by Lindy West
One day one of Bella’s friends is leaving the school parking lot in his van when he skids on some ice and almost crushes her. (Then Bella’s dad threatens to take that Black teenager’s driver’s license away, for revenge, which is extremely fucked up!) Edward zooms over there using wizard speed and stops the van with his boday.
Bella: How did you get over to me so fast?
Edward: I was standing right next to you, Bella…Bella, you hit your head. You’re confused…Nobody’s gonna believe you.
Gaslighting! Vampire gaslighting!!! Later that night, Bella wakes up and thinks she sees Edward inside her room watching her sleep. But he’s not. OR WAS HE? (Yes!!!!!!!)
“That was the first night I dreamt of Edward Cullen.”
Bella and Edward become more and more erotically enthralled, but they’re teens (well, one teen and one EXTREMELY ELDERLY MAN), which means lots and lots and lots and lots of staring, and Edward constantly walking up to her and saying stuff like, “Bella, we shouldn’t be friends,” and “If you were smart, you’d stay away from me.” Dude, YOU CAME OVER HERE.
Bella invites him to go to the coast with the regular kids, but he’s like, “What if I’m not the hero? What if I’m the bad guy?” so, that’s a no, I guess.
At the beach, she runs into Jacob “Mud Pie” NeighborBoy and his friends, and this is as good a time as any to mention that this character is Native and they should have cast a Native actor! Bella asks, very rudely, “What are you, like, stalking me?” and Jacob says, “You’re on my beach, remember?” and Bella’s like, “What did your friends mean about ‘the Cullens don’t come here,’” and Jacob reveals that his tribe has an ancient legend about the Cullens SPECIFICALLY. An ancient legend about the group of foster children who go to her high school. “If they agree to stay off our land,” he explains, “then we won’t expose what they really are to the palefaces.” Oh! Okeydokey!
Bella decides to pop over to Port Angeles to get a book about Quileute legends so she can learn more about HER LAB PARTNER. In the dark and twisting alleys of Port Angeles, Bella is menaced by some Port Angeles rapists, but then Edward appears and rescues her in his lil vampire hatchback! He casually drops that he can read minds and then takes her out for mushroom ravioli. (Waiter: “You’re sure there isn’t anything I can get for you?” I don’t know, do you have a BOWL OF BLOOD??)
Edward tells Bella that he feels very protective of her, and also he can read the mind of every human in Forks AND Port Angeles except her. “It’s very frustrating.”
Edward: I don’t have the strength to stay away from you anymore.
Bella: Then don’t.
Their hands touch, erotically, and his is cold as ice. Because he’s dead. And old. Dude, Edward. Come on. All the other vampires are with other vampires! What could you possibly have in common with this teenage girl?
Yo, girl, lemme play u my favorite song.
[Gregorian chant]
Bella looks up vampires on the internet and finds out that they’re called “THE COLD ONES,” which freaks her out, so now she’s scared of Edward and hurts his feelings at school on purpose. Who’s the cold one now????
He follows her into the woods, and she confronts him with her suspicions: “You’re impossibly fast and strong, your skin is pale white and ice cold, your eyes change color, and sometimes you speak like you’re from a different time. You never eat or drink anything, you don’t go out in the sunlight. How old are you?”
If I had a dollar for every time I had this exact fight with my exes!!!!!!!!!!!
Edward tosses Bella on his back and runs up an entire mountain in fast-motion, which is funnier than any intentional comedy I’ve ever seen. (Also me when they restock the toilet paper at Walgreens, right???)
Up above the clouds of Forks, Bella learns that vampire skin sparkles in the sunlight, a detail that would go on to sell many thousands of dollars in glittery dildos!
Bella: It’s like diamonds. You’re beautiful.
Edward: Beautiful? This is the skin of a killer, Bella.
And this is the peacoat of a killer.
I’m wearing a killer’s socks.
This is the hair gel of a killer.
Edward: I am the world’s most dangerous predator. I am designed to kill.
Bella: I don’t care.
Edward: I’ve killed people before.
Bella: It does not matter.
Edward: I wanted to kill you. I’ve never wanted a human’s blood so much in my life.
Bella: I trust you.
Edward: Don’t.
Bella: I’m here. I trust you.
B E L L A.
G I R L.
Y I K E S.
Edward: Your scent, it’s like a drug to me. You’re like my own personal brand of heroin. I call it Pale Eddie’s Heroin.
Bella: I’m not afraid of you. I’m only afraid of losing you. I feel like you’re going to disappear.
Edward: You don’t know how long I’ve waited for you.
Then they’re about to kiss, maybe, but the camera pans up to the sky all kooky because I guess the cameraman found his own personal brand of heroin. Bella and Edward lie down on the grass and stare at each other, which is how you can tell this movie wasn’t written by someone from the Pacific Northwest—there are only three days a year here when the grass isn’t wet. Enjoy your soggy asses!
I do need to pause and say that Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson perform the frick out of these goofy-ass roles, and you know what? I love them both. I do! I think they are good! Sue me! Take me to Taste Court!
Edward tells Bella that Dr. Cullen turned him into a vampire in 1918 while he was dying of Spanish influenza (PLEASE no one let Donald Trump watch Twilight), and that the Cullens “think of ourselves as vegetarians.” He invites Bella over to meet his whole family, and she’s like, “But what if they don’t like me!?” Dude, they go to your school! And one of them’s your doctor!!!!
Bella shows up, and Edward’s mom is like, “Bella, we’re making Italiano for you!” like a FULL ALIEN. “We’re using this as an excuse to use the kitchen for the first time!” Then Edward plays the piano for Bella while she looks ill. Man, that’s the best song you learned in one hundred years?
Meanwhile, Bella’s dad is investigating the “animal” that killed the guy at the mill and another guy. He finds a footprint and it’s…HUMAN!?!?
Bella’s mom wants her to come to Jacksonville, but Bella refuses because she’s fallen in love. Bella’s mom is PUMPED: “What is he? Jock? Indie? Is he smart? I bet he’s smart.” Well…he’s 107 and he watches me sleep.
They finally kiss but then Edward is like NO, NO, WE MUSTN’T, MY BONER IS 2 POWERFUL (this is also a real story line), so then they just have to TALK ALL NIGHT! And he learns about snuggling! Now THAT’S what I call a movie made for women by women!
The idea that a man born in 1901 wouldn’t have any fucked-up gender role shit or extreme racism going on is iffy. Wait, what am I saying, he does have fucked-up gender role shit. He is a human fucked-up gender role! I’ll make a call on the racism when I see him interact with ANY BLACK PERSON EVER.
Bella’s mom was actually right about one thing, though—Edward is kind of a jock. It’s raining, so he picks Bella up at her house because his whole family is going to play vampire baseball! And you just know it’s gonna be dumb!
You might want to lie down for this, in a grave, and never get up again: the Cullens can only play baseball when there’s a thunderstorm going on because they hit the ball so loud. I can’t. How loud could you…you know what? I’m not doing this one.
Anyway, Bella doesn’t even get to play. She has to be the umpire. In the rain! And they throw, hit, and run too fast for a human to see! Wow, fun!
In the middle of their baseball game, some other vampires show up. (Of all the weird shit Stephanie Meyer wrote in this series, “all vampires love baseball” is absolutely the weirdest. Did you know a vampire can smell one drop of baseball in a million gallons of
old growth forest?) Oh shit, it’s the bad vampires who have been munching the townspeople this whole time! Everything seems like it’s going to be cool, but then one of the bad vampires, James (Cam Gigandet, who you might remember from The O.C. but I prefer to remember from the Lifetime Original Movie NANNY CAM), sniffs Bella and is like, “Ooooooh, oh boy, Daddy’s num nums, don’t mind if I dooooooo!”
They manage to get Bella away from James, but Edward offers this extremely convoluted justification for the whole rest of the movie: “James is a tracker…I read it in his mind. I just made this the most exciting game ever.” Since James is a “tracker” and he smelled Bella, now he will not chill until he gets Daddy’s num nums!!!
The Cullens are like, “She’s part of this family now, and we protect our family” (they’ve been on ONE DATE), and they help Bella make a plan. In order to keep her dad safe, she has to tell him she hates Forks and she hates him and he’s fucking pathetic and she’s moving to Florida to be with mom. It’s honestly way harsher than it needed to be! Just tell him you’re going on a vacation, dude! Then she drives to Phoenix because she believes James has taken her mom hostage in her old ballet studio, but, duh, it’s a trap!
James takes Bella prisoner and decides to make a video of himself eating her to make Edward mad. But Bella pepper sprays James right in his low-rise jeans! And Edward shows up! And the two hot vampires fight over her—EVERY WOMAN’S BIG DREAM.
James is stronger because he eats the human meat, and he manages to bite Bella, but then all the Cullens show up and they rip James into small pieces and set him on fire. Then Edward has to suck James’s vampire venom out of Bella’s body without greedily sucking all her blood out and making her a vampire, but it’s a big job, so Peter Facinelli comes to help too. Love 2 suck venom erotically from my girlfriend side by side with my dad! Anyway, Bella is fine.
Edward tries to tell Bella that she needs to move to Jacksonville “so I’ll stop hurting you,” and she says, “WE CAN’T BE APART! YOU CAN’T LEAVE ME!” So instead of setting some boundaries in their wildly codependent relationship, Edward takes her to the prom: “Prom’s an important rite of passage.”
This is his eighty-ninth prom.
RATING: 5/10 DVDs of The Fugitive.
Speed 2 Is Not Canon
We open in the basement of an office building. Some big dork is down there, a security guard or something, wandering around like he’s going to survive this opening scene. Yeah, right! Dennis Hopper is there too! If you ever find Dennis Hopper in your basement, DO NOT APPROACH HIM. Dennis Hopper is extremely territorial. This Einstein doesn’t know anything about Dennis Hopper Safety, though, and he interrupts Dennis Hopper right when he’s trying to do terrorism, so Dennis Hopper murders him. You know, it’s always a tragedy when Dennis Hopper murders some reckless, irresponsible basement security guard, and then Dennis Hopper Control puts Dennis Hopper down, when he was just out there in Dennis Hopper’s habitat doing what Dennis Hopper does. I mean, what did you expect? Truly, we are the virus.
Upstairs, a bunch of business boys get into an elevator. (Somebody coughs in the elevator, and I have an anxiety attack. Loved watching this during the cataclysmic global plague!)
Dennis Hopper sabotages the elevator and all the business boys are trapped in there. Time to call Keanu Reeves and Jeff Daniels: ELEVATOR COPS!
Jeff Daniels drives dangerously to the business boy tower—what traffic laws? There’s elevator crime, and it’s going down1—where Miles Dyson from Terminator 2 is waiting in the lobby to fill them in on the scoop (guess he survived extremely blowing up at Cyberdyne HQ! Kudos!). There are like one hundred cops just standing around doing nothing because for some reason only Jeff and Keanu can handle this one. They have to climb thirty-two motherfucking flights of stairs, which I suppose would become the sole qualifying criteria to be an elevator cop. Can you climb thirty-two motherfucking flights of stairs? In less than an entire day? Congrats, you’re an elevator cop! (This is why most elevator cops are rascally old alley cats.)
They locate the trapped elevator and call out to the hostages. Some guy inside is like, “What are you doing up there?” FUCKING SAVING YOU, MARK.
While they’re working, Jeff Daniels gives Keanu a pop quiz (it’s a cute little thing they do):
Jeff Daniels: Airport, gunman with one hostage. He’s using her for cover; he’s almost to a plane. You’re a hundred feet away.
Keanu: Shoot the hostage. Take them out of the equation.
It was around the Speed era, I think, when people used to constantly make fun of Keanu Reeves for being a “bad actor.” Are you kidding me with that? I love Keanu Reeves! I love him. He is a really good actor, you fucks. Did you ever think that maybe you’re a bad actor??
I do think, though, that there is something unnatural about Keanu’s vibe in Speed, probably because his character is supposed to be a kind of hard-edged utilitarian robocop and Keanu can’t help being a freaking lamb to his core!!!!! Keanu would never “shoot the hostage,” unless the “hostage” was a Hog-piece-of-shit-republican-governor Opening States Too-soon Against-COVID-19 Guidelines-in-order-to Exterminate-the-poor! Sorry, can you guess what month it is when I’m typing this?????2
Keanu smells that something taint right, and he needs to make sure that this elevator car is safe as hell. He goes up on the roof and finds exactly what he was looking for—a crane with a rope on it! That might seem like a convenient coincidence, but if you put good out into the world, good is what you get back. Keanu can have whatever he wants. He dives down into the elevator shaft and hooks the crane rope to the car, just in case.
Just in case is right! Right then, Dennis Hopper literally yells, “DON’T FUCK WITH DADDY!” and detonates a bomb that sends the elevator box hurtling toward the ground where it will surely smoosh all the lil finance sausages in there. But Dennis doesn’t know about Keanu’s secret crane rope! The crane is like crooooooooooaaaaaak, but it hangs in there just long enough.
Keanu and Jeff run down to the floor closest to the elevator, pry open the wall, and start pulling people out one by one, making sure to show the female passengers’ entire pantied asses. (Wait. That was an option? How come no one else was doing that while K&J: Elevator Geniuses were up on the roof playing with the crane? There were literally one thousand cops downstairs just staring at the ceiling that whole time!) The rope snaps and the elevator falls JUST as they haul the final lady out of the box.
All the cops are packing it up, high-tenning, and getting ready to go, but Keanu’s like, “Hold on.” Keanu has the best ’stincts in LA, and he has a feeling Hopper is still in the buil’. He and Jeff go to check it out.
They find Hopper hiding in the freight elevator with a bomb, and not only does he take Jeff hostage, he’s also like, “POP QUIZ, HOT SHOT,” which is so rude because pop quiz is, like, their thing. Hopper tells hot shot that he wants $3 million or else. Keanu shoots Jeff in the leg to “take him out of the equation,” and I’m not sure exactly how that helps because Jeff is still a) alive, b) a hostage, and c) in Dennis Hopper’s arms except now he can’t walk, but I didn’t go to Bomb Sexpert Elevator Academy, so what do I know?
Regardless, it works. Hopper kind of waddles backward into the parking garage going, “Hahahahahahaha!” and then explodes. OR DOES HE?
Jeff Daniels is one of those guys that seems fat, but then he’s not.
Keanu and Jeff receive police medals in some sort of televised police medal ceremony—yes, very common, we’ve all watched them. And you know who else is watching? Dennis Hopper! Totally alive at his house! Turns out he did not blow up, and he’s really mad.
The next morning, Keanu goes to his local coffee shop and says hey to his favorite bus driver, and…did buses really look that antique in 1994????? Am I…old? If you asked me to date that bus I’d be like, “Sure, as long as it’s not a SAGITTARIUS”—HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA—no, I’d be like, “Uh, 1963?” but apparently that is a full-on 1990s bus like I rode to the bead store before piano lesso
ns every Tuesday.
Does anyone else feel like everything was 1970 until 2008 and then it abruptly switched to 2015 until 2017 when it became 2020 and has been ever since?
Half a block away, the bus absolutely explodes! Keanu runs over and discovers a pay phone ringing next to the burning dead bus. He answers it and, pop quiz, hot shot, it’s DENNIS. That was always happening in the ’90s—a pay phone ringing and on the other end is a psychopath who’s about to explain the plot. There’s nothing as creepy as that and now we can’t do that anymore because pay phones were canceled! I hate the 2000s!
Dennis informs Keanu that he’s actually put another bomb on another bus, and now he wants $3.7 million: “It’s my nest egg, Jack. At my age, you have to plan ahead.” (Bro, you’re old! Didn’t you already miss “ahead”?)
Spoiler alert, but I need to skip forward and address something. They figure out eventually that the reason Dennis Hopper made this extremely overcomplicated weird bus bomb is because he used to be a police bomb sexpert supercop just like Keanu. Unfortunately, his hand got fucked up in the line of duty, and now he’s mad that his pension isn’t luxurious enough. Can you imagine that story line being presented as a comprehensible motivation for terrorism in the year of our lord two thousand and twenty????? Hahahahaha! To a kid born in, say, 2001 that’s like a fish threatening to blow up the ocean because he’s thirsty. You’re an already-comfortable yet inexplicably enraged middle-aged white guy in 1994 with a government pension who’s prepared to kill a bunch of working-class people on public transit so you can squeeze millions of dollars of fun-money out of the US taxpayer coffers because you want it? LOL. Is Speed an allegory for the twenty-first-century GOP????? I hope so because at the end Dennis Hopper is decapitated to death by a subway lamp! (My hope is allegorical, of course!!!)
Dennis tells Keanu that there’s a bomb on a bus, and it’s rigged so that the bomb will arm when the bus goes above fifty miles per hour, and then it will explode if the bus dips back below fifty miles per hour. I feel like the one thing thrillers never take into account is that in real life all people are very, very lazy and no one would ever do this.