My First Twilight Experience

I have never been a particular fan of vampires. When I was a kid the movie that really did it for me in terms of the "classic" movie monster was An American Werewolf in London. I remember seeing that when I was younger and being completely floored by the special effects that turned the young man into a monster. So, when it came to the movie monsters, I always have liked werewolves better.

Sure, there were good vampire movies. However, I always liked the vampires as they were designed to be. They were not romantic, although there has always been something sexual about the vampire myth. Even in the original Dracula there was just something sexy about the mysterious and dangerous stranger who crept into women's rooms and bit their necks while they slept. Still, vampires are the undead. They are immortal but only if they stay in the dark, creep around at night and suck the blood of the living. For most of the work of fiction, completely draining the other person caused them to become a blood-sucking creature of the night.

The best movies and television shows did not have vampires, or many vampires, as heroes. If they were heroes, then they were tortured, filled with visions of the horror and murder they had bestowed upon the world. The vampires in the classic Near Dark are anything but glamorous. The vampires in 30 Days of Night are truly terrifying. The blood-suckers in 'Salems Lot and Nosferatu were horrifying. Even the vampires in the classic and wonderful television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer were the bad guys and to be feared.

One thing vampires should never be is romantic. I never bought into that. When the girls in my high school were dreaming of a vampire named Lestat and reading the Ann Rice books voraciously I was not buying it. I think my opinion of that paid off when you look at the awful movie it produced.

So, I have spent a lot of time bad mouthing the Twilight series. I never heard of the damn series until the first movie came out. I was surprised to hear there was a series of books about some sullen vampire who, for some reason, was still going to high school even though he was 100 years old. When I heard the story involved him falling in love with a fellow high school student named Bella Swann, my eyes nearly rolled out of my head. These were not books for me and I knew it.

I have suffered accusations because of that. How can I judge them if I have never read them or seen a movie? Well, it didn't take more than a single episode of Beverly Hills 90210 for me to know I hated that. I saw about half of a Dawson's Creek and realized it was dreck and I was better off not watching. Just because you turn the teenagers into vampires and werewolves, even old vampires, doesn't mean I wan to spend any time with those characters. I have my own teen angst to still get over from my teenage years. I don't need vampires.

However, I have fallen in love these days. I have fallen in love with a woman who likes the Twilight movies. Of course that meant I was now destined to see the third installment of that franchise called Eclipse. So, I can now say that I have seen the movie and render a real opinion.

I can proudly say I was right all along.

I don't understand what is supposed to be so great about this series. I have never seen a bigger bunch of whining, annoying, uninteresting group of people gathered around talking about nonsense since I once watched a congressional debate on C-SPAN. These are the most boring immortals fiction has ever produced. As such, I found myself completely unable to care about any of them. I wanted both the werewolves and the vampires to kill each other just so everyone would stop whining!

Bella Swann is quite simply the most boring, vapid and generally unattractive female fictional character to come into vampire lore in forever. Why either Jacob or Edward would waste even a fraction of a second caring about her let alone pining for her with longing and aching looks is beyond me. Why Edward would want to spend eternity with her only shows me that he is utterly insane.

Edward Cullen, meanwhile, is no prize either. He walks around looking like he is in pain all the time. This has to be because he is still in high school even though he's over 100 years old. He glowers with his bizarre orange eyes under eyebrows so sick you wonder if he might be ill. I wouldn't want to be on a short elevator ride with Edward let alone spend eternity with him.

Jacob is the only minorly interesting character. And what is really interesting about him and his entire clan is that, apparently, the men are unable to afford shirts. It really must be some kind of comment on the state of economic affairs among Native American tribes, I guess.

As for the plot, well, does it really matter? With such boring people, who cares what they are doing or why? All I did was count down the minutes until this borefest was over and I could leave. How anyone could be anticipating the next installment or spending even a bit of time with these characters is completely and utterly alien to me.

I will stick with my vampires. They are mean and they are ugly. They have dirt and blood crusted beneath their long claw-like fingernails. They sleep in dirt. They spout fountains of blood when they get stabbed through the heart by wooden stakes. Most importantly, they have no souls, do not really love and they die when sunlight strikes them.

For god's sake, they never, ever, EVER sparkle!