“I won’t kill you. That’d be too
easy. You deserve to live with this.”
The film begins with a lot of
wedding stuff, and feels like one of those comic books where one of the
protagonists gets married: light, fluffy and full of crap humour. It’s all
extremely well shot, though, with some extraordinary touches. There’s some nice
switching between monochrome and colour, and the dream sequence with the rose
petals looks extraordinary. Still, Bella is marrying Edward, and I’m bloody
worried about her. A potential lifetime of abuse awaits.
Alarm bells start sounding very
soon; Bella is not to become a vampire until after the honeymoon. Sex is dangerous,
so anything before this happens could kill her. And it’s not as though they’re
not going to have sex on their honeymoon, however much Edward tries to arrange their
time to avoid it. I don’t care how uber-cool their honeymoon suite is: this is
a stupid situation which the characters just seem to walk into. Surprise
surprise, Bella becomes pregnant: I assume vampires don’t do contraception as
it cramps their style. Surprise surprise: the child is not exactly all human,
and could kill her. Edward is personally responsible for all of this easily
avoided near-tragedy. How on Earth are we, the audience, supposed not to hate
the bastard?
And what are we supposed to
conclude/ That all sex, even good Christian married sex, is bad, dangerous and
to be avoided? That is NOT a good message. And, yes, the issue of abortion
rears its head. These films are getting more and more right-wing.
The ending is tiresomely
predictable: Bella gives birth, “dies” and, to no one’s surprise, is about to
become a vampire in the last shot. And I don’t like all this stuff about Jake
imprinting on the baby either: essentially this is just taking a character who
disagrees with the authorial viewpoint and making him conform. It’s crude and
nasty.
I have to emphasise, though, that
although I really, really hate the subtext of these films, they’re increasingly
well made as they progress. His film looks gorgeous, and even the CGI for the
wolves looks good. It’s just a shame that the central message is so wrong and
dangerous.
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