Re-Evaluating Bad Movies

It makes sense the Twilight movies would play well to Rifftrax. There's just so much dead air.

I haven’t re-watched any of these films, but I’m pretty sure New Moon isn’t worse than Twilight. Jacob is a better character than Edward. There’s a better director. Better music.

New Moon is the one that introduces the Volturis and does the world building

Is Eclipse the one with Bryce Dallas Howard?

Day Fifteen


Film Year: 2010
Director: David Slade
Starring: Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner, Anna Kendrick, Bryce Dallas Howard, Dakota Fanning
Riff Year: 2010
Riffers: Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy, Bill Corbett
Selected Short: The Trouble with Women

Women - what the hell, man? I mean, what's your problem? Thankfully, for all of us non-women, some very smart people have put their best be-crew-cutted minds into coming up with a solution to the trouble with women (to avoid a conflict of interests, no women contributed, thank goodness). The Trouble with Women doesn't give us the definitive answer, but it does give us some very useful tools for dealing with... them. Mike, Kevin, and Bill (themselves NOT women) are your guides through this indispensable short.

“The trouble with women is that one of them is Kathy Griffin.”
“Are we sure about that?”

As I prepare to watch my third Twilight movie in two weeks I hope you’ll forgive me for watching a short that vents about women. The short in question features a supervisor telling off his boss for hiring women, and listing off all the reasons why they shouldn’t be hired.

But say what you want about this guy, but at least he isn’t sexually harassing and raping the girls. This makes him infinitely more likeable than Harvey Weinstein.

But before we rag on this short for being sexist, it needs to be pointed out that the purpose of the short is to shed light on sexist attitudes and try and correct them. The boss sets the man straight that his troubles with women aren’t just gender exclusive. It doesn’t do much of a thorough job of examining and rebutting every example he comes up with. I could stand to be a bit longer with a stronger counterpoint.

It’s obvious the reason they selected this short is because it has an angry, ranting old man at the center. Mike, Kevin, and Bill enter ranting old man mode, taking what he says and pushing it to the next level. Because they cross the line that the short doesn’t touch, this short is a must-see gem.

And now our feature presentation...

Every now and then a sequel comes along that is arguably superior to the original film. The Godfather II. The Empire Strikes Back. 3 Ninjas: High Noon at Mega Mountain. But the makers of The Twilight Saga: Eclipse cleverly avoided such comparisons by just making the exact same movie a third time. You want a slack-jawed girl who can’t choose between some squinty, mopey fellows? We got it! You want a red-headed vampire lady running around causing some sort of unspecified trouble? We got it! You want a consistent mythology, or a story that builds tension and develops in any way over the course of three films? We got...uh...hey look, werewolf nipples!

All our favorites are back: Moustache Dad, Harpo, the Volvo. And really, why should anything change? If you like Big Macs, and you order a Big Mac, you want the Big Mac to taste just like every other Big Mac you’ve ever had. And if you keep eating Big Macs all the time you’ll wind up alone, unloved, with a colon that would make even Louie Anderson’s doctor say “Dear God, you’ve let yourself go.” Just like the Twilight franchise!

So settle in, get a warm plate of muffins, and join Mike, Kevin and Bill for The Twilight Saga: Eclipse!



“Thank you, Twilight. Before you where could a twelve-year-old girl go for tales of demonic possession and child murder that were age appropriate?”

In the aftermath of New Moon being released I recall a conversation with someone who claimed they had just watch 30 Days of Night and responded “The Twilight series should take notes from that!” I told them “Well you’re in luck because David Slade is directing the next one.” I believe their response was stunned silence.

If nothing else Eclipse is the most stylish Twilight movie. Throw in a finale that has a pretty decent action sequence and you have what might be the most guy-friendly Twilight movie. It’s certainly the one I thought was the least painful to watch, and I even liked parts of it. Whenever a girl and I watch a movie together and it winds up being a Twilight movie, I cross my fingers and pray that it’s this one.

This one has a somewhat different story than the previous two, thank god. Ginger vampire Victoria is still pissed at the Cullens and builds an army of newly turned vamps to march on them and kill them all. The Cullens reach an uneasy truce with the werewolves to fight the army and keep Bella from harm’s way. Because, you know, everything in the vampire/werewolf world revolves around her simply because she exists.

But that’s not enough to get female butts into seats. The true story is about Bella being torn between Edward and Jacob. Even though she’s said countless times that she chooses Edward and Jacob is more or less just a glorified stalker at this point.

Mike, Kevin, and Bill don’t hold back on calling this romance out on it’s bullshit either. They harp on Jacob’s sexual predator behavior and never let up on him. Bella’s relationship with Edward comes under scrutiny as well, as they laugh in disbelief that they are watching a film featuring a virgin girl begging her boyfriend for sex, only to have him refuse.

The riff in general starts out as merely adequate only to build continuous steam throughout the feature to a gutbusting finish. I’d consider this an improvement over New Moon in that the riffs are more varied (in other words, they cut back on the gay jokes), though that riff of the first film is still tops. But that’s almost an impossible bar to reach.

But let us celebrate, for what I am told is that there’s only one more book in the series and therefore only one more film, so that means this fad is almost over. Unless a film fad of splitting a finale book into two movies to make more money occurs, but what are the odds of that happening, right?

Right?

RIGHT?!

Oh damn. ::drinks from bottle of whiskey:: This is going to hurt.

But before I go, there’s a riff that caught my attention this time around…
“Something’s coming…”
“Shark Week!”

It might not seem like much, but starting tomorrow you’ll see the irony.

I just remember Eclipse being the most entertaining of the bunch.  I recall some sort of subplot/flashback about a character who was turned into a vampire in the past and that being part of the reason why at the time.  Plus, that opening scene is most likely the best-directed thing in the franchise.

Day Twenty-One


Film Year: 2011
Director: Bill Condon
Starring: Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner, Anna Kendrick, Maggie Grace, Michael Sheen
Riff Year: 2012
Riffers: Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy, Bill Corbett
Selected Short: Know For Sure

You think you don't have syphilis, but how do really know? Has anyone you trust told you you don't have it? Have you been in contact with anyone from a big city in, say, the last year? Then you almost certainly have it! Talk to your doctor immediately, or at the very least, a silver-haired white guy with an authoritative voice. He will put your shame under a microscope and make you look at it and if that doesn't change your ways, than I don't know what!

Or you can just watch RiffTrax latest hilarious short subject Know For Sure.

Hahaha! Stillborn children, penis sores, and sexually transmitted diseases! Comedy gold!

As sarcastic as that may seem, this short is actually a lot funnier than it has any right to be. The subject matter is grim and dire, as they try to hammer it into your head the syphilis is a bad thing (no shit) and you should get checked out whenever you make human contact. All this talk about penises, dead children, and promiscuous sex, it almost seems as if everyone had syphilis in 1941!

Mike, Kevin, and Bill are at the top of their game here. While the jury might be out on whether or not someone who actually has the disease might find it funny, there’s certainly enough here to make fun of. They relish seeing something of this age talking about taboo material so stiffly and like a play, with the accordion drop being a definite highlight. They seem careful to never make fun of the disease itself but rather the way it’s presented here. I think all things considered this short turned out hysterical.

Something I didn’t know until researching what year this short was made, but it was directed by Lewis Milestone, who directed All Quiet On the Western Front, Mutiny on the Bounty, and the original Ocean’s 11.

But enough talk about doomed pregnancies stemmed from diseases. Let’s watch a movie about a...doomed pregnancy stemmed from a disease....

When word leaked that the final Twilight movie would be split into two parts, most people assumed that this was done by the studio as a cynical cash grab. Not so. The last chapter in the Twilight saga is so vast, so detailed, that it demanded the lush, panoramic two movie treatment.

Okay, maybe they could have trimmed some of that twenty minute wedding because it was very straightforward and didn’t impact the story in any way and essentially could have been a wedding from a Reese Witherspoon movie. And we probably didn’t need every single one of the scenes where Jacob visits the Cullen’s house and shouts at someone. And dear god, they are showing them playing chess on their honeymoon AGAIN!

Fortunately, the remaining twelve minutes of the movie that advances the “plot” in some fashion makes up for the slow pace of the rest of the movie by being disgusting and incoherent. The birth of Bella and Edward’s horrible mutant spawn is repellent, nasty and vile, and yes, we are just referring to the decision to name it Renesmee.*

Also, this time the wolves go to a logging plant and communicate via telepathy.

Mike, Kevin and Bill love to hang out at the logging plant too, or at least they did until that lame foreman called their parents and ruined all their fun.

*DO NOT NAME YOUR CHILD THIS OR ALLOW ANYONE YOU KNOW TO NAME THEIR CHILD THIS



“Ah, a romance for the ages: a gaunt, pale man reluctant to make love to his wife.”

It’s the moment all Twilight fans have been waiting for: Bella and Edward screw the living crap out of each other. Oh and get married and have a kid too, I guess.

It’s the wedding of the century...or, well, the afternoon. Bella and Edward finally wed and honeymoon in Brazil. While there, Bella against all odds becomes pregnant with a half-vampire child. They return home to care for Bella, but the news outrages the werewolf clan who vow to destroy the unholy abomination.

Damn you Harry Potter! The fad of breaking a finale movie into two films has reached Twilight, just before infecting The Hobbit, The Hunger Games, and finally going complete erectile dysfunction on Divergent. Whatever you think of this blatant attempt to double profit, and I’ve disliked it even when Potter was doing it, for the most part this first portion of Breaking Dawn works well as an actual movie (part two on the other hand...we’ll get to that in about a week). Looking at it from the point of view on what Twilight fans would actually desire, we have a movie devoted to the leads getting married, consummating their relationship, and giving birth to their child, which is really what is the ultimate satisfaction of any love story. For better or worse, Breaking Dawn Part 1 delivers what it needs to, and that probably makes it the second best Twilight movie behind Eclipse.

“Best” being a relative term, of course. Twilight wouldn’t be Twilight if it didn’t screw the pooch on execution and be unintentionally funny in doing so. There was a time when I considered Bill Condon a pretty good director, though granted it was on the basis of Gods & Monsters alone. Since then I’ve seen him direct two Twilight movies and a surprisingly unlively Beauty and the Beast live action remake. Now I just want to stop him before he directs large budget trash again (as a Frankenstein fan I find myself nervous about his Dark Universe Bride of Frankenstein movie...and that was BEFORE The Mummy came out). Condon provides a beautiful looking movie, but has trouble translating the story without going into bizarre territory. Case in point…



Hmmm...why does this seem so familiar…?



Ultimately the more the series tries to flesh itself out and make itself more interesting, the dumber it seems to get. It’s weird that something is finally happening in this movie series and it makes me feel that Bella and Edward staring at each other in a flower patch with Jacob glaring at them from the corner was somehow better storytelling. Breaking Dawn gets nuttier as it goes on, before climaxing with a pants-crappingly insane ending where Edward chews a baby out of Bella’s womb, injects her Pulp Fiction style with a syringe full of his vampire venom, and Jacob gets on some sort of sex offender list by falling in love with a baby and peeing on it (or something) which connects him to it for life.

Holy shit.

“Well we wrecked the bedroom. I guess it only makes sense to wreck the toilet.”
“Way ahead of you, honey!”

In my opinion Breaking Dawn Part 1 is second to the original as the best Twilight Rifftrax. Let it be noted I’ve only watched Part 2 once, but I don’t recall enjoying it half as much as this one. But that could be subject to change.

What really puts this Trax over the top for me is the wedding scene, which is quite possibly the funniest riffing of this series. With all the long slow mo shots and patented Twilight pauses there is too much room for jokes here, and Mike, Kevin, and Bill deliver wall to wall winners. After that the riffing takes a bit of a dip, but mostly stays consistent. The movie keeps getting stranger and stranger and Mike, Kevin, and Bill just find themselves reacting to it. And really, that’s kind of enough.

As Twilight nears it’s end it’s hard not to get a little teary eyed. There were so many great laughs at the expense of these stupid movies, why did they have to end? I find myself reminiscing upon the good times. Of course the highlight of this series came with this entry, as Bill noted...

“Best part of the movie so far! Door slams on chalk face and TWO SECONDS OF FOOTBALL!”

On a side note: stay with the Rifftrax through to the mid-credit scene for more riffing. Then Mike and Bill sit through the next ten minutes of credits doing their Volturi impressions.

Breaking Dawn was entertaining with the whole pregnancy plot.

The pregnancy plus Jacob falling in love with a baby might have been too much for one movie to handle.

Doesn’t the baby rapidly grow up and hook up with werewolf boy. I know I ain’t imagining that.