Women in film. And then Twilight.

Hollywood is a male dominated scene. In 2001, only 6% of directors were female. The worst thing about this figure is that the year before, in 2000, there were 11%, which means that the number of female directors is falling. Although I can find no data on more recent years, I still found it amazing that even with roughly half the population being female, so few of them were directing in Hollywood. As Hollywood is undeniably the most dominating scene in film for English speaking countries, this lack of female directors can give millions of people a very biased male opinion on issues brought up in the film. The same goes for actors. Although there are some films and shows that try to break the stereotypes, such as "Buffy The Vampire Slayer" or "Kill Bill", most shows and films mainly feature male actors, especially in the main roles. When females are included, they tend to be stereotyped or included as sex objects, to appeal to young men, the primary target audience of Hollywood. Look at a James Bond film for example. In "Casino Royale", females are portrayed to be weaker and less important; as tools. For example, both Bond and Le Chiffre, the two arch enemies of the film use women, Vesper and Valenka respectively to do their biddings, to distract the crowd or to drug Bond's drink. This portrayal of women subconsciously sinks into the mind of the viewer, and as there are so few films to contradict the stereotype, it gets used more and more in reality, which can be dangerous.

But i'm going to change course a little bit now. See, originally, this part was going to further discuss the roles of women in films aimed at women, and how even that can have a very adverse effect. And then I went and saw Twilight.
I think I ought to explain myself. See, in 2005, a womans romance novel called "Twilight" was released, written by a previously unheard of author. Because the book had a few interesting online reviews, and a really nice front cover, I spent 12.99 on the hardback. I really enjoyed the book, and read it at least three times before the sequel, "New Moon" was released. By this time, the unheard of author was beginning to get pretty famous. I bought the books in sequence, and they now sit very proudly on my bookshelf (the last book sits slightly less proudly, but thats another story).  
Twilight is a book aimed at 13-30 year old females, and the film is clearly aimed at the same audience, so as a 17 year old male, maybe I am biased when I say that it was the worst film ever made. It's not just my biased male perspective though; I went to see it with two 17 year old girls (fans of the book), who found it just as pitiful as I did. Reviews for the film mirror this, on average receiving 5/10, which is very average. I can only assume that all the gross of$303,777,506 came from devoted, foolish fans like myself.
Before I begin my large list of bad points, I should list the good ones.
Peter Facinelli - He was a great actor; he got all the right emotions across, and none of his lines sounded tacky.
Jackson Rathbone - His Edward Scissorhands impression was great, even if it wasn't deliberate. I found him very entertaining, which was a real breath of fresh air.
The fight scene - Everything was perfect, it got you very engaged in the action, and you could feel the power that went into each blow due to clever camera techniques and a very powerful mise-en-scene (a dark room full of mirrors). I was happy with the very shocking end to the fight scene, where they graphically break the antagonist's neck and throw him onto a fire. It was a very powerful way to end the fight, and received several shocked gasps from the audience, which makes the scene even more effective at showing the raw power and emotions of the characters. No messing around with the usual "spare me!" Hollywood clichés.
With the good points over and done with, I can continue with why it was an awful film. Due to the target audience of the book, Summit Entertainment realised that the director would have to be a fan of the books, and female, as to best relate to the female main character and target audience. They chose Catherine Hardwicke, which was obviously a mistake. She must have realised that that the film was targeted at the fans of the book, and so sticking closely to the plot of the book and requesting the opinions of fans would have been a good way to find out what the fans wanted. But no. I'm not going to bother to explain why it was bad, I'm going to let the fans do it for me. Here are some heartwarming messages from some fellow fans of the books on IMDB.

"Catherine Hardwicke, you don't have the faintest clue how to tell this story right and you never should have been allowed to be anywhere NEAR the first film, let alone any of the others in the saga."

"This story had the potential of being an absolutely amazing film. It was not."

"I agree...Twilight was just awful directing. Seriously...the dramatic eye crap she had the actors do was so overplayed...it looked contrite and high school musicalish."

"People are super pissed of that she ruined a wonderful book."

My point is that when a woman director finally gets the chance to revolutionise the film industry, she creates an awful film, and now the sequel, "New Moon" is being directed Chris Weitz, who, as you may have gathered, is male. The way I see it, Catherine Hardwicke just pushed any chance of women getting an equal part in film making back by several years.

Oh, and Catherine Hardwicke? You made a horrible continuity error with the tubes on Bella's face near the end of the film.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/jul/05/filmnews.gender
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=twilight08.htm