to end. I give it a 3.5/10 because it did just barely manage to hold my attention to the end. It really was aimed at an audience of teenage girls, but the result looked like a beanie bopper's vampire movie. Oh, and is it odd that watching Twilight made me want to watch Hellsing OVA again?
