So in last week’s article I mentioned that I had recently sat down and watched all five Twilight films in a single sitting because, “Ha ha, wouldn’t it be funny to do that for Low Five.” One traumatizing fourteen hour experience later, and here we are. Without further ado, let’s talk about the middle chunk of the saga, New Moon and Eclipse. The Twilight Saga, Part 2: New Moon (2009) “Okay, I know this one. This is the one where Bella tries to kill herself over and over. Which…I’m game for. That sounds entertaining.” Credit where credit is due, the first thing I noticed in this film is that everyone had suddenly learned how to act. Well, “act” might be a little generous, but the quality in New Moon is high enough that I’m willing to believe that it was actually made by Hollywood professionals and not a dropout film student hiring actors off of Craigslist.We open on Bella’s eighteenth birthday, which means that we can cross out “it’s illegal” on the list of things wrong with Edward and Bella’s relationship, so that’s a step in the right direction. Of course, the whole notion of stability in a relationship makes for terrible romance fiction (apparently) and so about eighteen seconds into the movie Edward announces that he has to leave. For…reasons.
Bella realizes that without her man by her side she’s lost all semblance of her identity and so she spends four months in her room staring out a window until Anna Kendrick takes pity on her and they go to the movies. At this point, I’m beginning to understand why so many people relate to these characters, because it’s always been a fantasy of mine to be pitied by Anna Kendrick. At the movies, Bella meets a dangerous (“dangerous”) looking biker dude and a weird ghost of Edward tells her to stay away from him, so she does the sensible thing and takes a ride on his bike. The biker guy, being an actually responsible dude, gives her a quick joyride before dropping her off safely at the movie theater again. This gives Bella the crazy idea that if she puts herself in danger (“danger”) she’ll be able to see Edward in weird ghost form, which…okay, sure. Around this time was when I first Googled “Twilight Drinking Game,” and my girlfriend and I briefly paused to visit the local liquor store. Oh, also Jacob goes through puberty. And he’s a werewolf. Neat. Bella jumps off a cliff because she saw Jacob do it earlier, which causes Edward’s adopted sister Alice, who can see the future, to think that she’s died. (Just…just go with it.) Edward gets the news and decides that, even though he broke up with her, he can’t live in a world where Bella’s dead and he’s going to kill himself. Alice grabs Bella, they fly to Italy (where the Volturi are), and it turns out that Edward was shit testing Bella the whole time—he didn’t actually want to break up with her, he wanted her to come looking for him. The Volturi are upset that Bella knows what vampires are and want to kill her. Edward is like “Nah, I’m about to turn her into a vampire,” and the Volturi are like, “Cool.” Then they go back to Washington and it turns out Edward was lying, because like, he thinks his soul is damned, I guess? And he doesn’t want Bella’s soul to be damned. He also mentions that this will piss the Volturi off. Bella is upset (because being a vampire in this universe is fucking rad) and she presses the issue, so Edward says that he’ll turn her into a vampire if she marries him, which is cool, because marriage proposals should be founded on bribery. Roll credits. Scott’s Final Thoughts: “Being in a holding pattern for an entire movie is a special, special thing.” 4/10. Drunk Level: 3/10 The Twilight Saga, Part 3: Eclipse (2010) Okay, the werewolves are going to get important in a second, so we need to stop and talk about them:First, every single one of them wears jorts. That’s in no way important to anybody’s character, but like…the werewolf uniform consists of a tribal tattoo on your right shoulder, no shirt, and a never-ending supply of jorts. Also, vampires and werewolves hate each other because (I think) they smell bad to each other, or something. It’s like an instinctual hatred, which is much easier to write than having an actual reason. The werewolves and vampires in Washington have a treaty that says that they won’t kill each other as long as the vampires continue to only feed on animals and not people (Recall that the Cullens are “vegetarians.”) This poses a problem because Bella needs to get her pasty ass bitten if she’s ever going to be a vampire. Okay, on with the movie. So first we see a guy in Seattle get hunted down and bit. More on that later. Bella thinks it’s a dumb idea to get married at 18 and wants Edward to just vamp her out for free, but Edward’s not having it. He claims that she should experience human life while she still, y’know, breathes and has a heartbeat and whatever, which sounds pretty reasonable to me. Alice decides to throw a party! (Which is weird because two movies ago Anna Kendrick said that the whole school thought she was fucking her brother.) Also she has a vision that a bunch of vampires are going to attack their small town. The werewolves hear about it and we get a cool vampire/werewolf alliance.
We get a bunch of information on the other members of the Cullen clan: Jasper was a civil war officer until he got bitten. Rosalie was gang raped, turned into a vampire, and then used her new powers to eviscerate her attackers, which sounds like a way more interesting story than this one.
So the Cullens and the werewolves all get lined up to fight the invading vampires (led by the guy who got bit at the start. See? We came back to it.) while Edward, Bella, and Jacob camp on top of a mountain to keep Bella safe. This turns out to be a terrible idea because Bella is warm blooded and starts to freeze to death. She and Jacob spoon and she realizes that—gasp—she loves Jacob too. Not as much as Edward though, because she agrees to marry him, which is kind of a kick in the balls to Jacob. Meanwhile, a sweet vampire/werewolf/more vampires fight happens. The Volturi show up to help out the Cullens because it’s the Volturi’s job to protect the secret nature of vampires and suddenly having like a hundred more of them in Seattle is just a little conspicuous. The vampire army gets the shit kicked out of it, and then the Volturi figure out that Bella is still a human and leave in a huff. Bella and Edward go stare at each other in a meadow again and agree to get married after graduation. In my drunken haze I wonder if Bella’s tongue will stick to Edward’s penis like that scene from A Christmas Story. Roll credits. Scott’s Final Thoughts: “Definitely the best one so far. This movie actually had consequences to it.” 5/10. Drunk Level: 6/10. And there you have it! That covers the middle third of the increasingly silly Twilight Saga. Tune in next week when we finally conclude our epic Twilight journey and then delve into something even worse. Hope your holiday went well and I’ll see you all in 2017!
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Scott Watmough has many strong opinions about many things that he knows very little about. They're usually about video games. Archives
March 2018
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