Twilight Begs to be Taken Seriously

It occurred to me last night, while watching the movie Stardust, why I didn't like Twilight - the main reason, anyway.

These two movies have a couple of things in common. They're both supernatural adventures, and at least one character in both films sparkles. (Yeah, I had to go there.) But Stardust has something Twilight doesn't have: a sense of humor about itself. It doesn't take itself too seriously, and it actually makes the audience laugh on purpose.

A lot of people - myself included - have made a lot of jokes at Twilight's expense. There are snickers about sparkling vampires, memes about so-and-so being "still a better love story than Twilight" and so forth. But if you're laughing at Twilight, something's wrong, because there's no indication this was the intended result. Do you remember a single joke in Twilight? One piece of self-deprecating humor? A single bit of silliness to break the tension?

I can think of one: the arm-wrestling scene, which was too predictable to be too funny. Beyond that, however, they just weren't there - or if they were, they weren't memorable. This is a movie that wants people to take it seriously, which is fine if you're Schindler's List, but just seems pretentious in the context of this movie.

I got to thinking about all the supernatural movies I'd seen, from Stardust to the Harry Potter films to the Avengers, and they all contained a healthy dose of chuckles - even a couple of hearty belly laughs. But everything about Twilight is dead serious, from furtive glances between characters to the over-the-top syrupy-romance soundtrack. Hell, even The Hunger Games (a much better film in the same broad Young Adult genre as Twilight) had Stanley Tucci camping it up as a cross between Regis Philbin, Simon Cowell and early '70s Elton John.

For all you Twihards out there, I will give you this: The last movie in the trio is marginally better than the first three. It has a fun fight scene (though not up to Avengers or X-Men standards) and Kristen Stewart actually shows some semblance of believable emotion. I haven't read any of Stephanie Meyer's books, so this isn't a commentary on them. I haven't read the book Stardust, either, but I know from his other works that author Neil Gaiman throws in a healthy dose of humor - ranging from silly to sardonic - to keep the reader on his/her toes.

There's a lesson to be learned from watching the Twilight finale. If you take yourself too seriously, others may not.