OPINION:

EXPERT OPINION: 'Breaking Dawn' vs. A Twihard's (Mostly) Supportive Boyfriend

on November 26, 2011 by Ryan, boyfriend of a Twihard

A boyfriend can learn a couple things from Twilight. Like if your girlfriend is into Jacob, you need to get on a medicine ball and do some abs. Hit the weight room a little bit. If she's a fan of Edward, I think you marry her right away and don't leave some guy hanging around.

I wouldn't be afraid to date my girlfriend if she was a vampire. Ashley and I have been dating for seven-plus years at this point, so we were together before Twilight even started. As she got into it, I could definitely see the fan come out.

Before Twilight, she was always into the celebrity gossip columns. But I think when Twilight came out, the nature of Rob and Kristen and how they are—and the story—just really appealed to her. I know that she likes Rob and Kristen a lot. And as far as the story goes, I know she's not a big Jacob fan.

Ashley's definitely on Twitter a lot. I have a lot of conversations with the top of her head because she's on her phone or her computer. She helps run a Twitter thing that's just about celebrities? Pop culture? Oh, she says it's just pure Kristen Stewart—sorry! I'm going to get yelled at for that one. [Editor's note: @kstewartnews has nearly 47,000 Twitter followers]. I'm not that big into Twitter. I actually just jumped on Twitter, mostly, I'll admit, for my sports obsession. I follow all the people on ESPN. I'm definitely proud of her for that. But I don't follow her. I don't even know how—she set up my account and she blocked me because she says I don't need to see what she says.

I didn't see Twilight with her in theaters. She actually went and saw it with her sister actually toward the end of its run in movie theaters. And she was like, "I want to show this to you." And my first take, to be honest, was that I felt like the story could use more. It could get really good, but we'll see how how it goes. I thought, "Not bad, but it could be better."

Then she got into the books, and I think then she really got into the story. She's a real quick reader so I think she read through them all in two to three weeks. Wait, she's yelling at me that it was actually two days. That's when it really started to take off.

She saw New Moon on opening weekend, but I think I saw it a couple weekends after with her. At that point, I was only half getting into it because any time you pick up a story, you want to relate to the characters. You want to care about what's going on and what's going to happen. I don't think I was, like, jumping up and down to read the books to find out—I was just curious more than anything.

I'm not sure what it is in the story that people connect to? Maybe it's our culture, but everyone has a little bit of a thing about vampires. They're cool. I think girls relate to it because it's an obvious love story. I'd tell guys to go in with an open mind because, sure, it's a love story, but that doesn't mean it's not enjoyable. If you allow yourself to get past that macho thing and that it's a chick flick, there's some good things in there.

Guy-wise, you see a big werewolf/vampire fight and you're like, "All right, let's throw down—let's see this." From a guy's standpoint, I think that's very connectable. Sometimes you want to punch someone in the face, like Edward when he's stupid-or when Jacob is stupid, whatever.

As a guy, do I buy that Bella would have these two guys fighting over her? Well, honestly Edward doesn't have much of a personality either. I think I could see why he likes her. Edward and Bella are both, like, duds, so maybe that's it: they can be duds together. Jacob, I think he's incredibly stoic. I don't think the actor's that good who plays him, so maybe that could be it, but I couldn't go too detailed on why he likes her based on what I've seen onscreen. I just think Jacob has some personality: he's angry, he runs around, so I don't know what his deal is.

Kristen's kind of a dud in real life, so it makes sense she's a dud in the movies. I don't know if I can say that and not get yelled at. We'll find out. Bella's very passive and Edward's very dominant. Maybe that's why Jacob is around, so she can kind of dominate him—he does whatever she says. But then naysayers could say, "Why is Jacob around when Edward doesn't want him around?" Edward lets that happen. And at the end of the day, though, he could just snap her neck and kill her at any point.

My jury is still out on Robert Pattinson because I've seen some of his other movies and I think he's pretty good. I'm a Johnny Depp fan and he's a young guy getting into that world—I could totally see him being in that mold. But he's kind of stoic. I'd like to see some different thing out of him. He's always this deep, brooding character. I want to see him do a comedy or an action movie, something like that. Because right now, he's almost being typecast. Water for Elephants, Remember Me were brooding, and Edward Cullen is definitely that deep, brooding, soulful character. He's kind of like Brad Pitt in Interview With a Vampire. They're both kind of gloomy and they'd both rather eat animals then going out and killing humans because they think they're a monster.

I think Robert Pattinson could absolutely do comedy. I think parts of Twilight have it. In Breaking Dawn, there's a lot of funny parts that you could totally see him doing. He's a normal guy like anyone else—we're all capable of laughing every once in a while, despite what we see of him onscreen.

I've never been threatened by my girlfriend thinking he's amazing. No, no—I wish I could say I was, but I actually think that Rob looks like he ran into a wall and his nose just stopped. He looks like a pug dog or something. I've never been real worried about that. I mean, I've never been told to grow out my hair or get real skinny or stay out of the sun or anything like that.

Do I think Rob and I have anything in common? Well, this is kind of hearsay, but since Ashley tells me different stories, from what I hear, he's real into the bar scene. I feel like I could hang out with him at a bar, but then I also feel like I could hang out with just about anyone.

I think it's funny when you're in a theater and Edward or Jacob takes off their shirt and all the girls start screaming. As a guy, it's funny to hear girls start laughing and going, "Oh my God!" I'm a very educated moviegoer and I know that the actor that plays Jacob is like 5'8", so when he whips off his shirt, how are you going to compare him to, say, Gerard Butler who's 6'2", or Chris Hemsworth who is 6'5" and 240 pounds and would, like, squash him in one step. Sure, Jacob's got a lot of abs, but he's 160 pounds.

I think it's also kind of funny how excited my girlfriend gets over the movies. It's like, "You know the ending already? What's the big deal?" And I think it's really funny how she'll watch a movie and go, "That's exactly what it meant from the books and it was perfect onscreen," and I'm like, "Well, I didn't understand." Like in Breaking Dawn, how it took Bella two days to transform into a vampire? I didn't even pick up on that-she had to explain it to me. I was like, "I guess?" but I didn't really catch that. 'Cause I thought in the first one when Bella was sitting there dying, Edward had to suck the venom out right there or else she was going to turn into a vampire? So I thought it was an immediate change, but then when Bella's saying that she didn't want to spend her honeymoon in misery—their honeymoon was 14 days. If it took two days to become a vampire, why not just say, "Hey, let's take these two days to become a vampire and then just roll out and enjoy our honeymoon as vampires?" What is the reasoning? Sure, it's a pain, but then you're a vampire and you can live forever and do whatever you want.

I have no problems admitting to my guy friends I have to go see Twilight on the weekends. I was actually talking to my boss and he was getting taken to Breaking Dawn opening weekend, too. I was like, "Hey, we got our tickets, we're going Saturday morning." He was like, "Aw, at least you get to wait until Saturday morning—I'm going at midnight." He just got engaged three weeks ago. It's a widespread problem.

It literally is everywhere—doesn't Burger King have Twilight cups? Human nature means that you're gong ot be curious to find out what it is. I feel like some of my single friends don't know much about Twilight, but it's one of those things that a lot of couples enjoy together. My friends that are couples probably know just as much about it as me. I probably know more about the Rob and Kristen stuff. But my boss is actually involved in the story at this point. He said he now just wants to find out what happens. I told him, "Do you really want to know? I can tell you what happens at the end." And he said, "No, I'll just watch it."

Actually, Ashley also went Thursday night. She went with my mom. My mom's always been a sucker for love stories. Saturday was my day to see it with her. She wanted to see it again and I'm not going to fight her on it. I went to the Cleveland Browns game the next day.

I think Breaking Dawn is the best of the four movies. The whole love triangle of Bella and Jacob and Edward was just stupid. She likes this guy so much she's going to become a vampire and leave her entire life behind? So what is she even messing around with this other guy for? Now that they're married, their problems are a little different. The vampire baby, or whatever the hell that was. But it's seeing them overcome a struggle as a couple, and I think that's definitely relatable. That was much better than worthless Jacob running around and saying, "I like her!" Well, you're an idiot—shut up.

I think Bella was just making the whole love triangle worse. In Breaking Dawn they say, "I'll never understand this relationship you have with Jacob." And I don't. I'm a guy and I don't understand it. I've been with Ashley for seven-plus years and I don't have a relationship like that with some random girl. She doesn't have some guy making her warm when she's cold running around. That's my job. Granted, I'm not an ice-cold vampire.

It's not that I think Bella's a bad girlfriend, I guess. She does definitely accept Edward as a vampire, and if these two are so hellbent on being together then they do deal with it. She could be human or not, or become a vampire. But really, who cares what Jacob does—he's going to die out eventually. As for 18-year-olds getting married, I don't think it really bothers me. It is what it is. He's a vampire who's been alive for 100 million years or whatever. I don't necessarily think that it's bad. And I don't think it tells younger girls that it's a normal thing to do-they even joke about it when that girl's like, "Do you think Bella's going to be showing in her dress?" Everything about the situation isn't normal.

I thought Bella looked really gross during the pregnancy when she was really skinny. That was awful. And the very end scene when she goes into labor and they're doing whatever to get the baby and her back cracked in half? That was pretty terrible. And E.J. was kind of an awkward name. I was like, "That sounds like someone just word-vomited." It'd be a little odd to name your son after your wife's ex-boyfriend.

The imprinting was actually kind of neat. I thought that was cool how the whole thing happened. It wasn't like a huge surprise twist ending. And I didn't think it was creepy—it's a story about vampires and werewolves, so there's a lot of folklore that goes along with it. Hey, whatever. It's a story. No one would be following it if they got married, she became a vampire and they lived happily ever after. Who would watch that movie-it's too much like real life? Minus the vampire.

The first Twilight and this new one are my favorites. New Moon and Eclipse were kind of dumbed down, I thought. Like, Edward leaves and blah, blah, blah. Well if he was so in love with her, why did he leave? And then she takes him back like the last however many months didn't happen. What's the point?

Eclipse, the fighting wasn't bad, but I felt like it could have been a lot cooler. I don't think they do much. It was almost like an awkward fight scene when they were just running around in a field—it looked like a leaderless army. There wasn't much action that was like, "Oh my gosh! I've never seen that before—that was really neat!" But if New Moon and Eclipse had come out first, I'd probably have never watched another Twilight.

I would love to see what Tim Burton could have done with the series. I think he creates worlds and has a vision that's very dark and almost gothic to begin with. To see him wrap a love story into it, I'd love to see that. Or James Cameron could have sunk his teeth—no pun intended—into when they guys change into werewolves, that'd be neat to see, too.

I can't really blame her for any of her fangirl stuff. As much as she wants to talk Twilight, every Sunday I have four hours to myself just to watch football. I watch the draft, all that stuff. And I'm a huge movie freak. I'm just as into Pirates of the Caribbean and Batman as she's into Twilight. I have Captain Jack posters all over my room—that, and the Joker. I had Heath Ledger all over my room, too.

So I understand her obsession really well. I absolutely have an obsessive personality, that's for sure. I think at one point, I had a life-sized cutout of the Joker giving to me as a Christmas gift. I haven't seen any life-sized Edwards or Bellas running around in her house yet. I'm not ruling it out, though. If she got a cutout, we'd have to talk about it. If she'd want to stick it in a closet, that's fine. But if it started heading into the living room, then I'd have a couple issues. I tried to get her an Edward poster, but she wasn't too into it. She's not as into posters as I am. I did get her a Twilight lamp with a shade with the movie posters on it. She liked that. I do my best to be sweet. Of course, I know my obsessions are cooler—way cooler.

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