Title: Edward Scissorhands
Year: 1990
Synopsis: An uncommonly gentle young man, who happens to have scissors for hands, falls in love with a beautiful adolescent girl.
Tagline: His story will touch you, even though he can't.
Teenage girls the world over have spent the last decade (almost) swooning over a sparkly vampire by the name of Edward Cullen. This broody, pale, and (apparently) lethal creature somehow managed to get thirteen-year-olds and their moms all up in a frenzy. Personally, I'm confounded. Yes, I have read the books and watched the movies. They are all the comedy, and then some. But I just don't understand what the appeal is of this stalker-type fellow.
If you want a morose, bone-white dreamboat then there is another Edward who came before Mr. Cullen, and who has evidently been forgotten. And this Edward isn't going to play baseball or magically catch a falling apple, mostly because he has scissors for hands. Don't scoff and roll your eyes at me, young lady. This man does not warrant your flippant disregard or snorts of derision. He is a gem. A diamond in the rough. Far superior to any Volvo driving vampire, that's for sure.
Proof, you say! You want proof. I will give you proof.
Windswept, tousled hair - check. Peril - check. Intense stare - check. Amazing house - check. Swooping in and saving the day - check. That's all the proof you need, but let me go on.
If you want danger, try dating a man with scissors for hands. If you want taboo, try falling for a cyborg-ish man clad in latex, covered in scars who can't touch you. If you want a love story, try being with a man who leaves in order to keep you safe, and he doesn't come back later either, even more so, you don't have to travel all the way to Italy to stop him from stepping into sunlight and making himself appear as though he is participating in a Pride parade. If you want knight in ivory skin, try having the hero defend your honour only to kill the man savagely attacking you. If you want tragic love story, try the only girl he ever loved confessing the same and sharing a kiss, the only one - and there isn't the risk of him eating you, but he might possibly impale you on a scissor.
If this appeals to you, put down the Blu-ray of Twilight and pop the VHS of Edward Scissorhands in.
You know, now that I've spelled it all out like that, there are several parallels between these two story lines. Imagine that, the Twilight plot line isn't all that original. What a shocker. But despite the similarities, there is only one that is actually
But this isn't Us Weekly, and I'm not reviewing their love lives. I'm just refereeing the battle of the Edwards.
My love for Edward Scissorhands goes back years before Mrs. Meyer dreamed about two kids laying awkwardly in a grass field. And through these decades it remains untouchable. While none of us really live in the same cookie cutter neighbourhood, we all have experienced displacement and not fitting in. How about wanting love but not being able to have it? We know what it is like to be isolated and alone, different, a novelty for a certain group only to be discarded when our luster wears off, and I think all of us have tasted the bitterness of fear, of worrying about having the good things taken away.
Enter Mr. Scissorhands.
He is innocence. Kindness. Compassion. Loneliness. Regret. Disappointment. A mistake. Gentle. Dangerous.
He is reality.
And he is a reminder that not everything ends happily. Unlike Cullen with Bella, Scissorhands leaves Kim and her family alone, knowing he isn't good for them. That they aren't good for him. He is responsible and, ultimately, the greatest gentleman. Edward Scissorhands is the real story of forbidden love out of these two. It's sorrowful and beautiful and utter perfection.
And I don't want to hear anything about any other Edward, okay? Because they ain't got nothing on this one.
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