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here for Part 1!
Rose leaves, bumping into Christian on the
way out. He was coming to make sure Lissa is okay, but Rose tells him
to stay away from her. He tells her Lissa likes him, and Rose replies
with this line:
“Lissa used to
like Hot Topic too, and then she turned twelve”.
Ahhh, there it is.
This line made me curious enough about the books, so I actually
downloaded the first book to see how loyal the movie was being to it.
The book has ZERO references to Twilight
or Hot Topic, which leads me to believe Daniel Waters wrote this
entire movie as a middle finger to the entire genre. I mean the guy
is in his fifties now, this entire supernatural teen genre has to be
such nonsense to him. I could be totally wrong, after all this is the
guy who wrote Hudson Hawk
so I could be giving him WAY too much credit, but there is definitely
a tone to this movie that makes me feel I'm right. Also,
making fun of Hot Topic customers is MY gig Vampire Academy, OKAY?
Christian says he was only being concerned,
Rose saying there's a fine line between concerned and stalker. Jesus
Christ, what did he DO? It was clearly established Christian was
going to the church long before Lissa was, if anything she's stalking
HIM. Rose tells Christian to go away because it's what Lissa wants.
Nice, 37 minutes into the movie and I DESPISE our “heroine” now.
Well done movie!
He started off a
little rough, but Christian has been a nice guy who has been helping
Lissa through the bad time she's had since returning to the academy,
as well as defending the honour of her AND Rose. Rose just comes off
as a complete bitchy sociopath here. The next morning
Rose FINALLY reads the telegram Olga gave her after a couple of
scenes teasing her opening it. Yeah, it's only been a few days why
not? She meets Dimitri outside for more training and some monotonous
line reading on his part, during which we learn Rose's mother is one
of the most badass guardians in the world. Dimitri asks what the
telegram said, and this ought to be good after all that build up!
“Glad you're
alive. What you did was inexcusable. Mom.” Oh. Huh.
They talk for what
seems to be forever, the only worthwhile information that Rose knows
nothing of her Moroi father. Rose goes back inside the school, where
she runs into Mia. Rose tells her the world beware doesn't have an
“h” in it, Mia furrowing her brow at her like “WTF are you
talking about?” Rose makes a note of this as she meets up with
Natalie, who tells her Mia and Aaron are going on a field trip to a
hemoglobin factory later that day.
WHAT?! The
vampires take field trips? Does this actually mean the human world
knows about their existence? Or do they just pretend they're a normal
school? If so, how do they deal with state inspection drills? Also,
what the hell is a hemoglobin factory? Is that a human thing or a
Moroi thing? I googled it to no avail, so it must be a Moroi thing.
Also, I am completely bored to tears by this movie so am trying to
grab onto anything to stay interested.
Oh, we're only
forty minutes in? Hmm. Natalie wants to raid Mia's room while she's
at... the hemoglobin factory. A factory. To produce hemoglobin. Which
is a substance in blood that carries oxygen throughout the body. Why
would the Moroi even need to mass produce hemoglobin when they have a
never ending supply of humans willing to volunteer their blood?
Lissa-Vision time!
Rose watches as Lissa uses compulsion on all the Popular Kids to make
them hang out with her. What a fine use of her powers. I'd ask why
she's against using powers against the strigoi who want to brutally
kill her when she has no problem using them against her fellow
classmates, but I just really want to survive this review.
Christian walks by
and Lissa tries to talk to him, but she tells her she doesn't have to
pretend anymore and keeps walking. Nice one Rose, you're a champ.
Back at Lissa's, the three women go through Mia's laptop while
Natalie was easily able to steal. Lissa doesn't care about any of
this, getting dressed up for a night out with the Popular Kids.
Natalie sighs, wishing Lissa would compulse Ray into taking her
virginity. They are taking this cliché WAY too far, Ray is a
complete monster and no matter how good looking he is there's no way
the kind hearted Natalie would still be into him.
Rose
finds pictures of Lissa's brother Andre and Mia, who were secretly
dating. Rose tells Natalie how Andre was a player who went through
women like crazy, not caring about any of them. From these pictures,
she concludes Mia fell in love with Andre and felt very betrayed that
he didn't love her back. Since Rose is just making up bullshit,
Natalie joins in by saying Mia now hates the entire Dragomir line.
We
go to a montage of Lissa taking away all of Mia's friends as Rose
narrates this is turning Lissa into someone she's not. Ladies and
gentlemen, I give you the reboot of Mean
Girls! Lissa is Cady and Mia is Regina,
and Lissa is using compulsion to turn the Plastics against Mia
instead of lies and nutrition bars.
We
fast forward ahead some as Rose is now starting to kick ass in
training. After one session, Mason tells her how he saw Jesse and Ray
with bandages over their wrists while they were getting dressed in
the locker room. As they ponder what this could mean, they see Mia
walking by with her wrists covered up too. They follow her as she
meets with Olga in a secretive looking fashion. This
motivates Rose to break into Olga's office, and you want a perfect
example of how the scenes in this movie end? Here you go:
Rose:
There's a file in there that could be the key to my past, my present,
and my future.
Mason: That's it? Sounds cool.
End
scene.
Or
how about the next scene? Rose and Dimitri are training AGAIN, and
Dimitri ends up lying on top of her. Rose makes a sexually suggestive
comment and he pulls her to her feet.
End
scene. Hell she barely even gets on her feet before it cuts away.
Now
Rose is breaking into Olga's office, although I wouldn't say breaking
as much as she just walks in and takes Karp's file. Now Rose is back
in her room, finding a DVD in Karp's file and watching it on her
computer. The video is of Karp rambling about her powers, but before
it gets interesting a screen says the rest of footage is on another
disc the file doesn't contain.
Now
Rose is in church, sitting by Christian. He tells him about what she
did, asking for his help with Lissa but he's rightfully pissed at her
and leaves. Now Rose is at a school wide party, but gets sick of
Lissa's attitude and leaves. Lissa follows her, Rose trying to tell
her about Christian but Lissa doesn't care. Natalie pops up, saying
something is following her. We hear a howling, Rose saying it's a
psi-hound and tells everyone to run. Natalie asks what a psi-hound
is, but no one feels like answering.
They
run to the courtyard, where Lissa sees her backpack lying in the
center of the area. Rose notices small cameras are mounted
everywhere, but before she can investigate them Lissa grabs her
backpack and opens it. She finds her cat dead inside, trying to
resurrect it but the strain makes her pass out. A series of slashes
suddenly appear on her arm. Animals
being hurt, threats written on walls... does this remind you of
anything? Harry
Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
much?
This
prompts another Karp flashback as we learn Karp used compulsion to
make Rose and Lissa flee the academy because of a great danger inside
the school. You know, this movie is juggling a LOT of subplots right
now. What are the odds it's able to reconcile all of them? We
get our millionth cut of the last ten minutes as Rose is telling Olga
and the school board about what Karp said. Dimitri tells Olga it's
time they tell Rose about Karp, to which Olga agrees with because the
only thing consistent about her character is being inconsistent.
Remember
seven million hours ago when she tried to molest Rose? WTF was THAT?
A
couple of months after Rose and Lissa left, Karp suffered a complete
mental breakdown. She became a strigoi to make the pain away, because
strigoi don't feel pain or suffering or anything. Karp killed her
doctor and escaped the academy, and hasn't been seen since.
Rose
heads to the church to research stuff where she runs into Christian,
who agrees to help her. They learn St. Vladimir had a rare magical
ability called “spirit”, which sounds like what Lissa has. This
is pretty much their exact words, they don't tell us what it actually
is. Rose wonders what the “bad guys” want from Lissa, Christian
suggesting Tatiana, Olga, and Mia could all be working together to
drive her crazy. Characters just LOVE to make up shit in this movie,
don't they? It's an okay theory I suppose, but Rose immediately takes
it as fact.
Rose
brings up the cuts on Lissa's skin, which horrifies Christian. Rose
then delivers the absolute lowest point of the movie, and CEMENTS her
status as THE most vile character in supernatural teen history:
“Christian,
she really could have used your support these past few weeks.”
Bella
Swan, turn in your crown to Rose Hathaway immediately. Instead
of responding with “Hey, I would have been happy to be there if YOU
HADN'T SABOTAGED US YOU STUPID FUCKING BITCH!”, Christian says it's
LISSA'S fault they haven't been together. OH MY GOD this fucking
movie... this HAS to be a stealth parody of how stupid characters act
in the genre, I will accept no other answer at this point.
Rose
says it is never the girl's fault, even when it is the girl's fault.
So she's AGREEING with Christian now?! It is ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND
PERCENT your fault Rose! She escapes this entire episode blame free?
Utterly amazing. Christian jokes is she wasn't so psychotic, she'd be
fun to hang out with.
We
see them leave the library a bit later, hugging and all laughs now.
As Christian walks away Lissa pops out and angrily confronts him,
demanding to know what he was doing with Rose. He replies they were
just reading, telling her what they learned about spirit magic. He
says they want to help her, but Lissa says she doesn't need any help
and begins to rant. He cuts her off by kissing her, but she pushes
him off, tells him she hates him, and runs away. Wow.
Rose,
who watched this whole scene on Lissa-Vision, runs after her trying
to explain. As they power walk, a hole opens up in the ground that
Rose steps into and breaks her ankle in what is a VERY vicious
looking break that actually made me cringe. I have to give that one
to the movie, but that is nowhere near enough to redeem it after what
we just saw.
Rose
wakes up in the hospital, where she learns Lissa healed her leg. The
princess tells her she's “back to normal now”, getting the Mean
Girls out of her system when she saw
Rose's ankle break. Oh... kay? Olga arrives to tell them advisers
from Romania are now on the way to deal with all this bullshit and
the two women are to be sequestered, so they're going to miss the big
dance tonight.
Geez, this movie shifts
gears more than a drag race. Victor shows up and announces they ARE
going to go. Lissa tells him they haven't a thing to wear, but he
replies he's “engineered a shopping expedition”. The movie misses
a MAJOR opportunity here for him to pull out a handful of credits
cards accompanied by a “CHA-CHING!” sound effect, which is the
only thing that could have saved this film. I swear to the high
heavens, if we get a “trying on dresses to a pop song while the
girls shake their heads until they finally give a thumbs up on the
perfect one” montage, I am ending this fucking review.
They
head to the mall, taking a back entrance guarded by a guardian. For
some reason he gives Rose a UV light that'll help her blind strigoi,
which really makes me look forward to a mall brawl. That's something
you don't see much in movies anymore.
As
they pick out clothes, Rose's eyes fall on a beautiful necklace that
is way too expensive for her. They pick out their dresses and return
to Lissa's to get glammed up, cheating us out of a mall brawl. Why
did the guy give Rose a weapon then? They notice Lissa's laptop now
has a screen saver on it that says tonight will be here last dance.
Wow, these are the LAMEST threats I've ever seen since a video game
called Alone
in the Dark: Inferno,
which featured a villain who sent you threatening text messages.
Congratulations
Alone
in the Dark,
you're as scary as my ex-girlfriend!
Natalie
gives Rose a gift from her father, which turns out to be the necklace
she was looking at at the mall. Boy, that Victor sure is a nice guy!
The three head to the dance, where they enter in a slow motion shot.
Lissa
starts dancing with Christian, who apologizes for kissing her. She
responds by kissing him. Mason shows up with Jesse and Ray, making
them apologize to rose. Ray says Mia let them have sex with her if
they played all the pranks on Lissa. Like, at the same time?! Sure
enough, the answer is yes as we get a flashback of them, post-sex,
writing on Lissa's walls with their cut open wrists. Natalie,
you get an AIDS test STAT!
That
is so fucked up that I LOVE it. This is exactly what the whole movie
should have been like tone-wise, just bizarre imagery that makes your
stomach turn. This is almost enough to make up for the Rose/Christian
scene earlier, although it does make the Rose/Mia confrontation
earlier a bit confusing now as the movie really made it seem like Mia
had no idea what Rose was talking about. I mean, I guess Mia is that
good at deception since she's just a one-note bitch, but I don't
know... seemed like otherwise.
Ray
says they didn't do the fox or the cat though. Rose makes him go
dance with Natalie, which just further proves she's a horrible,
horrible person. Sabotaging Lissa and Christian and then blaming it
all on him, and now trying to hook her friend up with a walking
STD-bag. Lovely. Rose
and Mia get in a fight, Rose punching her out. The guardians take
Rose away and lock her in a room, Rose tuning into Lissa-Vision to
see what her best friend is up to. She's in the church making out
with Christian, but strangers knock him out and kidnap Lissa.
Olga
shows up with a syringe, not listening as Rose tries to tell her
about Lissa. Rose turns the tables on the headmistress and injects
her in the ass, Olga making a lame joke before she passes out. Damn,
Olga has the worst luck with syringes in my reviews!
Rose
sprints to Dimitri's room, telling him about Lissa. However, midway
through she's like “fuck it!” and starts kissing him. What the-?!
He responds back as they start undressing each other, and the camera
immediately explains what's going on by constantly cutting to Rose's
necklace. So yeah, Victor's the bad guy and did something to the
necklace. Dimitri realizes this and tears it off, both guardians
coming out of their little sex trance. Rose immediately returns to
“we need to save Lissa!”
They
check with the guardian watching the front gate, but she says no one
has left the ground. The three get in Dimitri's SUV to drive...
somewhere? Where are they going? Why wouldn't they go search where
Lissa was taken first for clues? Rose sees Christian is hiding in the
backseat, but doesn't tell the other guardians. I love when a movie
starts throwing any logic out the window so we can have our Big Dumb
Ending. How in the world would Christian know to hide in Dimitri's
SUV? A scene of him waking up and trying to find Rose would have been
helpful, but I guess the movie figured it was much more important
having our leads stripping.
Rose
NOW uses Lissa-Vision to find Lissa, and hey look, she's tied to a
chair in front of Victor. What a shock. He refuses to make eye
contact with her as that's the only way to avoid compulsion. I bet
you've already guessed his entire plan because at this point the film
is just on autopilot.
He
was behind the dead animals, as they were a way to test Lissa's
healing abilities. Which makes no sense as she wasn't able to heal
either, so wouldn't that mean her powers weren't strong enough to
heal his disease? He makes more sense when he reveals he used his
earth magic to break Rose's ankle to see if Rose could heal that,
although I fail to see how healing a bone would mean she could heal
whatever the hell Sandovsky's Syndrome is.
Lissa
says Rose will find her thanks to their bond, but he says his
enchanted necklace will keep her a bit preoccupied. She
asks why didn't he just ask her to heal him, which is a great
question. He answers because it'll take multiple sessions to fully
heal him, which will ultimately kill her. He says the Moroi need a
strong leader, which he can't be because of his disease. Lissa won't
help him, so he brings in an air magic Moroi to torture her. The
Moroi is blind, so he'll be immune to her compulsion.
Ooh,
magic torture! This should be interesting! I wonder how he's going to
do it? Violently suck the breath in and out of her body? Blast her
eyes with small torrents of air? Use the wind to slowly pull out her
finger nails? Oh, lightly blowing on her face? Y-yeah...
I guess that works too...
The
fuck? This is supposed to be dramatic and tension filled and
it's a guy freaking BLOWING ON HER FACE! This causes Lissa so
much pain she relents and heals Victor, passing out in the process. I
really wish I could have seen this in theaters now, there is NO WAY
the audience didn't burst into laughter during this scene. The
SUV arrives outside Victor's house, Dimitri and the female guardian
going inside to beat everyone up. Rose, who he stupidly believed
would stay in the car, takes Christian and sneaks inside to find
Lissa.
The
princess is doing just fine on her own though, as she uses compulsion
to escape the house because for some reason no one thought it'd be a
good idea to blindfold her. Hmm. When they kidnapped her they
blindfolded her, but no... let's just leave her alone in a room with
a single guard and hope she plays fair. Outside,
Lissa runs into two psi-hounds which are giant menacing dogs with
evil eyes. Victor watches this from a video feed, telling his
sidekick they won't attack her unless he says so. Lissa runs, but her
way is blocked by a helicopter that lands in front of her. Sure, why
not?
Rose
arrives and beats up the pilot, but then Victor arrives and shoots
Christian in the stomach. Before he can shoot Rose, Dimitri jumps him
and handcuffs him. Victor sics the psi-hounds on Lissa in
retaliation, but Christian uses his powers to engulf them in flames
which causes them to run away. Lissa tells Rose she needs to save
Christian but her powers are spent from healing Victor, so Rose
offers her neck. Lissa chows down and saves her boyfriend, everyone
passing out. I've
never seen an action climax so boring it put all the heroes to sleep,
but here we are.
Later,
Olga meets with Rose in her office. She says Victor will be
transferred to the “royal court prison” for trial while the
Dashkov family is coming to pick up Natalie. She gives Rose another
telegram from her mother and hot damn that got there in a hurry! It's
been maybe a couple hours tops since the “battle” with Victor, so
somehow Rose's mom heard about all this, sent a telegram that must
have arrived with Moroi magic because- ah, nevermind. What's it say?
I'm sure something REALLY epic and important since it defied the laws
of time and space to arrive at the academy.
“Proud.
Mom.”. Oh.
Rose
talks to Dimitri in the hallway afterward about what happened to
them, but he says it was just the necklace and he has no feelings in
her. She is all smiles as she says she doesn't believe him. Olga
walks up to them, saying Victor wants to speak to Rose about being
shadow-kissed. I can't put into words how awful she delivers that
sentence. Dimitri says no way, but Rose tells him he's not the boss
of her and she's suddenly very angry at him. Character consistency,
this movie has none.
Rose
goes into the holding cells to see him, and immediately starts
talking about Dimitri liking her because that's THE most important
thing going on here. Victor makes fun of her for this, and I'm pretty
sure Victor is just Daniel Waters's author avatar at this point,
mocking how all these teen girls put their relationships over
everything else. But Victor goes on to console her that the charm
couldn't have worked if Dimitri didn't have feelings for her in the
first place.
She
THEN asks about shadow-kissed, Victor telling her there's no way Rose
could have survived the car accident. We see a flashback of Lissa
crawling over to heal Rose as Victor narrates this is what awakened
her powers, as she used them to heal Rose and create their bond.
As
Victor talks, we can see the prison guards behind Rose being
attacked. Victor tells Rose she's been kissed by the shadows, as she
crossed over to the other side before being brought back to life by
Lissa. Rose finally notices the last guard dying, as we see Natalie
is the killer. She is now a strigoi, revealed to have been working
with her father the entire time. She killed the fox and the cat, and
killed Ray after the dance to become a strigoi. This leads to this
CHARMING exchange:
Natalie:
Killing him was a lot more fun than losing my virginity to him
would've been.
Rose: And with a lot more blood.
God.
You stay classy Vampire Academy!
Rose and Natalie fight as Victor escapes. Rose uses the UV light she
got earlier to blind her, but finds she doesn't have the willpower to
kill her former friend. Victor is about to leave via elevator when
Dimitri emerges from it, knocking him out. Geez Victor is a worthless
villain. Dimitri then attacks Natalie, Rose holding her captive while
he stakes her to kill her.
The
next night Rose meets with Lissa and Christian, where Rose FINALLY
gets her best friend to high five her. WOW,
WHAT AN EPIC CHARACTER ARC! This was so worth sitting through the
movie for!
Tatiana
holds another assembly to say how worthless Lissa is, but the
princess cuts her off. She declares spirit as her magic, as well as
the fact she's dating Christian. I'm shocked she didn't announce she
was dating him before her declaration. She then goes on to give what
I'm almost positive is the exact same speech Tina Fey gave at the end
of Mean Girls about
how everyone in the school needs to be nice to each other. Everyone
bursts into applause, but sadly it doesn't start off with a single
person clapping and then everyone joining in. Come on, Vampire
Academy! Are you even trying?!
Later
Rose catches up to Dimitri, who is training outside again. This movie
is too hard to make a drinking game for because there's like a
million things to choose from, but if you did a shot every time there
was a training scene you'd be in the hospital by now getting your
stomach pumped.
Rose
asks why he lied about his feelings for her, and he answers because
if he fell in love with Rose he wouldn't be able to do his job
because he'd worry about protecting Rose instead of his Moroi. This
makes Rose tear up, saying his reasons for not loving her just make
her love him more. So she LOVES him now, eh? Based off what, exactly?
He barely talked to her during their training sessions and when he
did it was just to berate her about this or that.
Rose
asks him to kiss her one last time, which he says is a bad idea. She
begs him, so he goes in to kiss her and she finally slams him to the
ground. I was almost going to give her a point for this clever ruse,
but then she ruins it with a HORRIBLY DATED Gladiator
reference.
“Are
you not entertained?!”
No
Vampire Academy, NO I AM NOT.
The
filmmakers wisely knew NO ONE IN EXISTENCE would sit through the
credits, so they put the stinger after this scene. The camera pans
way out to a cave full of Ms. Karp and a legion of strigoi, the
former teacher hissing “soon”. Sadly the movie doesn't end with
her jumping out at the camera like it should of, instead it just ends
on a shot of the hundreds of strigoi looking bored.
Cue
the credits, set to a cover of “Bela
Lugosi's Dead” by Chvrches. Well, the
movie did have one of the better soundtracks I've heard in awhile at
least.
This
was a bit of a mess, wasn't it? And by that I mean the single worst
movie of 2014 so far. The biggest problem it had absolutely no idea
what kind of movie it wanted to be. It started off as an on-the-run
movie, then turned into a straight up high school popularity drama,
then shifted to the world's lamest mystery that wouldn't have been
worthy of a Scooby-Doo episode, before it finally decided it should
be a villain with a master plan movie.
Ironically,
the villain was straight out of a Scooby-Doo episode with all the key
plot points: lots of red herrings pointing to the openly mean and/or
shady person, the villain hiding out in plain sight by helping our
heroes, and his plan was ultimately foiled by a bunch of meddling
teenagers.
While
it was painfully obvious that Victor was going to be the villain
almost immediately thanks to him being super nice as well as Gabriel
Byrne, I will freely admit the twist of Natalie being in cahoots with
him did surprise me. It's obvious it retrospect because they go out
of their way to say how she worships her father and will do anything
for him, but it was a good reveal at the time. I also like how they
killed her off rather than finding a way for her to stick around to
be a recurring villain.
What
else was good? Lucy Fry, who played Lissa, was pretty good. She
definitely had some cringe worthy acting moments like when she made
herself the leader of the Plastics, but overall she was likeable and
I actually cared about her which is certainly a rarity in these kind
of movies.
What
was bad then? EVERYTHING ELSE. Take your pick: the acting, the story,
the special effects, the pacing, the editing... yeah, this is the
pure definition of NO ONE working on this giving a fuck. They had a
contract and they were going to fulfill it, dammit. I'm guessing Mark
Waters just turned on his camera and filmed while he googled if
Hollywood is making a live action Teen Titans movie while Daniel
Waters took the Mean Girls
script and did Control + F to replace “Plastics”
with “Moroi”.
I
want to single out Joely Richardson for her SPECTACULARLY bad acting
here, as it takes a nearly immeasurable amount of not giving a fuck
to outdo Olga Kurylenko in a movie. Richardson is so good too, it's
just heartbreaking.
As
I mentioned before, this movie had a budget of thirty million dollars
and it barely made half that back. It came out in theaters on
February 7, 2014 and hit home video May 20, 2014. This is what we
call A BOMB. This won't deter Hollywood though, the recently released
Divergent was
a massive hit and the third Hunger Games
movie due out later this year is poised to shatter
box office records, so get ready to see tons more of these poorly
done young adult movies.
Yet
another movie I can't recommend because it's too bad to be that
special type of entertaining, and I'm sure if you're a fan of the
books this is just going to piss you off because it butchered them.
Speaking of that, let's see how this movie scored on my Twilight
Meter, as previously seen on my Mortal Instruments: City of Bones review.
Step
One. Start off with a completely bland boring uninteresting dark
haired young woman who starts off as nothing special. She has to be a
loner who only has one interest/hobby in her life.
Well,
Rose certainly did have a personality when compared to the monotone
heroines we usually get stuck with. Granted it was a terribly
annoying one that had you screaming “Shut up shut up shut up!”
every time she opened her mouth to crack a “funny” one liner, but
at least it was something. No points awarded for a score of 0/7.
Step
Two. She will have a single male best friend that she only thinks of
“as a friend or like a brother”. He, of course, pines for her
daily to love him like he secretly loves her.
Why
hello there Mason! How's the Friend Zone treatin' ya? +1 point for a
score of 1/7.
Step
Three. Have her suddenly become the most important person in the
world through a combination of the supernatural, a hidden talent she
didn't know she had, or an indomitable will.
Rose
wasn't the most important person in the world, hell she wasn't even
the most important person in the story. This was a nice change of
pace where the heroine wasn't out to save the world, but instead was
trying to save her best friend. No points awarded for a score of 1/7.
Step
Four. Make sure she only has one parent, usually a mother but that's
flexible. The other parent is gone either through divorce, death, or
mysteriously vanishing when she was young.
Whoops,
hit this one dead on. Rose only has a mother, and her father is
mysteriously absent. +1 point for a score of 2/7.
Step
Five. Throw her into a Love Triangle with two men, one of whom is the
aforementioned best friend she's known her entire life and the other
an enigmatic stranger she instantly prefers. Bonus if the stranger is
introduced saving her life.
They
teased a love triangle for a minute, but Rose stomped on it multiple
times by not having a single feeling for Mason. I really admire their
restraint here, because they had all the elements in place including
Dimitri saving Rose's life. No points awarded for a score of 2/7.
Step
Six. Add a villain. The villain isn't important at all so we don't
need any kind of development for him. In fact, the more faceless and
generic he is the better because that's just taking time away from
the Love Triangle.
The
villain was definitely borderline non-existent in this one. We
weren't even sure there WAS a villain until about 3/4ths in the
movie. +1 point for a score of 3/7.
Step
Seven. Make sure whatever world changing events going on in the story
are minimized so they can take a backseat to the Love Triangle.
While
there weren't world changing events or a Love Triangle going on in
the story, the events that were going on WERE thrown on the back
burner so the story could focus on Rose and Dimitri. For crying out
loud, Dimitri liking her is the very first thing Rose brought up when
talking to our master villain. +1 point for a final score of 4/7.
0:
Congratulations! Your fictional world is so original and creative
it's almost guaranteed it'll get ignored by mainstream audiences!
1 –
2: A very nice breath of fresh air, it was great to see a unique spin
on well worn material.
3
– 4: I feel like I've seen this a million times already, and will
see it a million more.
5
– 6: Seriously, why even bother making this when you should have
just been working on new features for Twilight:
The Tenth Anniversary
Blu-Ray?
7:
You should be expecting a call from Stephenie Meyer's lawyers ANY
minute now.
