Gothic literature of the 18th and 19th centuries was mostly read by female audiences, and the more popular and romantic examples included plots which featured vulnerable heroines (weeping, suffering, and fainting at the slightest shoe drop) who encountered supernatural elements and mysteries and who, after the defeat of some horrible foe, often ended up married to a wealthy lord (perhaps previously disguised). Common tropes of a Gothic novel included a mysterious and suspenseful tone, elements of the supernatural, omens or visions or prophesies, a lonely and suffering heroine, melodramatic reactions and emotions (especially those related to love or suffering), lovers parted, and often one lover's uncertainty about the reciprocalness of the other's love. While some of the most famous and memorable Gothic novels, like Frankenstein, deviated from the standard tropes, the Twilight series can actually be seen as a revival of a type.
But is that a good thing? And does that mean any of the films are actually worth watching? Well, grab your smelling salts and hold on tight: I watched all five movies so that you don't have to.
This is the Great Twilight Run-Down - PART 1, the original Twilight movie.
Believe it or not, the original 2008 film was actually a lot better than I expected. A lot better. If you want proof that someone got the "Gothic" tone and what was actually interesting about Twilight, this movie is your proof.
The directorial choice was a huge part of the movie working for me. Director Catherine Hardwicke was previously known for her gritty, teen-centric, low-budget independent film Thirteen (clip linked, trigger warning for allusions to cutting). The movie was hailed as shocking in 2003, partially for its realistic depictions of troubled teen girls. The film was largely shot in shaky camera (more rare at the time) and used color largely to reinforce mood. Hardwicke brings similar tools to the much more Hollywood-standard Twilight. The color and look of the movie is both fascinating and impressive. The cold, corpse-like blue of the film is punctuated by orange props (and actor hair colors) in a way to really draw attention to the movie's overall coldness.
In general, the aesthetics of the movie both work well and look great. Hardwicke seems to have worked really hard to make the movie feel realistic in setting and tone. The teenagers, for the most part, seem like real teens, including Kristen Stewart's Bella. Stewart does a nice job portraying a girl who is uncomfortable with her own body and the attention that people give her. The fact that her father hasn't been in her life much, and that he now doesn't know how to relate to her now that she's a teenager, adds to her awkwardness and isolation. Overall, it just feels very real.
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| A prom dress shopping scene, sure, but one FULL of awkward. This makes it so much better than Vampire Academy's... |
The vampires are the exceptions to this "realism" rule. They all seem slightly overacted and far too old to pass in a high school setting. This bothered me at first, but I wondered later if it may have been an intentional choice. Through their oldness and unnaturalness, the vampires stand out and seem "of a different world" than the human characters. While everything else feels authentic, the vampire characters (Edward Cullen especially) all seem to be slightly "off" in comparison.
The main plot of Twilight is simple: a girl named Bella Swan (beautiful swan... really, Stephanie Meyer?) moves from Phoenix to a small town in Washington. Leaving the bright and open desert, her new home is full of shadow and mist - like a Gothic castle in the form of a whole town. At her new school, Bella feels awkward and alone, even though (or perhaps mostly because) people seem drawn to her. Despite outward appearances of everything being fine, she feels lonely and out of place, pulling away from friends instead of pushing toward them. She then meets a similarly very-out-of-place boy, who is attractive but who treats her coldly.
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| Ladies, if he looks at you with vague disgust, it means he likes you... |
After he saves her life, Bella notices that this boy seems to be harboring a mysterious secret and soon discovers he is a vampire. The boy, named Edward Cullen, at first tries to lie and withdraw from Bella to "keep her safe," but then relents, admitting his secret and showing her more about the vampire world (and his non-human-eating family). However, soon much more dangerous vampires arrive and decide that hunting Bella seems like a fun activity, causing Edward to have to save Bella once again. I'm sure it's no spoiler to say that he succeeds, ending with him vowing to protect Bella and Bella wanting to someday become a vampire.
Once again, the plot or dynamic of the film is not exactly a new one. The story is full of mysterious Gothic tropes and structures, making the "cold corpse" look of the film, as well as all the rain and mist, a good choice. Edward Cullen also fits another Gothic trope: he is a Byronic hero if I ever saw one. Byronic heroes, as the name suggests, are named for Romantic poet and writer Lord Byron, and are identified by largely being beautiful, moody, tortured intellectual men who are somehow alienated by larger society. One early example of the Byronic hero perhaps fittingly comes from the story The Vampyre by John William Polidori, Lord Byron's friend and personal physician who used him (Byron) as a model for the character. Polidori described his vampire hero as "gazing at the mirth around him, as if he could not participate therein," and that those who saw this man felt "a sensation of awe" that they "could not explain from whence it arose," except that man was cultured, pale, beautiful, and detached.
Edward Cullen definitely fits all the Byronic tropes. He is beautiful, cold, distant, passionate and artistic, but also moody and sullen. He treats Bella terribly one moment, then cries, calls himself a monster, and talks about how much he wants to protect her the next. The Brontë sisters would swoon...
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| "Sure, I'm an asshole, but I can play Mozart and look chronically disinterested. Love me!" |
The relationship between the emotionally insecure Bella and the Byronic-trope-a-thon Edward isn't healthy, but it's hard to hold that against the movie. Hardwicke does a great job of keeping the slightly creepy and Gothic tone throughout the "romantic" scenes, as if winking to the audience and letting us know that the film is a celebration of the genre more than the relationship.
That's not to say the movie is perfect. There are definitely terribly stupid details. First of all, Bella's narration throughout the film gets annoying fairly quickly, though it isn't quite as bad as Vampire Academy. Also, yes, there is the horribly cheesy 'vampire baseball.' And there are sparkles. Oh the sparkles.
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| ♫ "My Little Ponies, My Little Ponies..." ♫ |
Neutering the legend by having the vampires sparkle rather than burst into flames in the sun is infuriating, but it's a complaint more about Stephanie Meyer's original novel than the film. Also, to give a small amount of credit to Meyer and her books, at least she does try to make the vampire mythos her own.
Besides the incredibly stupid sparkles, Meyer also adds a few more new details about vampires. One such detail is that vampires have personally evolved to be the most beautiful, the most attractive, and the most appealing to humans, even down to their smell, in order to more easily hunt and kill them. That's actually a neat detail, and gives even more of a sinister tone to Bella's attraction to Edward. There's also the oddness of "extra" vampire powers; each vampire has the normal trademarks of super strength, speed, agility, and senses, but each one also has a different power which emerges when they are first transformed into the undead. Edward, for example, can read minds. Another vampire can influence human's moods. Another, Edward's "sister" Alice, can see glimpses of the future. This loosely accounts for differences in vampire stories throughout history, and it allows for an added tension when new vampires are introduced.
The action in the film is pretty decent, if not completely interesting. Because the main vampires we follow are ones who don't harm humans, we only get violence and tension when our vampire "villains" show up, which isn't very often. However, Hardwicke uses the time they are on screen well, and implies some pretty viscous deaths even if she can't actually show them in the teen-girl and PG-13 friendly film.
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| Horrible murder is being implied here. Somewhere. I promise. |
Ultimately, if you know what kind of movie you're going into, the original Twilight film is actually above average and pretty tolerable..... oh god, if only I could say that about the sequels.
Rating: a surprising 3.5 out of 5 bites
To be continued in PART 2. Unfortunately.
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