"New Moon" Drinking Game

[Special K]

It's really interesting, if I hate something so much and have complete contempt for it, I usually move on and stop whining about it. Just sayin'....

Methinks there is something more to this widespread male perseveration about this movie... not so much the guys who say they don't like it and move on, but the guys who keep coming back to whine and whine and whine. It's pretty funny.

[renaissance]

NEVER underestimate the power of pre-teen girls.

And guys, the only thing more sad then girls' obsession with these movies and books is your hatred for them. At this point I can only assume that you are jealous of Edward and Jacob.

[renaissance]

Nevermind, keeastman beat me to it :doh:

[FanboyOf91]

What's scarier about that is that it beats Harry Potter and The Dark Knight for that new record opening, which, if it continues along that trend, would put it on pace to gross about a billion dollars worldwide like both HP and Dark Knight did (making Twilight one of the highest grossing films of all time).

:doh:

[Toe Jam]

It's really interesting, if I hate something so much and have complete contempt for it, I usually move on and stop whining about it. Just sayin'....

Methinks there is something more to this widespread male perseveration about this movie... not so much the guys who say they don't like it and move on, but the guys who keep coming back to whine and whine and whine. It's pretty funny.

It's not that.

I just find something severely unjust about a lousy movie like this beating out something great like The Dark Knight.

At least when pre-teen girls were flocking to Titanic over and over again they were supporting a decent movie. This is just garbage. It's like Transformers 2 doing so well even though it was a terrible movie.

It just makes no sense. And I don't think I'm a movie elitist or anything because I enjoyed the hell out of 2012.

I mean if it were mainly intelligent adults like you making this movie do well then that's one thing. But I'm just at a loss to figure out how today's teenagers have sunk to this new low.

[Spartacus87]

NEVER underestimate the power of pre-teen girls.

And guys, the only thing more sad then girls' obsession with these movies and books is your hatred for them. At this point I can only assume that you are jealous of Edward and Jacob.

I can assure you, I have no jealousy towards any of the fictional "vampires" or "werewolves" (using the terms loosely according to how Stephenie Meyer uses them) in the books, or the actors that play them.

I'm really more fascinated than anything at how a franchise that has zero substance behind it can be so ridiculously successful. Just complete emptiness that still finds a way to make tremendous bank. It's interesting.

[Toe Jam]

It's not just guys that have a problem here.

This is from a woman reviewer:

It’s intellectually and socially detrimental to both literature and cinema, simultaneously. The fact that so many girls will see this movie and drink up the messages like poisoned Kool-Aid depresses the hell out of me.

It's not like we're hating because we're jealous of sparkly vampires or something like that.

[Special K]

I mean if it were mainly intelligent adults like you making this movie do well then that's one thing. But I'm just at a loss to figure out how today's teenagers have sunk to this new low.

Dude, it is a mainly adults like me making this movie do so well. I sat in the theater today surround by a lot of MOM's who brought their teen/preteen daughters as well as a lot of Army wives. Who do you think pays for their teen daughters to go see the movie over and over?

I'll be going multiple times, all my girlfriends who are in professional careers are going multiple times...one of my girlfriends texted me before going into the theater last night and she was totally outfitted in "Team Edward" gear. My sister skipped on med school classes last night and this morning to see the movie twice. It's not just dumb teens watching and reading this series.

Yeah, we love the crap. Sure, it's crappy acting, teeny bopper stuff, but WE LOVE IT. Having to deal with all the pretty horrible stuff I see day in and day out in my career and studies, it's nice to have a few hours where I can just lose myself in fantasy and not think about anything serious. Laugh a little bit, remember the "crushes" I used to have when I was a team...it's just fun to delve back into the pre-teen girly gaga world. I know that's how most of my girlfriends feel when we talk about the series. We're not really "in love" with the characters, it's just nice to have a little piece of girly "unreality" in our lives.

HP wasn't my thing, but I didn't belittle people who were into it. Everyone has something that entertains them. The cheesiness that is Twilight is something that entertains a lot of us So LEAVE US BE AND LET US WATCH THE TWILIGHT SERIES....over and over and over!!

[Toe Jam]

The cheesiness that is Twilight is something that entertains a lot of us So LEAVE US BE AND LET US WATCH THE TWILIGHT SERIES....over and over and over!!

I can deal with that.

It's your wallet.. err.. pocketbook. Not mine.

[PokerPacker]

So LEAVE US BE AND LET US WATCH THE TWILIGHT SERIES....over and over and over!!

Just don't drag any unfortunate men along to suffer.

[Ghost of]

But keeast, have there not been better romance stories and fantasies put on screen (and definitely in book form?)

I mean, it's easy to say you want to escape but the Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Star Wars allow one to escape to interesting worlds (I'm talking classic Star Wars, not the prequels) filled with mythological archetypes, great characters, good to great writing (particularly LotR) GOOD EFFECTS and sound story structure all developed with care and love beyond this garbage.

Certainly there are better stories to "lose oneself" in, even at a teen level?

I can't imagine why it's going to break records.

And the film franchises I just covered were the easy ones to recall. Bram Stoker's Dracula, if you want to go the vampire and star-crossed love route, was better than this (not for pre-teen/early-teen girls, I guess) and I'm not even sure that it was a very good movie.

[renaissance]

Some guys escape in senseless action flicks and some girls escape in senseless romance movies. I don't see how it's so hard to understand...

[Ghost of]

http://joesherry.blogspot.com/2008/12/twilight-by-stephanie-meyer.html

Edward comes across initially as broody (as all good vampire boyfriends should be), but obscenely beautiful. That’s not the problem. When he becomes interested in Bella he does so with great obsession. So much so that by the end the reader realizes (or should realize) that Edward is only a hair’s breadth away from being an abusive boyfriend. If not for the fact that the text makes it clear that he would never hurt her (on purpose, if he can control himself), the reader would need to be seriously concerned about the safety of Bella regarding Edward.

Here’s what we know: Edward does not believe Bella can take care of herself, does not believe she has any chance of being safe without him around. He is insanely jealous of other boys. He keeps warning Bella that he’ll hurt her, that he’s a bad guy, but he keeps coming around. He asks her three days worth of superficial questions which borders on the bizarre. He follows her around and listens in on all of her conversations. He has snuck into her house to watch her sleep for weeks on end. He is extremely controlling and gets angry frequently, both with her and with everyone else, but then reassures her that he loves her and that everything he does is for her.

Bella’s response: okay, I love you, too. Now, please don’t ever leave. Seriously, Edward tells her that for weeks he’s been sneaking into her house to watch her sleep – incredible stalker behavior, and after a flash of anger which scarcely lasts a sentence, she’s over it because, well, Edward is dreamy.

Then, to make matters worse (worse!), the only way Bella can ever truly have an equal relationship with Edward is if she is willing to give up everything, her friends and her family, and become a vampire herself, because after a couple of months she knows this is forever and eternal, this “love” of hers.

Further – the reason Edward is infatuated with Bella has nothing to do with who she is, anything about her personality, or anything she wants to do with her life. The reason Edward “loves” Bella is because her blood smells as good as cocaine to a junkie. That’s the initial appeal.

So, uh yeah. That's garbage. It's a bad thing to put out there to young women, it sets them up for serious failures in relationships and getting into dangerous ones and is simply bad.

The guy gets upset all the time, breaks into her house and she's cool with it.

I understand the "bad boy" thing but it's a sick meme to be transmitting to young girls because this goes beyond him being a brooding loner who doesn't respect authority into being a controlling, stalking weirdo.

[Ghost of]

Some guys escape in senseless action flicks and some girls escape in senseless romance movies. I don't see how it's so hard to understand...

When I saw Transformers 2, I never wanted anything else to do with it unless Bay gets his hands off it and they treat it more seriously. I only saw TF 1 once. Sure, enough of guys like me and you'll get high ticket sales. But you don't get a phenomenon.

Senseless action flicks get seen once and forgotten about. Good action movies or movies that happen to have action can have a long lasting legacy.

For instance, Platoon and Glory. These are excellent movies with some action but they are far from senseless and they are "Guys" movies. Many men will admit to crying at Glory (and not much else lol)

However, Transformers books are not huge sellers.

I'm sure you would not make the mistake of comparing, say, Lord of the Rings or any of Tolkien's work with Meyers trash? So I'm not seeing the source material as a reason for its success, either.

So why is it a phenomenon?

Your post describes why movies like Ninja Assassin or Two Weeks Notice get made and seen---not why movies become culturally significant.

[PokerPacker]

good post, ghost.

[renaissance]

Marketing

I do want to compliment whoever handled the digital/online communication strategy. I don’t know if that was handled by Summit’s marketing dept or by an external agency – and I don’t really care enough to research it – but I think it’s an impressive example of how to successfully market to youth (and, in some cases, their parents) online. Is it weird that I’m a bigger fan of Twilight’s marketing department than the actual movie? They covered everything -social media, blogs, widgets, Facebook, Twitter, iTunes, YouTube…the word of mouth was brilliant. I thought the use of widgets, which counted down everything from trailer sneak peaks to Bella’s period (joking, but I wouldn’t put it past them), was clever…and ubiquitous. The blogger outreach strategies were key – I think that’s why the bloggers are (for the most part) staying positive and focusing on the future rather than lamenting about the ho-hum piece of crap they were served. The partnership with MTV.com also helped to target the right audience and throw tweens into a complete hormonal frenzy on a weekly basis. They truly made it look like it was as easy as shooting fish in a barrel – seriously, bravo!!

And that's all just for the first movie.

Add to that word of mouth, the intrigue of the movie's stars having an off-screen romance, and the third wheel/werewolf dude buffing up rather unbelievably (young girls have just as many hormones as young boys) and get ready to bring in the bank.

[Special K]

But keeast, have there not been better romance stories and fantasies put on screen (and definitely in book form?)

I mean, it's easy to say you want to escape but the Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Star Wars allow one to escape to interesting worlds (I'm talking classic Star Wars, not the prequels) filled with mythological archetypes, great characters, good to great writing (particularly LotR) GOOD EFFECTS and sound story structure all developed with care and love beyond this garbage.

And the film franchises I just covered were the easy ones to recall. Bram Stoker's Dracula, if you want to go the vampire and star-crossed love route, was better than this (not for pre-teen/early-teen girls, I guess) and I'm not even sure that it was a very good movie.

Well first, amazingly, I'm not into vampires and werewolves...don't really know why I like this...probably because it's not typical vampires and werewolves and it's complete crap, which I'm totally into. I didn't like Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter. I love Star Wars though, one of my favorite series of all time. My my range of interest is all over the place from good quality to absolute crap...I'm an equal opportunity movie-goer, when I ever end up going.

But you're right, there are a lot of better storylines out there. I'm not at all denying that. I'm just saying I enjoy this one a lot too.

Some guys escape in senseless action flicks and some girls escape in senseless romance movies. I don't see how it's so hard to understand...

I don't even want to try to count the number of Rambo, Van Damme, Seagal, Bruce Lee, etc., etc., etc. flicks Matt's watched while taking the TV hostage.

So, uh yeah. That's garbage. It's a bad thing to put out there to young women, it sets them up for serious failures in relationships and getting into dangerous ones and is simply bad.

The guy gets upset all the time, breaks into her house and she's cool with it.

I understand the "bad boy" thing but it's a sick meme to be transmitting to young girls because this goes beyond him being a brooding loner who doesn't respect authority into being a controlling, stalking weirdo.

Um, I would say the series outright encouragement of females to fall in love with souless, flesh eating, blood drinking monsters is a bit more of a disconcerting notion to me than the fact that he watches her when she sleeps...

All movies have something that's a bit unhealthy to encourage, I could name bazillions of them. The good news is that they are FAKE.

Hey...maybe I'm out of touch with preteen and teenage girls, although I don't think so since I just coached junior high and varsity softball girls and I have a lot of younger female cousins I regularly talk to, but no one I know or associate with takes Twilight seriously. They not running around thinking of jumping into relationships with the immortals, lol. It's fake and it's fun!

Regardless, why am I even discussing this with dudes on a male-dominated message board??? On a Friday night... :doh1:

[Spartacus87]

I don't even want to try to count the number of Rambo, Van Damme, Seagal, Bruce Lee, etc., etc., etc. flicks Matt's watched while taking the TV hostage.

None of those movies were ever projected to make a billion dollars in one worldwide run though.

That's the point.

Twilight is a completely soul-less piece of crap, but it's relevance to pop culture is astounding for something so devoid of any meaning other than getting aimless young girls (and random older women) to swoon at the idea of "Team Edward" vs "Team Jacob." The author of the series can't write worth a damn, nothing in the core storyline makes sense (including the actual relationship between Bella and Edward), and the movies aren't even done that well. And they've all come out within the past few years, so it's a brand new phenomenon that's taken the world by storm without any nostalgia factor of any kind traced into having an already established audience of any sort.

Twilight really is the most nonsensical and bizarre pop culture success in recent history I think.

[Special K]

None of those movies were ever projected to make a billion dollars in one worldwide run though.

That's the point.

Twilight is a completely soul-less piece of crap, but it's relevance to pop culture is astounding for something so devoid of any meaning other than getting aimless young girls (and random older women) to swoon at the idea of "Team Edward" vs "Team Jacob." The author of the series can't write worth a damn, nothing in the core storyline makes sense (including the actual relationship between Bella and Edward), and the movies aren't even done that well. And they've all come out within the past few years, so it's a brand new phenomenon that's taken the world by storm without any nostalgia factor of any kind traced into having an already established audience of any sort.

Twilight really is the most nonsensical and bizarre pop culture success in recent history I think.

Oh give me a break. The straws you're grasping at are ridiculous. There are a bazillion other nonsensical and bizarre pop culture successes that are crap as well...like, say, reality television???

Seriously, guys like you are upset that there are a lot of young chicks and "random older women" who like this and are making the series successful. You sound like sour grapes. I don't understand all the hate. Sorry you couldn't figure out how to successfully tap into a certain demographic and make bazillions of dollars. Stephanie Meyers and all the actors are laughing all the way to the bank.

Regardless, I'm pretty much done with this thread. Ballz meant it to be something funny and of course on ES, it's just devolved into a pile on of hate and a referendum on society for something a lot of females take enjoyment in...that's not even real, lol

[Elessar78]

I just got back. We actually came with another couple and 5 minutes into the movie my friend disappears to the bathroom and is gone for awhile. His wife goes to check on him and says they have to leave, because he got "sick". Right. But props to him for having an exit strategy. He sold it pretty well too because he bought two sodas, a pretzel, and medium popcorn plus tickets.

I think that's some coyote-chewing-off-its-leg-to-get-out-of-the-steel-trap action right there.

[stupidmorals]

http://www.cracked.com/article_16878_if-twilight-was-10-time-shorter-100-times-more-honest.html

and

I had a lovely rant I almost posted in an effort to destroy the utterly silly idea that, somehow, men that hate this trash simply MUST be curious or jealous of it, but I couldn't write it without it coming across as insulting and mean. So I'm biting my tongue (fingers?) on that one.

...Although, I REALLY want to rant about it. :mad:

[MissU28]

Ok I LOVE Harry Potter, have read all the books, have seen and own all the movies.

I also LOVE Lord of the Rings, but have not read the books.

Not really into Star Wars.

I LOVE Twilight, have read all the books, and have and own the first movie. I will be seeing New Moon tomorrow morning.

My mom loves Twilight as well. My aunt is actually the one that got me into the series in the first place. It's not amazing literature, but it's young adult fiction, what do you expect?

You guys are reading WAAAY more into it than we girls do. I don't watch Twilight and immediately think "stalker!" when Edward watches Bella sleep. It's romantic. When people analyze these books and movies, they are going overboard.

I'm not a vampire fan and I'm not a werewolf fan. I don't think I've ever seen dracula or watched a single movie that had a werewolf in it, aside from Teen Wolf. I don't care that the vampires and the werewolves in the movie don't live up to a "guy's" standard for monsters. When I first read Twilight (long before there was even mention of a movie), I fell in love with the storyline. It was new and interesting.

Is it comparable to Harry Potter? No. Harry Potter is amazing, and the world jk rowling created is insane.

That does not mean that Twilight is not enjoyable. FUN to read, FUN to watch. I LOVE it. I know the movie will not be good, and I know the acting will not be good. But I will still love it. And I will see it multiple times. My mom already texted me yesterday asking if I'll go with her again when I come home for Christmas.

I don't get all the hate on Stephanie Meyer and her writing, either. Again, it's supposed to be for young adults. She's not going to write like she's Tolstoy. She's going to write in a way that young adults can relate to. Many girls feel like Bella and can relate to what Bella thinks. And the idiots that analyze the story and call it sexist are just that....idiots.

[Spartacus87]

Oh give me a break. The straws you're grasping at are ridiculous. There are a bazillion other nonsensical and bizarre pop culture successes that are crap as well...like, say, reality television???

Seriously, guys like you are upset that there are a lot of young chicks and "random older women" who like this and are making the series successful. You sound like sour grapes. I don't understand all the hate. Sorry you couldn't figure out how to successfully tap into a certain demographic and make bazillions of dollars. Stephanie Meyers and all the actors are laughing all the way to the bank.

Reality television actually has its own merits. Shows like American Idol, Top Chef, or even a Project Runway reward talent at a highly competitive level while allowing their stars to become fixtures in the "reality television" universe.

Shows like "The Hills" or whatever "Real Housewives" are dumb, but they're not worth hundreds of millions like Twilight is, and they don't inspire months of media coverage leading up to just the premiere of the next movie trailer or book release or whatever. Besides, that's an example of a genre mashed together that's become popular this decade. Twilight stands on its own as a tentpole franchise of literature/films/media spin-offs in every direction, and it's just sprung up in the last couple of years as a pretty much overnight phenomenon.

Twilight, on the scale of relevance at this point, is more on par with Harry Potter than "The Hills" or any other reality show outside of "American Idol."

You can keep claiming I'm "upset" or "jealous" or whatever, but as Ghost pointed out already, Twilight's really a money grossing machine that makes no sense for anyone to actually obsess over to the level many people do. And just saying "it reminds me of the pre-teen girly gaga world" doesn't explain why this film is currently on track to make in the neighborhood of a billion dollars and become one of the highest grossing movies ever, especially considering how "New Moon" is getting worse reviews than "2012."

Like I said before, it's not a hatred so much as a fascination as to how it's so bankable when there's literally nothing behind it of substance.

So yeah, I stand by my original point that it's hard to think of a pop culture phenomenon in recent history like Twilight, that's been so gigantically successful while also so absurdly bad, and many of it's fans even admit to how terrible aspects of it are, but still go out in droves to support it.

[MissU28]

Like I said before, it's not a hatred so much as a fascination as to how it's so bankable when there's literally nothing behind it of substance.

Says you. Maybe you have to be a romantic, a tween, or just a female to understand it. I still don't get why it bothers you so much.

[Special K]

Says you. Maybe you have to be a romantic, a tween, or just a female to understand it. I still don't get why it bothers you so much.

Yeah, me neither.

It seems like guys who are confident in themselves just laugh at us and let us be. My husband is just like "Oh Katie! You're ridiculous" then just walks off and does something else. He doesn't (and neither does any other guy I know) harp on me or my girlfriends for enjoying a show. It's fun, harmless entertainment.

Call it crap as much as you want, but the marketing they've done for these movies is extremely intelligent and innovative. That's a big reason this has become such a hit. Maybe others in the industry can take some notes ???