Thank You, Twilight, For Teaching Me To Enjoy Bad Movies
Thank You, Twilight, For Teaching Me To Enjoy Bad Movies
If only Mike could also learn to enjoy bad movies so he'd stop vomiting during them.
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When I flew into New York about 6 weeks ago, the first thing my new roommates and I did before the next day’s big move was watch Twilight. I started off hesitant, just along for the ride, thinking my jet lag would swallow me up before the movie ended, but I was so wrong. What a life-changing film. The hype is real. So much so that I ended up watching two of the sequels New Moon and Eclipse later.
I want to discuss a particular scene in New Moon that I simply can’t forget (and have embedded below for your enjoyment). The context is that Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner’s werewolf, for the uninitiated), takes Bella out on a double date with classmates to see a grisly movie, their budding romance threatening Bella’s relationship with Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson’s vampire baddie). However, while Bella’s 17 and therefore of age to watch rated-R films, Jacob is only 16, so he feels like a little baby boy instead of a man. Further complicating this forbidden romance is that only half of the other couple shows up, which happens to be a schlubby, sensitive-stomached dude named Mike who ends up third-wheeling. And yes, his stomach chemistry is crucial.
Mike ducks out of the movie early to literally vomit because the violence makes him physically sick, so, for some reason, Jacob and Bella also leave instead of finishing the movie and reenacting it for Mike later like real friends would. Jacob, likely in a full moon roid rage, steps up to Mike. Then, the tension begins. “Feeling ‘sick?’” he says, practically spitting the words into Mike’s pale, boyish, cherubic face*. “Maybe you need to go to the hospital. You want me to put you in the hospital?” This line broke my heart. I rooted hard for Jacob in his battle against toxic masculinity and would’ve far preferred that he learn to express his anger through pottery or industrial noise mixtapes or something. Instead, both Mike’s physical safety and Jacob’s spirit are on the line.
Thankfully, Bella swoops in to hold Jacob back, saving the day: Jacob acknowledges that he’s been roiding out on werewolf juice since he was a child and leaves. Before that, though, Bella did nothing. She just furrowed her brow and sent Jacob mixed messages. This is the key to appreciating Twilight: watching these characters react passively to each other and gasp and generally squeeze themselves into a scene they’re reluctant to be a part of. It’s brilliant. Every scene has at least one person uncomfortably making faces. You can endlessly entertain yourself watching now-acclaimed actors sneer and scowl their way into $25,000,000.
And that’s pretty much all that happens. Simple, but it captured that late 2000s zeitgeist with aplomb. And the performances? *Mwah*. Mike’s actor’s perfect delivery of “What…is your problem?” kicks this scene up from teen drama to ideological showdown (he carries this scene). Taylor Lautner admittedly struggles to keep up, but he and his giant ego at least balance the vibe with some good snarls and a symbolic black shirt. When Mike’s date doesn’t show at the beginning (because she was also sick, apparently), we as an audience are already devastated. But when Jacob insults him (“What a marshmallow!”) while poor Mike’s broken digestive system lays siege to his crumbling sanity, our hearts are in our throats.
I think about this scene often. Why? I cannot say. Perhaps it’s because I’m new to the world of campy TV and movies, having spent lots of (too much) time in my early 20s huddled in the world of “prestige” media, so now any scene full of pulpy, banal absurdity like this stays with me. People more familiar with the Twilight universe have better reasons than me for why Jacob behaved so aggressively—his werewolf instincts kicked in, he didn’t like that Mike called him out for being too young for the movie, he wanted to prove his manliness, he was angry that Bella turned him down for Edward, he suffers from emetophobia**, etc. All are very plausible.
OK so by now, it should be abundantly clear that my enjoyment of this scene (and this franchise) come from how bad it is—from how messily it mismatches my expectations of storytelling, which I think says more about me than it does about the movie. For those of you out there who hate Twilight and wonder what is going on with me and have commented “still a better luv story than Twilight ROFL” on every YouTube video that involved at least a single iota of human connection, I’ve got something to say. I used to be one of you. I used to scoff (audibly) at crappy movies*** because there was no ~deeper meaning~ or ~character development~ or ~clarity of vision~. It’s only now, in my mid-20s, that I’ve reabsorbed the maybe obvious truth that adult movies, like kids cartoons, are allowed to be bad. They can swim in nonsense, and that’s OK, because they’re more fun to play with that way. They can just be about having fun, quoting bad dialogue, and repressing gastrointestinal distress. Not everything needs to be “high quality.”
I still do love watching good movies because they make me think and feel and question myself as any well-told story does. The negative phenomenon I’m talking about, though, is those prestige films that I don’t actually like but gather so much in positive critical reviews and popular hype (usually bolstered by clickbait headlines in my news feed like “Must Watch: Timothée Chalamet fainted into the ghost of Roger Ebert’s lap during premiere of new indie film Toilet Magic” or whatever) that I feel like I’m supposed to like them. Prestige films pour into my eyes and ears and hold a nice little dinner party in my brain with tablecloths and collared shirts and the boss bringing his wife so be on your best behavior! until I fall asleep and wake up unsure of A) whether I actually had fun or just fulfilled a relatively lax obligation, B) what the plot was, and C) why it got a 94% on Metacritic. They become a fully professional enterprise, more intent on convincing me of their merit than being themselves, and I find them as opaque as people who do the same.
Twilight showed me I can enjoy something bad. Reader, I hope you actually watched the scene I linked, and if you haven’t, that I’ve convinced you to do so. I am curious to know what you think about Twilight and how you feel about bad movies as well. What’s the worst movie you’ve ever seen? What’s your favorite bad movie? One that you’d watch over and over again? I am so curious, and will take suggestions in the comments and email replies.
* It’s strongly implied early in the film that the only violence Mike has experienced is from watching too much Looney Tunes.
** The perceptive individual who suggested this and at least three online resources I later consulted all phrased it as “Emetophobia, or the Fear of Vomit,” which reminds me of “Birdman, or The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance” and makes me want to mount a broadway production about emetophobes who find love.
*** Exception being cult classic The Room by Tommy Wiseau, which I still love, but doesn’t count because it’s brilliant in how bad it is.
Other Things Of Note
This Twilight fan fiction website full of good energy and wholesome comments. I haven’t explored much but for the time being, I’ll probably draw my Twilight boundaries at feature films.
On the note of overrated prestige movies, the film The Master by Paul Thomas Anderson is incredibly overrated.
Also, I stopped watching Mank halfway through because I got bored. It’s boring. I’m tired of these American-ass movies about older American-ass movies that only pwn at the box office because of quippy dialogue.
The Usual Suspects is also boring, and maybe even bad? But mostly boring. And also #cancelled, I suppose, because of Kevin Spacey.
OK on a new (and very important) note, this Atlantic essay on workism that every millennial searching for their “dream job” needs to read.
This short essay “How Have You Overcome Writer’s Block?” by Alexander Chee that digs into what it means to write and how to manage mental blocks.
This spiritual image of Latino trap rapper Bad Bunny:
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—Chuckry Vengadam (@churrthing)