I finally caved and watched this movie for the first time last night...I'm not a hater, I try to give objective reviews, I'm a male, I'm straight, I love all types of movies including vampire movies. But I'm sorry; this movie was awful. Here's why: - No character development= This is a two-hour film and that's more than enough time for the movie to set up it's characters and make you care about them yet aside from Edward and Bella, everyone else seems like they were only in the movie for four seconds. NOBODY leaves you with the impression that they matter.
You could use the excuse that "You should read the book to fully understand everything!". No actually I SHOULDN'T have to read the book to understand a movie. The whole point of film adaptations is to convert the book into a visual narrative that may alter/remove/add things in order to tell the story more cohesively on screen...but to throw a bunch of crap together and say "Well, people should read the book to like the movie better" are just lazy and suck at their jobs.
Yes, it is tailor made for teenage girls. However, it's also saying that teenage girls are stupid and will eat this crap up because it's made for them. You can make something for teenagers and still have it be good. Sadly, they know they don't have to put the effort in because teenage girls DO eat this crap up. It's really a sad testament to society these days.
- dry pointless dialogue= it felt like at least 90 minutes of this film were Edward and Bella staring at each other. The only significant dialogue I remember is him saying how he wants to murder her but will fight the urge to do so and somehow that made her fall in love with him. Aside from that it was all "high school stuff" pretty much. Which would be fine if it was interesting in any way.
- cardboard cutout characters = As I said earlier, none of the characters get any development, Bella shows up on her first day at her new school and basically gets a whole group of best friends. Yes they established she knew some of them from when she was what, 4? But it was just way too convenient and lazy writing that they all meet her and say "Hey wanna hang out? I value your opinion on everything even though we just met." and everyone she bumps into all happen to be in the same clique.
- terrible acting = Absolutely zero chemistry between Edward and Bella...ironic seeing as how they were dating in real life. I know some of the actors in the movie are actually pretty good so I chalk up a lot of that to the dialogue and directing.
- incoherent pacing = The three evil vampires, shirtless Channing Tatum stand in, evil chick who was in the movie for 5 seconds and black dread-lock dude. Who go around brutally murdering people. Then black dude shows up at the Cullen's to warn them about Channing Tatum's stand in for no reason at all. Then he just leaves and that's that. So that whole threat lasted about 4 seconds when the Cullens all kill the sh*t out of him. The romance between Edward and Bella...he does all this creepy stuff that literally would cause any woman to file a restraining order makes her fall in love with him, then they play vampire baseball and then bad vampires hiss at them and then disappear.
- no plot = girl moves to a small town, falls in love with creepy guy, then there's the threat of 3 evil vampires that gets solved in 5 minutes. This could have been a 42 minute after school special.
You could use the excuse that "You should read the book to fully understand everything!". No actually I SHOULDN'T have to read the book to understand a movie. The whole point of film adaptations is to convert the book into a visual narrative that may alter/remove/add things in order to tell the story more cohesively on screen...but to throw a bunch of crap together and say "Well, people should read the book to like the movie better" are just lazy and suck at their jobs.
Yes, it is tailor made for teenage girls. However, it's also saying that teenage girls are stupid and will eat this crap up because it's made for them. You can make something for teenagers and still have it be good. Sadly, they know they don't have to put the effort in because teenage girls DO eat this crap up. It's really a sad testament to society these days.