Okay, the most coherent commentary I’ll manage on Twilight is live at Tor.

More is coming. Oh, it’s coming.

Every teenager hits that phase when life becomes Tragic. In my day, girls packed the theatre to see Romeo + Juliet . Most of those same girls do reach a point where they realize that it doesn’t hold up the way it once did; Romeo and Juliet, at the end of the day, are two bored and horny teens with nothing to say to each other.

Did I mention I saw Twilight last night?

When it’s not posing as a travelogue for the Pacific Northwest (“Come for the scenery, stay for the abusive undead boyfriends!”), Twilight tries to capture teen malaise with a faux-mature sincerity that would have been satiric in the hands of a better director. Here it backfires. Bella Swann (Kristen Stewart)’s move from Phoenix to the tiny town of Forks is supposed to represent a lonely bleakness that only a room-temperature boyfriend can allay, but the initial scenes of Bella’s “boring” life come off not so much as a desire for the exotic and dangerous as it does a totally self-centered and misplaced petulance: her father is shy but kind, her peers are welcoming and inclusive, and by the end of her first day at school two boys have a crush on her. Oh, how can she STAND such a life?

Well, turns out she doesn’t have to—the prettiest boy in school, Edward Cullen (played apoplectically by Robert Pattinson), sweeps her away into a world of excitement and danger. He wants to be her friend—but it’s a bad idea —but he can’t stay away—but he’s a murderer!—but he’s been waiting so long for her!—but it’s not safe—but it’s impossible for him to be away from her!—but she has to leave home, it’s not safe—but how can they be parted?

You’ll notice Bella’s feelings never enter into this emotional emocoaster; she decides she loves him from the first moment and never changes her mind. In fact, she doesn’t even make up her mind about much else; having decided on the guy whose girlfriend she wants to be, she lets the plot meander along largely without her. With Edward doing all the romantic heavy-lifting, Bella gets to be carried beatifically from dinner dates, to prom, to fleeing for her life from a bloodthirsty vampire, to the Cullen family baseball game with nary a peep to say about her own future. (It’s fine; Edward does enough broody, close-talking romanticizing about their doomed love for six people.)

This is perhaps the movie’s biggest misstep: there’s no need to show us the mundanity of high school, and yet by the time Edward introduces Bella to his vaguely-incestuous vampire family we’ve spent so much time watching normal teens surfing and dress-shopping that there’s hardly any time for vampire baseball before it’s time for the tacked-on mortal threat to appear and become as infatuated with Bella as everyone else has. The vampire family dynamic appears as an afterthought, which means we never even get to experience Bella’s joy at attaching herself to a group of random people that are much cooler and prettier than the previous group of random people to whom she attached herself.

Instead, we get endless and often painfully awkward love scenes between Edward and Bella; they talk mostly about how they shouldn’t be together, which gets old long before the two of them are finished talking about it. Even after making the jump to Official Couple, complete with Edward’s possessive arm-slinging, they have nothing to talk about without an external problem to discuss; in a telling scene, Edward and Bella share a night of cuddling and talking, but the audience sees only a series of quick, mute fade-outs as twinkly music plays. What they had to say is far less important than the scene of her cuddling up to his chiseled chest as he makes the sort of face normally seen in the “before” half of a constipation commercial.

Unfortunately, this largely faithful movie adaptation of Stephenie Meyer’s blockbuster novel is set to do extremely well among the set still pining for their first love, whether it’s thirteen-year-olds who are still waiting or diehard romantics for whom their perfect man never appeared; it’s the perfect movie for anyone who never let go of Romeo and Juliet and don’t mind spending two hours with bored, horny teens with nothing to say to each other.

[This piece originally appeared on "a href="http://www.tor.com/blogs/2008/11/twilight-true-woemance">Tor.com]

Okay, so, plans have been finalized. Contact has been made. I’m headed down after work.

As much as I don’t want to get punched in the face (hint: I really, really don’t), I hope there is at least enough going on to make a liveblog worthwhile. When I stood in line for Lord of the Rings (yes, midnight show, yes, all three movies, haters to the left!), the people were almost unvaringly polite and awesome, so the liveblogging would have been supremely spotty and reasonable:

8pm: Arrived. Standing quietly in line outside the theatre. It’s pretty cold.

9pm: Watching Fellowship of the Ring with the dudes behind us who brought a DVD.

9:30pm: One of the dude’s wives came by and brought the guys AND US hot chocolates! She doesn’t even know us! This movie’s gonne be AWESOME.

10pm: It smells like popcorn butter in the air vent behind me. It’s like where popcorn goes to die.

11pm: Inside. Still smells like popcorn.

11:30pm: Crowd is respectful, chatty but quiet. One person is dressed up; he looks a little embarrassed but everyone is pretending not to notice.

3am: Man, those are some gropey Hobbits.

Let’s all hope tonight goes better! Or worse! Just not worse enough that I get punched in the face.

No matter what your feelings are on next year’s Watchmen movie (and mine are mixed), this is a beautiful example of what editing and music can do to elevate a trailer. I had been underwhelmed by the previous iterations of the trailer to the point that I had decided not to see the movie. I mean, when your opening is Billy Crudup doing his Joaquin Phoenix impression for the first twenty seconds, you’re not really going to entice me into a theatre. Let’s just face it.

HOWEVER. I have watched this trailer a dozen times in the last two days. The song at the end, Muse’s “Take a Bow”, is expertly applied (MUCH better suited than the Smashing Pumpkins). The editing, even though it largely recycles from previous trailers, is so much better in this one that I didn’t realize until my second go-through I was watching the same shots.

What I’m saying is, it’s probably better than the movie’s going to be. Plus, you know, great example of a well-edited trailer, blah blah blah nerdcakes.

PS. My favorite part is her hair at the end. (Neeeerd.)

PPS. Except she turns clockwise, then starts running with her right side! It doesn’t make any physical sense, and it bugs me. A lot. Quantum people, totally fine. Turning clockwise and then running with your right leg? I don’t think so, young lady!

And no, I don’t even mean this evening, after LiveJournal moves servers and eats our journals except for that one emo post we wish we’d never made which is suddenly the entirety of our archive.

I’m talking about the Twilightabasis Hannah and I will be taking in just over 48 hours. Even though we have plans to line up about seven hours before the premiere (SEVEN HOURS), we will be far too late, I think, since people are lining up well over 24 hours in advance.

However, I can’t help but feel a deep, ridiculous joy at the chance to witness something like this:

Hours in, I was still having to shout my interview questions at the top of my lungs because the “Team Edward” cries were being matched by the howls of the Jacob-supporting wolf pack.

(For people who are smart enough to stay away from canon, the last book is already written. It’s over, the character settled down, all done. And people are still screaming at each other about which one she should pick. Note the delightful lack of “College!” or “Team Bum Around Europe A Few Years!”)

Also, apparently at the premiere some of the fans stormed the barricades like it was the second act of Les Mis. Security and police managed to restrain them. I really hope that movie theatres are hiring security for this thing. It’s mob mentality, straight up.