The Twilight Saga: Eclipse - Discussion and Grading

[Trekker4747]

Rii wrote:

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I liked the baseball scene in the first film and the rest of it was tolerable enough. Got bored of the second halfway through and switched off. No plans to see this one or, y'know, read the books; whatever interest I had in the franchise has been sated. The moral panic thing is fun to watch, though, particularly as it appears to be promulgated largely by romantically challenged males.

Romanticlly challenged?

Yep. I'm romanticlly challenged because I don't like a relationship where the woman has to give up everything she is and her entire family to be with man she loves; who loves her so much he refuses to kill her.

Yeah, I'm romanticlly challenged.

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Seeing this movie the other night did prompt me to watch the first two movie again, with Rifftrax, forgot how funny they are. I need to figure out how to make DVDs of these. When Jacob is showing Bella her new truck and Bella instnatly figures out how to drive the 30 or 40 year old truck by double-clutching. Mike "Yes, all sixteen-year-old girls instinctively know how to drive an unsynchronized manual transmission."

[Aragorn]

[Trekker4747]

Lame, and not the best looking of "lesbians" either.

[Rii]

Trekker4747 wrote:

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Romanticlly challenged?

Yep. I'm romanticlly challenged because I don't like a relationship where the woman has to give up everything she is and her entire family to be with man she loves; who loves her so much he refuses to kill her.

Yeah, I'm romanticlly challenged.

No, 'romantically challenged' because you haven't had much success with women. It's cool, we have jackets.

There's nothing wrong, of itself, with pointing out the various ways in which Twilight fails to serve as a guide to healthy relationships; but why the hysteria? Women like trash too, always have. A not insignificant percentage of all romance novels ever written - and which are written almost exclusively by women - include scenes which border on rape. The 'male conquers/subdues the reluctant female' motif is everywhere. There are powerful psychological hooks here which don't correlate at all with anything even vaguely resembling morality. And vampire fiction has long been a vehicle for the exploration of the darker sides of human sexuality; Buffy built its feminist mythos first and foremost by subverting that. Twilight is not a recipe for healthy living, but neither is Halo. The notion that young girls are going to grow up with fundamentally warped notions of romance and sexuality from reading Twilight is no less absurd than the notion that young males are going to grow up to be psychopaths from playing Street Fighter. And underlying the concern for one but not the other is the chauvinistic notion that women need to be protected from this sort of thing. We men know best, y'see?

Seeing this movie the other night did prompt me to watch the first two movie again, with Rifftrax, forgot how funny they are.

So you've seen all the films, and two of them more than once. Are you sure you don't like Twilight? It's ok, we're here for you.

[ParticleMan]

I saw the film on Monday afternoon...I've seen bits and pieces of the first one and saw the second one once in theaters. My wife has read the books but isn't a diehard fan...she treats it like a guilty pleasure.

I have to say, I enjoyed Eclipse more than the previous two...the sad thing is, as many others have said earlier, the only thing that I could have done without is all the Bella/Edward/Jacob stuff...all the other secondary plots are interesting.

And regarding the romantic stuff, I think it would work better if you aged up the three leads to their mid-twenties...have Bella a recent college grad or something instead of a high schooler. I'd be more willing to buy into the whole "give up my mortal existence for love" bit if she were a bit older...but then, would the books be as successful if they weren't targeted to teens?

[Gaith]

Rii wrote:

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And underlying the concern for one but not the other is the chauvinistic notion that women need to be protected from this sort of thing.

I agree that that's a factor, though I'd argue that in most stereotypically male-centric cultural stuff (Halo, 007, Trek even), there are core values of serving the greater good, unlike Meyer's fantasies.

Ironic, isn't it: the protectionist impulse which makes many of us men loathe Twilight is the narrative foundation of the series itself! Reminds me of a top FML:

Today, my girlfriend dumped me proclaiming she wanted someone more like her "Edward". I asked her who Edward was. She held up a copy her "Twilight" book. She was talking about a fictional vampire. FML

[Kegg]

Gaith wrote:

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I agree that that's a factor, though I'd argue that in most stereotypically male-centric cultural stuff (Halo, 007, Trek even), there are core values of serving the greater good, unlike Meyer's fantasies.

Wait what?

I'm sorry, but nobody needs to justify their fantasy or their entertainment with the notion it has 'core values of serving the greater good'. It's entertainment; not a sermon. And there is plenty of stuff that's exceedingly popular with teenage boys that is, ah, downright immoral.

The Grand Theft Auto series, for example. What sort of inspiring core values does that teach? Damned if I care; I'm not the biggest fan of the franchise but I've enjoyed them myself since my eye-opening experience just running around a city hitting people with a bat in III.

But heck, if I need inspiring core values, I can pretty much chuck half the cultural detrius that is my entertainment in the sewer. So long, Kind Hearts and Coronets. Fare thee well, Oscar Wilde. It's just a very contentious notion to maintain, frankly.

Today, my girlfriend dumped me proclaiming she wanted someone more like her "Edward". I asked her who Edward was. She held up a copy her "Twilight" book. She was talking about a fictional vampire. FML

And there are guys who have married virtual avatars. There's always going to be people who confuse and conflate fantasy and reality in any sufficiently large fandom.

[Kestrel]

Rii wrote:

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I liked the baseball scene in the first film and the rest of it was tolerable enough. Got bored of the second halfway through and switched off. No plans to see this one or, y'know, read the books; whatever interest I had in the franchise has been sated. The moral panic thing is fun to watch, though, particularly as it appears to be promulgated largely by romantically challenged males.

If it helps I was first introduced to the Twilight-dislike by a feminist woman who's currently engaged.

Besides.... this.

[ParticleMan]

If I were the FML dude, I'd be breathing a huge sigh of relief that I was no longer associated with an individual who is apparently incapable of understanding normal human relationships or distinguishing between fact and fiction...

[Trekker4747]

Rii wrote:

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So you've seen all the films, and two of them more than once. Are you sure you don't like Twilight? It's ok, we're here for you.

I've watched "Manos: Hands of Fate"'s MST3K version dozens of times. I wouldn't call it my favorite movie.

[Gaith]

Kegg wrote:

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I'm sorry, but nobody needs to justify their fantasy or their entertainment with the notion it has 'core values of serving the greater good'.

Maybe with adults, but I believe in the value of presenting children with moral instruction via art. You may now assail me to your heart's content.

Kegg wrote:

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It's entertainment; not a sermon.

Your implicit suggestion that sermons can't entertain is totally absurd. A righteous message, well-argued, is a singularly thrilling thing.

Kegg wrote:

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The Grand Theft Auto series, for example. What sort of inspiring core values does that teach? Damned if I care; I'm not the biggest fan of the franchise but I've enjoyed them myself since my eye-opening experience just running around a city hitting people with a bat in III.

Well, I believe that the vast majority of recreational video games, especially GTA, at best debase and dehumanize by wasting precious life-time, so I don't think you'd like to start that argument here without veering a good ways off-topic. For the record, I disapprove of letting children watch Twilight or play GTA.

[Kegg]

Gaith wrote:

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]Maybe with adults, but I believe in the value of presenting children with moral instruction via art. You may now assail me to your heart's content.

I think that's up to parents, not you, frankly. And Twilight is marketed and sold as aimed at teenagers; not children. Thankfully I had more leinent parents then that, I think; I remember reading The Iliad at age twelve and being blown away at the depth and complexity of the work. I still have a deep fondness for Hector; a loving father and husband who was also mercilessly brutal on the battlefield.

But no, I guess I should have read Harry Potter (I'm not sure if it had been invented yet, aber); and given some of the philosophy reading of my teenage years a pass. Anything even remotely antinomian, heaven forfend!

Your implicit suggestion that sermons can't entertain is totally absurd.

Actually my implict suggestion is that entertainment need not be sermons. If I was against the very idea of sermonizing entertainment why would I be a Trekkie?

Well, I believe that the vast majority of recreational video games, especially GTA.

That's just plain ridiculous. I could understand this argument if you were against video games and/or entertainment sui generis; but you think it's a waste of people's time to enjoy entertainment that isn't moralizing at them? Entertainment is pretty much by definition a timewasting activity; it's what we do for fun. Maybe some people's ideas of fun involve elaborate mental games or narratives that demand to be interrogated; maybe trashy guilty pleasures; maybe middling middle-brow entertainment; maybe staring at a damn brick wall; maybe all of the above (brick walls can be pretty interesting.)

[Dream]

One thing I really liked about the Eclipse movie was how they handled Riley.

In the book, he just shows out of nowhere and is first named during the final battle. But in the movie, they show much more of Riley's background, his family, him getting vamped, and there are actually scenes with Riley building the army. The actor also did a good job. I thought Xavier Samuel made a more convincing villain than Bryce Dallas Howard's Victoria.

[Trekker4747]

Dream wrote:

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One thing I really liked about the Eclipse movie was how they handled Riley.

In the book, he just shows out of nowhere and is first named during the final battle. But in the movie, they show much more of Riley's background, his family, him getting vamped, and there are actually scenes with Riley building the army. The actor also did a good job. I thought Xavier Samuel made a more convincing villain than Bryce Dallas Howard's Victoria.

It seems this is a theme in the Twilight movies, the secondary characters get a lot more attention than the secondary ones. Along the same lines, as I understand it, the "bad vampires" in the first movie just showed up at the end of the book/at the ballgame but in the movie the director/writer had the intercut scenes of the vampires coming towards Forks.

But damn, the Vampire Bride Killing Spree thing would've made for an awesome movie, or even the Civil War Vampire dude, hell I could watch an entire movie of Alice pitching a baseball in the Cullen's vampire baseball play. Anything secondary in this movie series I'd much rather watch than what the central focus of these movies is.

[Rii]

Gaith wrote:

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Maybe with adults, but I believe in the value of presenting children with moral instruction via art. You may now assail me to your heart's content.

I've used films that way with my younger brother on occasion. Time was I had mild concerns about him wrt racism and drug use; nothing serious mind you, just trash talk with friends for the most part that he'd as likely as not have grown out of anyway, but a potential issue. So in both cases I nipped it in the bud by sitting him down with American History X and Requiem for a Dream respectively, age advisory tags be damned.

That was a 'shock and horror' approach, though. If the attitudes and behaviour of a child or teenager can be altered by mere osmosis in the form of exposure to a few novels depicting less than healthy relationships, then there mustn't have been much in the child's head in the first place, either wrt relationships specifically, or more underlying values. I'm no expert on parenting, but rather than forbidding children and teenagers to indulge their curiosity or base interest in stuff like Twilight, I'd seek to ensure that they were also presented with alternative examples and messages in the form of other fiction, real relationships, subtle parental guidance, and so on.

Re: adults and trash. I once read a document by a feminist author arguing, amongst other things, that the reason men like lesbian pornography is because they place themselves in the scene and fantasise about converting the women to heterosexuality via the sheer power of their penis. Needless to say, this is a classic case of overthinking the problem; but it's not difficult to understand how the author arrived at the idea. The notion that lesbians are women who simply haven't met the right penis is out there; in its most harmful form giving rise to so-called 'corrective rape'. Depending upon its form of expression, the idea can be absurd, distasteful, or abhorrent. But in any case, it's not a nation to be enjoyed.

So when it cropped up in Sin City (Marv: "Lucille's my parole officer. She's a dyke, but God knows why. With that body of hers she could have any man she wants.") I should've been offended. Or disturbed. Or something. But I wasn't, because it was too goddamn funny. From the picturesque lipstick lesbians with breasts glistening in the moonlight, to the protagonist's rough growl of a voice, it was all so knowingly, gloriously masculine that it transcended offensiveness to come full circle around to being awesome again. Male power fantasies are everywhere; but rarely so unabashed and exuberant as Sin City. And that very quality allowed me to enjoy it; to indulge in attitudes and behaviours that in most other contexts I find distasteful. In being so clearly a fantasy, I was able to treat it as such and disengage my faculties for the duration. It wasn't moral, or enlightening, but I doubt I came out of it any worse a human being than I was going in.

In the same way I expect girls and women can enjoy Twilight without having their attitudes wrt relationships and sexuality warped in the process.

Trekker4747 wrote:

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I've watched "Manos: Hands of Fate"'s MST3K version dozens of times. I wouldn't call it my favorite movie.

I haven't even seen most of my favourite films that many times.