Twilight.  It is supposed to be a film about teenage vampires.  It  is much ballyhooed.  My niece wrote something about it.  I must admit I was thinking of her review when I saw the movie.  I saw it on DVD, and here are my impressions…

Two outsiders get attracted to one another.  Bella, a new student, very accepted at her new school, meets Edward Cullen, a mystery boy and outsider of sorts, and are attracted to one another.  Complications arise when it turns out that Edward is a vampire.  Bella learns about it gradually.  In a near auto accident, Edward saves her from getting hit by a speeding car, literally shielding her with an arm.  Then, in an out of town trip, he saves her from four men who were about to waylay her.  It was then that she noticed how her eyes turned color and that his skin was cold as ice.  Finally, Edward opens himself up to her and tells her what he feels about her:  the initial repulsion-attraction “thing” he has towards her, and the fact that he can no longer keep himself away from her.

That’s the first part of the story.  There is a second thread however that is anticipated in the scenes where murders are committed by vampires who feed.  This thread is developed in the appearance of another group of vampires different from the group of Edward and his family.  The groups meet while the Cullen family stage a family baseball match in the middle of a thunderstorm .  Bella was playing with the family when the other group appears.  One of these, the hunter, gets a whiff of Bella’s scent  and gets interested in her.  At this point, the Cullen family begin to protect Bella as their own.  The vampire tracker actually succeeds in getting very close to Bella but she is again saved by Edward.  Finally, the tracker is destroyed by the Cullen boys and Bella is brought to a hospital to recover.  The story does not end there however, there is a conclusion that is not really conclusion since it opens the door to a possible Twilight II.

A third  thread pits a group of Indians whose leader is a personal friend of Bella’s dad with the Cullen group.  In an episode about a beach-outing, Bella talks to a childhood friend, the Chief’s son — Jacob — about the Cullens.  From him she learns of a legend about the Cullen family and the places where they can be.  According to the legend, the Cullen family — supposedly descended from werewolves — was caught hunting in Indian grounds; they entered into a pact with the Indians in which territories were drawn.  On the night of the prom, when Edward and Bella prepare to join the party, the Chief’s son, talks to Bella about breaking up with Edward.  The animosity between Edward and the Chief’s son was shown.   Where does the animosity arise?  I suspect it is because of the animosity between vampires and werewolves, something that has been explored in recent hollywood productions (e.g. Underworld).

Finally, there is another thread that is suggested at the end of the movie.  The last image of the film showing James’ vampire girlfriend suggests that Twilight only has a momentary happy ending.

The movie is a high school love story with vampire characters.  It has a weak story line and the performances of the actors leave a lot to be desired. (I agree with my niece here).   What the story does however is to make vampires more acceptable.  Recent movies have made the “monsters” of a previous generation more acceptable.  The scenes where Edward shows Bella his world as he employs his superpowers is no different from what Superman does with Lois Lane  or Spiderman with the love of his life.

What I liked about the movie is the screenplay.  It is so well constructed that one can trace how scenes lead to another and how the whole story line moves from the introduction to conflict, climax and a momentary resolution.  This is an aspect of hollywood movies that no Filipino movie can ever replicate so long as our producers and directors think only of making use of current fads to gain money.  That is the reason too why a Filipino version of Twilight will not work.  Twilight was made based on a good story.  A Filipino version of it — as happens in a lot of our movies recently — will be based on scenes copied from Twilight; it won’t have a story line just scenes where the “idols” of the moment are exploited.

Lastly, I won’t be surprised if a TV-series spinoff would come out in the near future.  Twilight already has a cult-following.  A TV-series that exploits the story-line won’t be a surprise.  Besides, a TV-series called Moonlight, and before that, a Buffy The Vampire-Killer spinoff involving Angel, has made vampires living in the midst of mortal men acceptable.

Twilight.  It is supposed to be a film about teenage vampires.  It  is much ballyhooed.  My niece wrote something about it.  I must admit I was thinking of her review when I saw the movie.  I saw it on DVD, and here are my impressions…

Two outsiders get attracted to one another.  Bella, a new student, very accepted at her new school, meets Edward Cullen, a mystery boy and outsider of sorts, and are attracted to one another.  Complications arise when it turns out that Edward is a vampire.  Bella learns about it gradually.  In a near auto accident, Edward saves her from getting hit by a speeding car, literally shielding her with an arm.  Then, in an out of town trip, he saves her from four men who were about to waylay her.  It was then that she noticed how her eyes turned color and that his skin was cold as ice.  Finally, Edward opens himself up to her and tells her what he feels about her:  the initial repulsion-attraction “thing” he has towards her, and the fact that he can no longer keep himself away from her.

That’s the first part of the story.  There is a second thread however that is anticipated in the scenes where murders are committed by vampires who feed.  This thread is developed in the appearance of another group of vampires different from the group of Edward and his family.  The groups meet while the Cullen family stage a family baseball match in the middle of a thunderstorm .  Bella was playing with the family when the other group appears.  One of these, the hunter, gets a whiff of Bella’s scent  and gets interested in her.  At this point, the Cullen family begin to protect Bella as their own.  The vampire tracker actually succeeds in getting very close to Bella but she is again saved by Edward.  Finally, the tracker is destroyed by the Cullen boys and Bella is brought to a hospital to recover.  The story does not end there however, there is a conclusion that is not really conclusion since it opens the door to a possible Twilight II.

A third  thread pits a group of Indians whose leader is a personal friend of Bella’s dad with the Cullen group.  In an episode about a beach-outing, Bella talks to a childhood friend, the Chief’s son — Jacob — about the Cullens.  From him she learns of a legend about the Cullen family and the places where they can be.  According to the legend, the Cullen family — supposedly descended from werewolves — was caught hunting in Indian grounds; they entered into a pact with the Indians in which territories were drawn.  On the night of the prom, when Edward and Bella prepare to join the party, the Chief’s son, talks to Bella about breaking up with Edward.  The animosity between Edward and the Chief’s son was shown.   Where does the animosity arise?  I suspect it is because of the animosity between vampires and werewolves, something that has been explored in recent hollywood productions (e.g. Underworld).

Finally, there is another thread that is suggested at the end of the movie.  The last image of the film showing James’ vampire girlfriend suggests that Twilight only has a momentary happy ending.

The movie is a high school love story with vampire characters.  It has a weak story line and the performances of the actors leave a lot to be desired. (I agree with my niece here).   What the story does however is to make vampires more acceptable.  Recent movies have made the “monsters” of a previous generation more acceptable.  The scenes where Edward shows Bella his world as he employs his superpowers is no different from what Superman does with Lois Lane  or Spiderman with the love of his life.

What I liked about the movie is the screenplay.  It is so well constructed that one can trace how scenes lead to another and how the whole story line moves from the introduction to conflict, climax and a momentary resolution.  This is an aspect of hollywood movies that no Filipino movie can ever replicate so long as our producers and directors think only of making use of current fads to gain money.  That is the reason too why a Filipino version of Twilight will not work.  Twilight was made based on a good story.  A Filipino version of it — as happens in a lot of our movies recently — will be based on scenes copied from Twilight; it won’t have a story line just scenes where the “idols” of the moment are exploited.

Lastly, I won’t be surprised if a TV-series spinoff would come out in the near future.  Twilight already has a cult-following.  A TV-series that exploits the story-line won’t be a surprise.  Besides, a TV-series called Moonlight, and before that, a Buffy The Vampire-Killer spinoff involving Angel, has made vampires living in the midst of mortal men acceptable.

• Jerry likes Christmas songs (Jingle Bells)
• Jerry would lie for a cigarette (Jerry was told to say “six” though he only saw “five”, and all this for a cigarette. With some hesitation, he did say “six”.)
• Jerry allowed another JOE to “die” so that he could get a candy (a video demonstration in court that was used originally to prove Jerry was a robot and therefore non-human, was used also to demonstrate that Jerry survived a mine detection mission when he pushed another JOE to the direction of a land mine he had already detected so that he can get a candy and a smoke.)

At the end of the episode, a voice over that sounds like Jerry says in effect that a time will come when men will be proved to be men not for the virtues they have but for their vices.
I thought that the episode was comedic, but the final idea that comes across — of one’s humanity proved by one’s vices, not virtues — is sobering. For it does reverse how we currently define “humanity”.
If you would recall the movie “Bicentennial Man” it does precisely the opposite of what the writer of “Jerry was a Man” did. In “Bicentennial Man”, Andrew the Android decides to be a human being by first becoming independent, then by transforming himself so that he could experience the world and others like a human being (this involved getting a central nervous system), and finally, by deciding to die. Throughout all these, he was able to do something beneficial for humanity through the experiments he himself funded, apart from showing how much he loved his adoptive family and remaining loyal and faithful to them. In other words, in “Bicentennial Man” the interest was to show three qualities that makes up a human being:

• freedom
• the capacity to experience pain as well as pleasure
• love, fidelity and compassion
• heroism in the face of death

Both the above presentations show what a human being is, in contrast with something robotic. There is some truth in the presentations of both. While the presentation in the “Bicentennial Man” the presentation of what is a human being is positive, one cannot also discount the definition of a human being in “Jerry was a Man”. So what do you think? How should “humanity” be defined?