How Twilight Is Saving The Movie Industry
The most important cinematic universe is Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson making enough money to do whatever they want.
The new Batman sucks.
The new movie, The Batman, is a superb noir-action flick, but the actual character of Bruce Wayne/The Batman portrayed by Robert Pattinson is kind of a loser.
What’s great is that the film knows this and lets the always-interesting actor play the titular role without the flair or the panache expected of the iconic hero. If he didn’t have the superhero namesake, Pattinson’s turn as the caped crusader could be mistaken for a member of a My Chemical Romance cover band or a guy that would try to hit on women outside of a Spencer’s Gifts.
Unlike Christian Bale or Ben Affleck’s recent attempts, Pattinson really boils Batman down to its essence. At its heart, this guy is a disturbed, mentally ill, repressed sociopath who happens to be really good at fighting and being rich.
Although the fulcrum of the biggest blockbuster so far this year, Pattinson’s Batman isn’t far off from the work he’s been doing as of late in indie, auteur-driven works.
From his bizarre preacher in The Devil All the Time to his gleefully-batshit antagonist in The King to his exhausted parent in High Life to his enigmatic sidekick in Tenet to his (my personal favorite) squirrely wickie in The Lighthouse, Pattinson has been using his name recognition and eccentric taste to make fascinating choices, all the while bringing lesser-known directors to the forefront. All of the movies listed in this paragraph are just from the last four years. I haven’t even mentioned his work with the Safdie Brothers or James Gray.
Although it seemed to pulverize and drain Pattinson and costar Kristen Stewart by the end of its run, the Twilight saga phenomenon inadvertently created two of the better actors we have right now, both looking to take on smaller, more-creative projects since the duo already have all of the money and fame they’ll ever need.
Stewart is currently on the awards campaign trail for Spencer, a biopic in name and horror movie in execution. It’s a breath of fresh air for a stale format that frequently rewards drab performances and ridiculous prosthetics. If we’re going to make movies about real people, they should all include a nauseating dream sequence in which Princess Diana swallows pearls as music builds and tensions rise. Give me creative filmmaking like that over Rami Malek lipsyncing every day of the week. Pablo Larraín should be the only one allowed to make a biopic until we figure this shit out.
Not every role from the Twilight leads is a success, but they’re taking chances and playing with the form in a way that we rarely see from such bankable stars. To be fair, it’s not just Pattinson and Stewart though.
It seems that other prodigies like Elijah Wood or Daniel Radcliffe have taken a similar route after their immediate superstardom. With the pinnacles of Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter respectively, the two have made out-there choices. Wood talked to a man in a dog costume on television and plays (it seems) only sociopaths in film, while Radcliffe literally played a farting corpse in Swiss Army Man.
Twilight became a bit of a laughingstock for critics and movie zealots during its run but it has given us two things…
The best cinematic sports sequence of all time
A movie in which Pattinson kills a “sea bird” and nearly makes out with Willem Dafoe
The new Batman film is less of a superhero film than a murder mystery. Yes, it sometimes falls into the common thematic trappings of a loaded final act and promises for sequels/spin-offs, but the movie isn’t just a reimagining for intellectual property or a bland team-up in which you can say “I’ve seen that guy before” time after time.
This blockbuster has an idea with real choices from an expert score to dazzling cinematography to real chemistry between its leads. If we’re going to have 5-10 superhero movies a year for the foreseeable future (and we most likely are), I’d prefer this genre exercise every single time.
It seems only fitting that Pattinson is at the center of it. Those sparkly vampires were 100% worth it.
Hollywood Needs Cigarettes
Obviously, cigarettes are bad for you. I’m not a doctor in 1957, so I’m not going to tell you they aren’t. But, two things can be true. Cigarettes are bad AND eliminating them from the movies is a terrible idea.
The Penguin needs a cigar. That’s just common sense. Some of the best characters in film smoke and we need to keep that going. What’s Pulp Fiction without Uma Thurman and a cigarette? Is Clint Eastwood even a cowboy without one? Just last year, one of the best shots was Tom Waits in Licorice Pizza emerging out from behind a cloud of smoke into the frame.
I’ve never had a cigarette so this isn’t something I personally need, but it’s ridiculous to cut them out of movies for safety concerns. I don’t watch Godzilla destroy a city and think that I need to do the same thing, and if you’re doing that then we have bigger problems than a measly cigarette.