Best Twlight Reviews EVER (SPOILERS)

[glottal]

Heh.  Reminds me of the Sims.

Well, it's been a long time since I've played the Sims, and I did generally want my Sims to be happy ... but from what I've heard, many other players try to make their Sims quite unhappy...

[Haids1987]

Heh.  Reminds me of the Sims.

...which I'm playing now.

[KatieHal]

I disagree with you on that.  Edward treats Bella like as much crap as she treats everyone else.  All that talk about how "fragile" and "breakable" really bugs me.  He doesn't show any actual respect for her.  And it does give the wrong message to kids: if you get into an abusive relationship, you will be happy, but if you find someone who seems to respect you (Jacob), then it's not "meant to be."

He's extremely controlling of her. When he ripped the engine out of her car to prevent her from seeing Jacob, that pissed me off. The pace of the book kind of fools you into thinking it's all okay--which was my experience with it. I read them quickly, then put down book 4 and finally went, "Wait a second..."

(Bella, in turn, is also very controlling but in a different way since she can't compete physically with Edward or Jacob. She instead controls and manipulates emotionally, and not even just them.)

That's another thing that bothers me about this series.  I hate the idea of predestination, especially in the case of imprinting with the shapeshifters.  I remember a Mormon trying to explain this to me: "You have free will, but there's one path God wants you to follow, and that's the one you have to follow."  Then what's the point of having free will in the first place if your goal is to follow the "right" path?

I kind of always took it more as, you have free will. But the thing is, God is omnipotent, so S/He knows what your choices will be, even if S/He does not in any way influence them.

[Delling]

That's another thing that bothers me about this series.  I hate the idea of predestination, especially in the case of imprinting with the shapeshifters.  I remember a Mormon trying to explain this to me: "You have free will, but there's one path God wants you to follow, and that's the one you have to follow."  Then what's the point of having free will in the first place if your goal is to follow the "right" path?

I kind of always took it more as, you have free will. But the thing is, God is omnipotent, so S/He knows what your choices will be, even if S/He does not in any way influence them.

How about this one: you have free will, we all in fact have free will, but in the grand scheme of things, not all of our decisions are all that important. There are some events that God has decided will happen or would happen contingent upon people's steering reality's course toward some unwanted outcome.

If God is omniscient, He knows all of the possible options at any given time. He only needs to take action to prevent the ones He absolutely doesn't want happening from happening and to cause the ones that He absolutely wants to happen to happen: and He's omnipotent so He can do that.

Conversely, we exist on a much smaller day-to-day scale such that our decisions seem really important to us. This offers us the assurance that by our choices, things could be different but also assures us that whatever reality we find ourselves in is moderately acceptable to God (because He took no special action to preclude it). Therein ends my diatribe unless we want to get into more metaphysics...

Yeah- I saw that interview too which changed my opinion of her slightly. She REALLY should've done more research, but for what Twilight is, it's not bad. It's just as if you were on Fanfic.net reading an amateur story about vampires. She stretched the meaning of everything in the story to her liking, and went with it. I'd be fine with that if Bella wasn't such a jerk.

That's just how I see it though. I'm all for stretching the rules if you know what they are. I do that in my story with Arkillian Dragons. They're not dragons, but a different branch of them. It adds new dynamic to something familiar without saying "Oh yeah- I'm an idiot"

Still, all the research in the world offers no protection from people thinking the adaptation in question is idiotic. :-/ I think people would still be anti-Meyer vampires if she'd done research and still just went with her idea. This has more to do with this:

Ugh. Yeah, she just....created some pretty pretty totally awesome no downsides at all creature, threw in blood drinking, and called it a vampire. They are NOT vampires. They don't even have FANGS!

Than the not knowing what a normal vampire was to begin with. (Also even fangs couldn't save their vampirism.)  

[Deloria]

I remember a Mormon trying to explain this to me: "You have free will, but there's one path God wants you to follow, and that's the one you have to follow."  Then what's the point of having free will in the first place if your goal is to follow the "right" path?

According to what I believe as a Christian: you have the path God would like you to follow (a godly, righteous path), but you don't have to follow it.  He gives you opportunities that can lead you down different roads, but ultimately it's your decision how it all turns out. 

That being said, I don't think He looks at you and is like, "Hmmm.  Looks like a plumber to me!" and leads you down the road that'll turn you into a plumber.  I think He leads you down a weird, meandering path that is full of forks (no pun intended ), so if being a plumber is where you ultimately happen to end up, then go you!  I think He just wants you to be happy, whatever you decide.

Why would God care about whether you happen to become a plumber or not? Is it a more morally acceptable career choice than any number of other white or blue collar jobs?

[Enchantermon]

He doesn't. That was Haids' point.

(Posted on: June 15, 2011, 04:00:11 PM)

So, to steer this thread back on-topic, I present to you the reason why Twilight is so popular.

[Delling]

I like the first comment: "Hey, this is an extremely offensive video. I like Lego bricks."

[Enchantermon]

Hah, nice. I hadn't even read the comments.

[Haids1987]

Bwa ha ha ha haaaaaaa!  That's awesome...yet sadly, it's also true.  I hadn't thought about why girls identify with Bella, but it's true: every girl--EVERY girl--feels insecure in her life, and Bella is the Lego brick representation of insecure.  Girls are like, "ZOMG!  If Bella can find her (perfectfacesuperhotsuperperfectflawless) Edward, then of course I can too!"  Too funny!

Under the suggested videos, this one was among them.  I've never watched the movies, so I'm not sure why Carlisle is all whispery and quiet, like it's all a big secret, but it's pretty funny.

[glottal]

Under the suggested videos, this one was among them.  I've never watched the movies, so I'm not sure why Carlisle is all whispery and quiet, like it's all a big secret, but it's pretty funny.

I've never seen or read Twilight, but I have seen Blade, so I definitely laughed at *that* ending.

[Enchantermon]

If you've seen Blade, you may appreciate something I posted earlier in this thread (apologies if you've seen it already).

[glottal]

No, I hadn't seen that.

[Haids1987]

If you've seen Blade, you may appreciate something I posted earlier in this thread (apologies if you've seen it already).

I saw it, and I know who Blade is, but I don't get it.  Who is that character supposed to be in the movies?  Is he Laurent? 

[KatieHal]

No, no, it's just Blade saying he's going to kill Bella & Edward and do us all a favor.

[Enchantermon]

What Katie said. It's basically the crossover that Twilight haters daydream about.

[Haids1987]

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! So he doesn't really show up in the movies.  I get it!

[Enchantermon]

Ah, the wonders of Photoshop.

[Cez]

somebody mentioned the music in this series. I did come across a few pieces of the score, and they were absolutely wonderful. Of course, by Alexander Desplat, who is great at making music an has also lead the score for the latest (not sure how many) Potter films.

As for the abusive relationship between Bella and Edward, and the fact that they are manipulative teens, well, that's a very good depiction of many relations I've seen --especially with teens!. But I guess I understand the point of this being sold to pre-teen girls as "it is ok".

I do remember the first time I was heartbroken. The beginning of the second movie reminded me a bit how I felt then (Hey, I wrote a full book of poems out of that particular experience!). There was a particular scene that was very well done, where Bella is in her room and  time goes from summer to winter, and she's still there in the same position. There are some relationships in our lives that makes us become stagnated or fixated in particular people, even if we know deep inside they are not good for us. We all grow out of that and become jaded and see love as a more practical thing eventually, but there is a period in everyone's life where love can be a life-death situation. And I think that's what Twilight is trying to depict.

Now, I'm not really defending it. I've seen the movies and I only really liked the first one. I really liked the chemistry between the two leads there --it was a weird relationship, it was not normal, it may have been built upon abuse and whatever, but at least, in the first movie, it feels different. They are teens that find each other through the worse in each one, their loneliness brings them together, there's a sense of overall dread in the movie, and it is through this dread that they connect. There's tragedy cast on both of them, and I think they did a wonderful job at it--they are both highly unlikeable by standards, and yet you eventually feel their connection. It never felt cheesy or cliché as I thought it was going to feel --reason why I was dragged into the movies to watch it.

I've heard that the books go on the romance more as almost a soft-porn entry to pre-teen girls where Bella just keeps going on and on how she's oh, so in love with Edward. But I certainly didn't get that vibe from the movie in general --or at least not excessively.

And then it became a triangle, and the next two movies were crap.

[KatieHal]

A lot of people dislike that particular bit in New Moon, where four months just pass and Bella's zombie-like throughout. In the book it was four pages, totally blank except the name of a month on each one. I actually liked that and thought it was effective--I've been there myself, I know that feeling.

Still, can't wait for the trainwreck of Breaking Dawn to hit theatres! 

[Enchantermon]

I saw the trailer for it when I went to see Transformers 3. It was...odd.
And I didn't know they were splitting it into two parts.