Contributing to the raping of the imagination?

Rating: 4/10 (14 September 2010)

'THE TWILIGHT SAGE: ECLIPSE': Two Stars (Out of Five)
I've never been one to jump on the band wagon and hate something just because it's popular to hate; I disliked the first 'TWILIGHT' movie the first time I saw it on opening weekend even before I had any idea it would be so infamously loathed by so many (and yet loved by an equal number, which is always the case). I was actually expecting a good movie since it was directed by a good director (Catherine Hardwick, who helm-ed such well respected movies as 'THIRTEEN', which she also co-wrote, and 'LORDS OF DOGTOWN') and starring the very talented Kristen Stewart, not to mention the fact that it was based on an immensely popular book about vampires and werewolves (but popular books can be just as trashy and poorly made as popular movies and I've heard from people that have read the books, as well, that they're just as bad as the movies based on them). So I was somewhat surprised to find out how awful the movie actually was and then later learned that many others agreed. I thought the lead actor, Robert Pattinson, was about the worst actor I had ever seen in a major motion picture and the dialog and drama was so cheesy and ridiculous that it wasn't even so bad it was good, it was just nauseating. The sequels have gotten a little better with each one though through well executed business tactics. Experts take note on everything that doesn't work about a film and attempt to somewhat fix it with the next installment.
With this chapter they've really tried to draw in at-least a small number of males with their almost solely female audience by making it slightly more of an action / horror film. To do this they hired yet another impressive director David Slade (the man who brought us '30 DAYS OF NIGHT' and 'HARD CANDY'). He does manage to deliver some somewhat impressive thrilling and horrendous action scenes but they're few and far between. What he also does well is attempt to cut all the boring crap down; he only lets Pattinson speak as long as he needs to for plot development and edits camera shots of him to make his acting appear not quite as atrocious. There are a few good scenes between Stewart and the only other good actor in the series Billy Burke, playing her father, but then Slade also allows Taylor Lautner to yap for way too long which is a fatal mistake. The only actor that should be allowed to speak at any extended amount of time in this series is Kristen Stewart. Lautner managed to suck so badly that in this installment he made himself look like a worse actor than Pattinson!
The film tells of the continuing romance between Bella (Stewart) and the vampire 'like' creature known as Edward (played by Pattinson, and he's not really a vampire considering the fact that he can survive in the sunlight but the movies still shits on the vampire mythology by calling him one) and her struggle to fight off the sexual advances of her werewolf stalker buddy Jacob (played by Lautner). This time around there's a female blood sucking creature (now played by Bryce Dallas Howard) building an army of freshly born blood suckers in order to kill Bella and get revenge for the death of her brother (from film one). The only way this series could possibly come to a somewhat satisfying conclusion is if it's revealed that Bella is actually a more deadly and vicious creature than them all and is manipulating everyone to her will. That would be pretty cool.
I saw this movie at the drive-in which is probably the best way to see it considering it's really just a glorified 'B' monster movie and trashy 'B' romance. If you really respect film you have to acknowledge what's good about a movie even if parts of it are repulsive. A movie like this isn't all bad; you can't just say it's a zero star movie because parts of it are atrocious. The director and crew pretty effectively deliver exactly what it's core fan following wants to see. You can argue that that's contributing to the raping of their imagination though. I know the books were intended for ten to thirteen year old girls which it does make sense why they would like them but it doesn't make sense why anyone older than that would actually enjoy these movies and consider them well made in any way. I think the only reason grown women like these movies is because they think the two lead guys are hot which proves that women are generally more superficial than men. You don't see guys becoming obsessed with movies that some hot actress like Megan Fox is in just because she looks good in it and actually trick themselves into thinking they're well made movies. Women act like they're less superficial than they are and men act like they're more superficial than they are but things are actually reversed; women are a lot less likely to settle in the looks department than men on average, they're obsessed with appearance as these movies show.
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