Devil’s Threesome

Hey, how about we have a really cool, dynamic poster or… yeah. Just them staring. I guess that’s fine too.

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Tagline: It all begins… With a choice

More Accurate Tagline: Two men must choose: an unattractive girl or hot, hot gay sex.

Guilty Party: Stephenie Meyer. You know, this is getting silly. Who the hell else am I going to blame? The actors? They didn’t write it. The screenwriter? Look what she had to work with! The director? I don’t know for sure, but with a name like David Slade, he’s probably fictional. Or possibly a blaxploitation superhero. So we’re blaming the Mormon Sub-Machine Gun Stephenie Meyer. Will someone please go down on this woman already?

Synopsis: Previously, on Twilight: hundred-year-old vampire Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson and his hair) and teenage werewolf Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner and his abs) both love surly teen Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart and her microscopic ass). Why? I have absolutely no idea. Although in this movie it becomes increasingly obvious that maybe Bella isn’t what these guys really want. And what is it they want?

Cock.

Fucking safesearch…

Bella and Edward have a problem (beyond the fact that Edward is terrified of Bella’s ladyparts). Well, not really a problem. See, Bella and Edward don’t have those. They have minor hiccups that they inevitably make worse by making asinine demands and squandering their resources. But that’s okay since the universe apparently has a vested interest in whether or not they get married. Anyway, here’s the “problem.” Edward won’t turn Bella into a vampire until they’re married. And Bella… would rather the other way around. Yep. That’s it.

Bella reconnects with Jacob, who is still super upset and stalkery about the prospect of his not-girlfriend becoming a vampire. So he comes on rather strong, lounging around without a shirt on (and in his defense, if I looked like that, I wouldn’t even own shirts), making creepy declarations of love, and even planting a nice little rape kiss on Bella.

Edward is none too pleased about this, citing werewolves’ lack of self-control as the reason that hanging with Jake is a bad idea (and conveniently forgetting Jasper’s own freakout at Bella’s last birthday party). Because Edward is an experienced abuser, he knows that only the creepiest and most controlling man will win Bella’s affection, and so does everything he can to manipulate, cajole or outright force Bella not to see Jacob (including disabling her car, lurking out her window and chaining her to a radiator – Okay, fine, I made one of those up). But the real question… is Edward jealous of Jacob? Or Bella? All those longing glances at Jacob can’t be coincidence is what I’m saying.

Meanwhile, down in Seattle, Victoria (Bryce Dallas-Howard, re-cast from the last two movies, presumably just to fuck with us) is still upset about the death of her boyfriend, avant-garde explorer Aphex Twin. Now, instead of killing the vampires who actually murdered Twin (Jasper, Alice, Emmett and to a much lesser extent Edward), Vicki decides to kill Bella. And her plan? Make a bunch of newborn vampires, send them up to Forks and hope for the best. Here’s a problem, though: Alice Cullen can see the future, but Vicki’s thought of that. As long as she refrains from making decisions, Alice can’t see her! Fortunately, this makes so little sense, it’s a cheap high, sort of the equivalent of huffing paint thinner.

Anyway, Victoria heads up to Forks to finally get this thing over with. The “good” vampires and the werewolves kill the entire group of bad guys and only suffer a couple superficial injuries for it. And everything is okay again! Yay!

Life-Changing Subtext: It’s not gay unless the balls touch.

Also, killing bad guys is fine, because they don’t have blood and guts like real people. This really disturbed me while watching the movie. Whenever a vampire is killed, they crumble like statues. Bloodless. Did you know that many serial killers pretend their victims are unfeeling dolls? Thought I’d point that out.

Defining Quote: Edward: “Bella, would you please stop trying to take your clothes off?” You’re in the way and I can’t see Jacob applying that third coat of Crisco to his abs!

Standout Performance: In the first two movies, Jasper Hale ((Sherlock Holmes villain Jackson Rathbone) was mostly relegated to the background. He had a little bit of depth since he was the newest convert to the vegetarian (ugh) lifestyle, so he was sort of weird and twitchy. Well, all of a sudden Jasper Hale has an accent. Out of nowhere. Like the accent was paradropped in when someone realized that Jasper had no backstory and a little could go a long way. So I’m not calling Jasper the standout. Just his accent. Which was simply… well, atrocious. But memorable!

What’s Wrong: Hey, remember that part in New Moon where Bella cuts her fingers on wrapping paper and Jasper completely loses his shit? Well, good thing he doesn’t have that problem. Seriously, Jasper hangs out with a badly bleeding Bella (say that three times fast) and has the same reaction any normal person would have to an injured Kristen Stewart. “Let her bleed out and see if Jennifer Lawrence is available.”

Did someone say “vampire?” Because I brought a shitload of stakes.

Also, and I only bring this up to be a dick, Bella successfully unwraps a present without severing a major artery. So, you know, character growth.

Now let’s talk about what’s really wrong with this movie. The main character is Bella Swan, right? Fantastic, a strong young woman for girls to look up to… what? Oh, that’s right. Bella is merely an object. She exists only to ratchet up the tension between Edward and Jacob to Top Gun-in-a-bathhouse-in-the-Castro level gay. Bella is merely the perineum that keeps the dicks from rubbing together. They can’t admit their love for one another, but can for a dead-eyed little void who exists only to suck the joy from their lives. AND NOTHING ELSE.

Flash of Competence: I know every guy is supposed to love Ashley Greene in these movies and being a sucker for skinny white girls with pixie cuts, I’m certainly in the right demographic. But she’s not my fake Twilight girlfriend. That dubious, and no doubt terrifying, honor goes to Leah Clearwater, despite the fact that she is a total turd. Julia Jones, the actress who plays Leah, is really pretty. The filmmakers do the best they can to frump her up, but (and this is putting it mildly), they fail. I haven’t drawn any pictures of us riding unicorns on rainbows or anything. Mostly because whenever I try to draw a unicorn it just looks like a retarded horse with a dick on his forehead.

Best Scenes: There’s a scene where Bella discusses love and marriage with her father Charlie (Billy Burke, the unofficial MVP of all three movies for finding new ways to convey that his character has given up). Unlike the rest of the movie, which is filled with stilted dialogue and forced emotion, this otherwise unremarkable little scene, capped off with Bella’s embarrassed declaration that she’s a virgin, is natural, funny and dare I say it, a little touching. It is unironically good, anchored by two actors believably inhabiting father and daughter.

Okay, enough nice shit.

Edward spends the entire movie looking like he’s about to cry because he just saw this marathon on Lifetime, and he was really upset the way the poor husbands, who really only wanted their wives to be safe, always got abandoned in the end. I mean, sure they hit the wives on occasion, but that’s to help make her a better person! Anyway, his sad panda face reaches a head when once again, Bella begs Edward to fuck her and in order to avoid the terrors of Bella’s Bog of Eternal Stench, he starts yammering on about how he would have courted her back in the day, capping it off with a proposal. The whole time, he still looks like he’s going to cry or vomit, maybe even at the same time. It’s as though he’s seeing the life he should have with Jacob slipping from his cold, dead hands. “Screw you, Prop 8!” screams his agonized internal monologue.

One of the newborn vamps has slightly more personality than the others. The youngest one, she alone seems to have trouble with this whole “let’s murder everybody” thing. She surrenders to Dr. and Mrs. Acula during the final battle. Well, when Jane and the Volturi show up, they demand that this girl be murdered. The Aculas, supposedly paragons of morality, give the girl up with barely even token resistance. “We’re gonna kill her!” say the Volturi. “Aw, c’mon,” whines Dr. Acula. “No, seriously, we’re gonna.” And that’s it. Granted, even that little objection was more than Mr. Awesome Nice Guy Edward did. Although he was worried about injured Jacob, so maybe we can forgive.

Transcendent Moment: Now, I know I haven’t given a whole lot of proof for the sizzling homoeroticism that pervades this movie like taint-stank in a locker room. It all comes down to the Tent Scene.

In order to protect Bella, Jacob and Edward hide her in a tent on top of a mountain while the other vampires and werewolves fight the newborns in a field below. A blizzard hits the mountain, and Bella, who has no body fat, is predictably freezing to death. Edward, with no body heat of his own, can do nothing, so he calls in Jacob, still wandering around in nothing but a pair of cut-offs like the good nevernude he is. Jacob, as a werewolf has a higher body temperature than humans, so he’s the perfect person to keep Bella from turning into a surly popsicle, or as he tells Edward with a saucy smile: “Let’s face it, I am hotter than you.”

Well, judging from the way Edward’s eyes perform an impromptu prostate exam on the young man, Edward agrees. Jacob crawls into the sleeping bag, Bella cuddles up and passes out. Then the two guys start verbally sparring and openly leering at each other. Bella, the girl these guys supposedly love, is completely forgotten in favor of limp asides and wanton eye-fucking. I don’t know if the director stepped in and was like, “Hey guys, can you gay this up for me?” But frankly, unless he actually had them covered in hot oil or fighting Persians it could not be any gayer.

You carry most of your tension in your shoulders. And your balls.

Fortunately, this is the third book of a four book series, so I only have one more film to sit through and this assfuck of a project will be finished. Wait, they turned Breaking Dawn in to two movies? How? Nothing fucking happens!

Son of a –