And Then I Waxed Pompous
Mar. 23rd, 2013 02:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bloodyrosemccoyGuys, I hate to say this, because the rest of the series chagrins the HELL out of my dazzle in the best worst way, but the end of Breaking Dawn, Part 2 is ... actually kind of badass. And not for the reason you think.
No, hear me out. At the end of the movie, vampire Bella'n'Edward and their vampire and werewolf X-Men family are going up against the Vampire Mafia, headed by COUNT FABULOUS, who are coming to exterminate them because back when she was human Bella managed to get knocked up by Edward* and eventually gave birth to a vampire-human hybrid,** which is FORBIDDEN by Vampire Law. So they all meet on a convenient battlefield, and after some filibustering and a laugh by Count Fabulous that sounds like he's auditioning to be Frank Miller's version of the Joker, a huge battle ensues.
And in that battle EVERYBODY DIES.
It's ten minutes of vampires getting their heads unscrewed and kicked around like footballs. According to anecdotes, audiences screamed through the whole ten minutes. NOT CARLISLE! NOT HARPO! NOT--WHOEVER THAT WEREWOLF WAS! NOOOOOOOO and then the audience paused to be like HANG ON A SECOND WHAT THE HELL?
Because it turns out the whole climax of the film, the glorious attempt to be Peter Jackson, was going on ONLY IN THE HEADS OF TWO VAMPIRES--the one who can see the future is sharing her vision with Count Fabulous. Everyone else is still just, you know, out standing in their field, watching these two mind meld. After this vision of DISMEMBERMENT AND CHAOS AND OH GOD THE FLAMES that would stem from his decision to attack, the Count, amazingly enough, decides that mass decapitation, and more importantly HIS OWN decapitation, are probably not worth it, makes a few flimsy excuses to his wingmen, and just straight up CANCELS the end fight. And then everyone goes home.
And of course, the natural response would be ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? And clearly the director just stuck that in there because the book had an unsatisfactory final sequence. But think about it--how subversively, accidentally pacifistic is it? The villain is made to understand that doing battle will benefit NOBODY; with a little extra foresight he realizes war is really not worth it. There is no comeuppance; there is simply the realization that This Is A Bad Idea. Our sense of justice isn't really served, but things work out BETTER for everyone.
I've been thinking about that a lot after the whole Steubenville debacle, when I was wishing that the perpetrators' sentences included some sort of way to train them NOT to think like rapists. Actually calling bad guys out is a good start. But I really want to work on turning bad guys into good guys. Not only do you decrease the ranks of the bad guys in that case; you also INCREASE the good guy ranks. It doesn't quite fit with our sense of comeuppance, but overall it seems like that would work out better for everyone.
So while it stemmed from a spectacularly stupid story, I actually rather like the message at the end of Breaking Dawn. The realization that "Hang on, if I destroy everything that might INCLUDE ME" is not exactly the noblest, but it's at least a start on the way to a less violent world.
Also, goddamn is Count Fabulous great. I still want to be Michael Sheen's friend.
*AFTER the wedding, of course. These are MORMON vampires, after all.
**Which, believe it or not, was actually a pretty fucking awesome scene in its own right. After three and a half books of dull, tepid vampire meebling, Stephenie Meyer suddenly smacks you with a superstrong deathfetus that sucks most of the juice out of its mother Bella and then snaps her spine in half while trying to bust out of an amniotic sac that is made of Magic Vampire Stuff that can only be cut by vampire teeth--and THAT means that the only way to deliver the baby is for Edward to FUCKING CHEW IT OUT, and then the werewolf who was the sad third angle of this love triangle irrevocably imprints on the baby in some kind of creepy werewolf soul-mate-forever thing and meanwhile they have to jam a syringe full of vampire venom into Bella's heart to try to turn her into a vampire because it's the only way to fix her mangled, broken, wasted husk. That scene in Prometheus where Noomi Rapace has a Space C-Section to give birth to a Hugger is NOT EVEN CLOSE. If Meyer had STARTED with a book like this, I would be ALL OVER IT.
No, hear me out. At the end of the movie, vampire Bella'n'Edward and their vampire and werewolf X-Men family are going up against the Vampire Mafia, headed by COUNT FABULOUS, who are coming to exterminate them because back when she was human Bella managed to get knocked up by Edward* and eventually gave birth to a vampire-human hybrid,** which is FORBIDDEN by Vampire Law. So they all meet on a convenient battlefield, and after some filibustering and a laugh by Count Fabulous that sounds like he's auditioning to be Frank Miller's version of the Joker, a huge battle ensues.
And in that battle EVERYBODY DIES.
It's ten minutes of vampires getting their heads unscrewed and kicked around like footballs. According to anecdotes, audiences screamed through the whole ten minutes. NOT CARLISLE! NOT HARPO! NOT--WHOEVER THAT WEREWOLF WAS! NOOOOOOOO and then the audience paused to be like HANG ON A SECOND WHAT THE HELL?
Because it turns out the whole climax of the film, the glorious attempt to be Peter Jackson, was going on ONLY IN THE HEADS OF TWO VAMPIRES--the one who can see the future is sharing her vision with Count Fabulous. Everyone else is still just, you know, out standing in their field, watching these two mind meld. After this vision of DISMEMBERMENT AND CHAOS AND OH GOD THE FLAMES that would stem from his decision to attack, the Count, amazingly enough, decides that mass decapitation, and more importantly HIS OWN decapitation, are probably not worth it, makes a few flimsy excuses to his wingmen, and just straight up CANCELS the end fight. And then everyone goes home.
And of course, the natural response would be ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? And clearly the director just stuck that in there because the book had an unsatisfactory final sequence. But think about it--how subversively, accidentally pacifistic is it? The villain is made to understand that doing battle will benefit NOBODY; with a little extra foresight he realizes war is really not worth it. There is no comeuppance; there is simply the realization that This Is A Bad Idea. Our sense of justice isn't really served, but things work out BETTER for everyone.
I've been thinking about that a lot after the whole Steubenville debacle, when I was wishing that the perpetrators' sentences included some sort of way to train them NOT to think like rapists. Actually calling bad guys out is a good start. But I really want to work on turning bad guys into good guys. Not only do you decrease the ranks of the bad guys in that case; you also INCREASE the good guy ranks. It doesn't quite fit with our sense of comeuppance, but overall it seems like that would work out better for everyone.
So while it stemmed from a spectacularly stupid story, I actually rather like the message at the end of Breaking Dawn. The realization that "Hang on, if I destroy everything that might INCLUDE ME" is not exactly the noblest, but it's at least a start on the way to a less violent world.
Also, goddamn is Count Fabulous great. I still want to be Michael Sheen's friend.
*AFTER the wedding, of course. These are MORMON vampires, after all.
**Which, believe it or not, was actually a pretty fucking awesome scene in its own right. After three and a half books of dull, tepid vampire meebling, Stephenie Meyer suddenly smacks you with a superstrong deathfetus that sucks most of the juice out of its mother Bella and then snaps her spine in half while trying to bust out of an amniotic sac that is made of Magic Vampire Stuff that can only be cut by vampire teeth--and THAT means that the only way to deliver the baby is for Edward to FUCKING CHEW IT OUT, and then the werewolf who was the sad third angle of this love triangle irrevocably imprints on the baby in some kind of creepy werewolf soul-mate-forever thing and meanwhile they have to jam a syringe full of vampire venom into Bella's heart to try to turn her into a vampire because it's the only way to fix her mangled, broken, wasted husk. That scene in Prometheus where Noomi Rapace has a Space C-Section to give birth to a Hugger is NOT EVEN CLOSE. If Meyer had STARTED with a book like this, I would be ALL OVER IT.
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no subject
Date: 2013-03-23 01:42 pm (UTC)And yes, Michael Sheen is awesome. That laugh!
Honestly, Twilight is so much better if you look at the implications rather than take it at face-value as a romance. It's really rather Wuthering Heights-esque in that way. There are some seriously dark things in the series, too bad they're being drowned out by all the ~omg Edward sparkly marble adonis~ stuff. Meyer might even make a servicable horror writer - just keep away from the romance (or make it absolutely clear that this is entirely and totally fucked up, and revel in how wrong it is).
no subject
Date: 2013-03-24 09:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-03-23 02:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-03-23 06:40 pm (UTC)I guess that means it's Ponies time for me, then.
no subject
Date: 2013-03-24 09:13 am (UTC)Plus, even with bad stories, I always try to acknowledge the good bits. That seems only fair.
no subject
Date: 2013-03-23 07:29 pm (UTC)And there actually is a really good story in there, it's just told from the wrong perspective, and it's a tragedy, not a romance. Someone over on Tumblr laid out how the whole thing would look from Bella's Dad's point of view, and I've gotta say, that sounded like a series I would read/watch the hell out of.
You make an excellent point about the conclusions drawn from it all, too. Punishment is really a crappy way to change people's behaviour, honestly. The problem is that it's simple to implement, and it works really well on people who are unlikely to ever break the rules in the first place, so it took us a couple thousand years to even start to work that out.
no subject
Date: 2013-03-24 09:21 am (UTC)I did feel the most for Bella's dad, who got stomped on pretty thoroughly through the whole thing. But I also recall a friend a while back who pointed out all the reasons why the Cullens should have had social services called on them about eighty times over, and think, "Dude, Charlie, YOU ARE A COP. There's got to be something proactive you can do here if you think Bella's in trouble."
Punishment seems to have a place beyond making the rest of us feel like we are avenged--it DOES curb SOME people--but it's obviously not enough. And even if it is effective, I would really rather that we didn't need it--I want people to be able to understand WHY they don't want to do something in the first place. Which ... is going to take some more time, I think. But we seem to have started, at least.
no subject
Date: 2013-03-24 03:14 pm (UTC)Punishment does work on some people. But as a general thing, the people it works on are mostly those who are unlikely to be committing many crimes in the first place. Most of the people who do commit crimes are too arrogant, stupid, or desperate to really care about the punishment.
The other thing is that punishment only really works if it's applied 100% of the time, without fail. Otherwise, it sets up a feedback loop sort of similar to gambling addiction, where the times that a person got away with something actually start serving as a reward in a positive conditioning scenario, and irregularly applied reward leads to the strongest conditioning to continue with a given behaviour.
no subject
Date: 2013-03-27 04:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-03-24 03:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-03-24 09:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-03-25 09:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-03-24 07:01 pm (UTC)(I hate horror.)
(I had also known this all already, but when I found it out it was at the near-end of marathoning Cleolinda's Twilight sendup/summaries of the books, and so I was already sick and tired of all the wibblesparkle and so, I think, was everyone else.)