Twilight Is Over, And Everything Is Wonderful
By Nico Lang
Do you hear that sound blaring in the background? That’s the sound of utter elation — in the form of me Leslie Knope-dancing to LMFAO’s “Party Rock Anthem.” Because the last Twilight movie (Breaking Hymen — Part Too Many) is out, meaning there will be no more Twilight films. If I may quote Sixteen Candles: I’ve never been so happy in my whole life. The low-hanging fruit will soon be axed, and we can all go back to our regularly scheduled lives.
No more Taylor Lautner taking his shirt off just so the mothers of 10-year-old girls can explain to their children what it means when their vaginas get tingly. No more vampires that sparkle in the sunlight rather than exploding in a ball of flames, because THAT’S WHAT VAMPIRES ARE SUPPOSED TO DO. No more Dakota Fanning and Michael Sheen making me forget what good actors they are in other things. And, most especially, no more Kristen Stewart slouching and trembling and twirling her hair and performing the inverse of acting. You are a grown ass woman. Stand up straight and forgodsakes, stop biting your lower lip! You only get one of those things.
I’ve been at odds with pop-culture phenomena before, and I still don’t believe that Skrillex or Justin Bieber are real people (prove it!), but I’ve never disliked something that so many other people like with such vehemence. I once forced myself to watch High School Musical — just to see what was up with it and what its deal was. I hated it (a lot), and I felt like I was being punished for something I didn’t know I did. But I could understand why kids might like it. There were lots of songs, Zac Efron looked awful shiny and Ashley Tisdale’s mean girl was named after an excess-skinned brand of dog. If I could get down with Disney channel movies like Zenon, Johnny Tsunami and Brink!, I could let the kids have their singing and dancing. I’m not John Lithgow in Footloose. I get it. I’ve listened to One Direction. I can be hip!
But the thing is: No one takes High School Musical that seriously, because it’s a tween musical, not Tolstoy. However, Twilight people take Twilight very, very seriously, as those reaction videos of girls crying while watching the FUCKING TRAILER can attest, and this troubles me. It troubles me because the movies are about a girl who meets a 100-year-old dead guy (who I’m sure she has a ton in common with) that has nothing better to do than keep hanging around high school for almost a century. (Surely American History has to get boring after a while. I mean, George Washington was a cool guy for founding the country and all, but do you really want to talk about him for 100 years?) And after meeting this dead person, she decides he is “the one,” despite the fact that he obsessively stalks her and constantly reminds her that he might kill her. He will later reward her devotion by turning her into a vampire, proof that you are nothing until you meet some guy who you can completely change yourself for.
Take it from Bella, ladies. You are nothing without a man to follow around, so you don’t need things like rights or reproductive health. All you need is love — and your vampire boyfriend to kill you. You’ll never feel so alive until you’re dead.
Have I left anything out? Let’s survey the wreckage: Abusive relationship that ends in death? Check. Multiple suicide attempts to win back a loved one? Check. Regressive female sexuality predicated on abstinence-only bullcrap? Check. A rapidly aging, creepy CGI baby? Double check. Bad, kabuki-theatre-esque make up? Check. Talking wolves? Oh, yes. Bella’s would-be werewolf boyfriend (the one who can’t find his shirt) that she dumps for a cold-blooded stalker instead imprints himself on her half-vampire, half-human child as a consolation prize. A WEREWOLF FALLS IN LOVE WITH A BABY. And people thought that was a thing that was good, so good that they cried over it when a trailer teased its appearance in an upcoming film.
When the movie came out that features this nocturnal-canine-infant romance, hordes of Twi-Hards flocked to see it with t-shirts and big foam fingers. Undoubtedly, the movie will end and adolescences will be destroyed with the closing credits. People will wonder what they could possibly do without more Twilight movies. They will look to Stephenie Meyer’s offhanded shrugs about creating more books “one day in the future or whatever” as a flashlight by which to see an uncertain future.
But when darkness falls over Twi-Land, chaos will reign. And I will rise. The year of Stacy will be complete.
Some will look at this as the darkest day, the one in which they had to face the realities of adulthood and real life — where a married Edwards spends all day watching baseball and drinking beer with his vampire buddies, the romance dies and sweatpants happen. But I look forward to the release of this last “saga” as the beginning of an era in which I don’t have to be reminded who Taylor Lautner is or that the term “Twi-Hard” is even a thing, in which I can gaze upon the voluptuous figure of Jennifer Lawrence and know that the future of girl world is in good hands. Because not only is Twilight over, but we now also have three more glorious years of The Hunger Games, one in which women don’t have to pretend to be damsels in distress to get the guy. They get the guy by kicking his butt in a game of post-apocalyptic Battle Royale and murdering all of their peers for survival. That’s my kind of romance, Ron Swanson-style.
If Stephenie Meyer does come back with more Twilight books, as she casually threatened in a press conference, we have at least five years of buffer time to prepare for that spin-off — which will be about the romance between Jacob and THE VAMPIRE BABY, Renesmee. (Which, if there’s any justice, will be called From Jacob to Renesmee, co-star Kelly Clarkson and be a musical.) To prevent this, I suggest we get Buffy on the case. She’ll have this vampire business taken care of in no time, when she rips Renesmee’s head off for having a stupid name.
Until then, fly away Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart. You are free now.