(Obviously you'll want to stop whatever you're doing immediately.)
My theory is this:
The Twilight stories deal with adolescence. They are one big metaphor for sexual awakening. They begin when Bella Swan enters Forks, Washington; a symbolic passage into a "foreign land" which is the opposite of her old home. Whereas Arizona was sunny, happy and dry, Forks WA is wet, gloomy and overcast. Welcome to adolescence, Bella!
Bella soon meets a handsome guy who, now that we're freshly adolescent, is practically a different species altogether. Very attractive, but also somewhat scary and dangerous.
She falls for him, he falls for her, and we're launched into a series of hugely melodramatic adventures that magnificently capture the emotional experience of being a teenaged girl. All sixteen year-olds are Bella, and they've all got an Edward.
And that's amazing. Huge kudos to Stephenie Meyer, the writer who pulled it off.
This is actually the POINT of literature. To put us in a fictional setting that utterly captures the spirit of our (alas) non-fictional lives.
So why all the haters?
My theory says, it's because of the subject matter, and I don't mean vampires and werewolves. I mean adolescence.
I'm racking my brain trying to come up with a classic novel or movie which deals with adolescence. Not pre-adolescence, there are a billion of those, from E.T. to Harry Potter, and not post-adolescence, which comprises 98% of all stories.
But adolescence itself, in all its awkward, fumbling, pathetic glory.
My theory says that Twilight haters are embarrassed by memories of their own adolescence, and the Twilight stories bring all those memories back. Childhood's fun to revisit, with its uncomplicated friendships and its long summer days, and early adulthood too, with its heady optimism and newfound independence.
But adolescence, with its work-in-progress social skills, brutal high school hierarchy, and emerging sexuality -- also verrry much a work-in-progress -- well, heck, who wants to revisit that?
The haters sure don't. And they hate the fact that the Twilight stories force them to do so. Even if they refuse to read the books or see the movies, it's impossible to avoid all the posters and magazine articles. Wherever you go these days, Edward and Bella are staring back at you.
(I have a corollary theory about all the Kristen Stewart hatred. I think the prospect of being stuck with Stewart for the next forty years, constantly reminded of stupid things said or done when we were seventeen, is too much for some to bear.)
Anyway, that's my theory.
Armed with it, I was looking forward to seeing the penultimate Twilight movie. I had enjoyed the previous three, and when I enjoyed this one, I knew I would have the added satisfaction of demonstrating my calm sense of self-acceptance, and maybe even striking a blow for artistic integrity.
Woo hoo!
Then I saw the movie.
Part One of the filmic version of Book Four in Stephenie Meyer's vampires series simply doesn't work.
And truth be told, I'm not sure why. I probably spent all my intellectual energy thinking about why the overall series does work.
But here are some thoughts:
-The first half of the book, any book really, is all set-ups and exposition, with precious few payoffs. Cutting a book in half and making two movies from it can result in a very limp, overdrawn first movie. See the Harry Potter finale for an example.
-We've sort of wandered off the central metaphor with the plot of this book -- oh, I guess I'd better recount that plot. Here it is:
The first quarter of Part One deals with the wedding of Bella Swan and Edward Cullen. The second deals with their romantic honeymoon on an island off the coast of Brazil, during which Bella and Edward have interspecies sex. The third and fourth quarters are preoccupied with Bella's unnatural pregnancy, the imminent battle between vampires and werewolves this pregnancy precipitates, and the birth itself, which practically defines the word "complications."
So if the central metaphor stands for adolescence -- and it does -- you can see how we're dealing with some not-very-adolescent issues all of a sudden.
Compounding this...
-Bella plays a passive role in the story. Things are done to her, not by her, and she has little freedom of action throughout. She's bedridden the whole second half of the movie.
Curiously, Stephenie Meyer was quite cognizant of this, and did something very clever with the book. As soon as Bella gets back from her honeymoon, Meyer shifts the POV over to werewolf and spurned lover, Jacob.
This has a bunch of positive consequences. It puts us in the shoes of someone who gets to run around and confront real adversaries -- his own werewolf clan, intent on killing the woman he loves. It also puts us back on familiar thematic ground. Jacob pines for Bella, but because of apparently insuperable obstacles in the way, he can't be with her. That's adolescence in a nutshell. Good POV shift, Meyer!
But the movie can't do that. It can't have Jacob stand there telling us about things. It has to show them. When it does, Jacob's POV is lost, and (new to the series) director Bill Condon doesn't show much interest in replicating it visually. Jacob, pivotal in the first half of the book, is relegated to minor status in the movie.
Maybe that's why the scene where the werewolf clan convenes to bark at each other was so embarrassing to watch.
Maybe it's also a function of the fact that the superatural elements of the story, once the undercurrent of the fictional world, are now very much in the open. Vampires don't live in the shadows anymore. We live with them. Werewolves don't lurk in the forest. They have staff meetings!
This can work okay in a book, where our imagination can beat any special effects house in the world. But on screen, squabbling werewolves just look silly. And even vampires lose much of their charm when we flip through their CD collection and see what's on their DVR list.
Breaking Dawn -- Part 1 disappoints, but Part 2, due in a year, will feature vampire Bella smashing trees, killing baddies, and getting mistaken for a fashion model.
And that's gotta be an improvement.
SCORE
How Accomplished: 44/100
How Much I Enjoyed: 49/100
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