I’ve made no secret of my slight distaste for the Twilight franchise. In fact I’m pretty sure some of my previous maligning comments will come in handy should you ever need to eat through the various hulls of The Nostromo. However, it’s fair to say these movies make a decent amount of money. It probably has something to do with, um, well, wow, look at all that money it makes!
As we approach the release of The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2, because a story that epic is demanding of two movies which together comprise one giant disaster, whispers are already being shouted that the studio is planning to reboot the series once it takes it final, excruciatingly slow, bow. If you ask me, and we know you didn’t, Summit’s pathetic ploy to hold onto this cash cow long after it’s fully milked plan will require of a vastly different approach to “filmmaking” than the one to which we’ve heretofore been subjected.
If I had to come up with five ideas for the Twilight franchise reVAMP, I’d write this piece I was assigned and categorize them thusly…
Twilight: Ageless Romance or Twilight: Breaking Hip Bone
Okay, so let’s ease into this so as to not jar the Twi-hards too much…all none of them who are reading this article. The first possible avenue to be pursued is itself pursuant to the basic appeal of the franchise: you know, love and stuff. Given that Edward is a 111-year-old man and Bella is a incessantly mopey doorknob…sorry, I mean teenager…forgoing the obvious and palpable creepiness, it’s fair to say they find themselves in a May/December romance that may/may not/totally does make us want to vomit.
One of the greatest cinematic iterations of this type of love story was Hal Ashby’s 1971 film Harold and Maude in which a quirky young man obsessed with death meets a seventy-nine-year-old woman who possesses a zesty zest for life zest. Why not copy it? Taking this setup as the model, the new Twilight could be about a quirkless young girl obsessed with being bland falling for a 111-year-old codger who can’t even muster zest from salad dressing or grapefruit juice.
Also he’s a vampire I guess. Hilarity ensues.
Twilight of Mankind
Am I a bit fanatical about post-apocalyptic cinema? I don’t know, maybe you should go ask the fifty-five cases of bottled water and the stockpile of automatic weapons in my makeshift bomb shelter. However, as Twilight strove so hard to be the pop culture apocalypse of vampire and werewolf canon, it seems only fitting that we get Vapid Kids of the Year 3000 (released in Italy as Twilight of Mankind).
In this version, Jacob and Edward roam the wastelands, in cars decked out to look like a vampire and a wolf respectively (like Mad Max meets Whacky Racers), searching for the last woman on the planet. The dearth of female companionship on the scorched Earth is the sole motivation for their seeking out of the woman with the desperately barren personality. Extra points if Robert Pattinson is melted by a flamethrower and Taylor Lautner’s enormous head is dubbed Thunderdome.
Wolfie and The Vamp
Given that werewolves and vampires have been around for centuries (as, seemingly has this film franchise), why not do a period film to reboot the franchise? The obvious choice would be to set in the suffocating Gothic malaise of nineteenth century Europe, also known as Tim Burton’s wet dream, but I see other possibilities in this game of temporal hopscotch.
I see a roaring, candy red, Dodge Charger patrolling the streets of 1970s New York City during the midnight shift. Inside the car, having just slid expertly across the hood, sits Jacob “Wolfie” Black, his lush beard and massive sideburns encompassing his face, and his partner Edward Vampinski; nicknamed The Vamp for his pallor and perpetually turned-up collar. Their main beat is 42nd Street where they prevent crimes against the citizens and even the worst of genre movies. Soundtrack by Isaac Hayes.
But I’m a Vampire!
Jacob and Edward are two guys who grew up together; never getting along and always at each other’s throats…literally. When they reached high school, they were faced with the sobering realization that they were a werewolf and a vampire respectively. Their parents, oblivious to “the rules of the supernatural world,” see Jacob running around with a pack of shirtless boys with a jorts affinity and Edward throwing up in his mouth at the sight of a pretty girl…and assume they’re gay.
They send the kids to a trendy pray the gay away camp run by Adam Sandler. He’s a whacky, barely intelligible minister who, along with endlessly spouting, “dappity-doo” at the end of every scripture quote, subscribes to the controversial “treatment” method of bringing a hot girl into the camp to trick the boys into believing they are straight. He brings in Kristen Stewart, which results in Jacob and Edward, who were straight the whole time, realizing they would rather date each other. Glenn Beck called this pitch“the worst thing he’d ever heard and please stop calling me at home in the middle of the night.”
Brometheus
Deep space explorers Jacob and Edward are venturing to the furthest reaches of the cosmos; beckoned by ancient cave drawings relaying mysterious coordinates. They are aboard the USS Bella, named for the girl as cold, depressing, and empty as the vastness of space. They reach Eclipse-223 and encounter a race of giant humanoid aliens they call engineers…but only because they just watched a Bob the Builder marathon and couldn’t think of anything better.
They are troubled to find that somehow a copy of 2008’s Twilight reached the planet and, upon watching it, the engineers immediately began plotting the destruction of Earth. The as-bro-naughts attempt to stop them, but are distracted by questions introduced without answers presented. Questions like, “why do vampires glitter in the sunlight?” and “could Bella write a song so emo that even she herself could not listen to it?”.
Which one would you pay the most to see?
Related Topics: Kristen Stewart
