What will happen to Robert Pattinson after all of the Twilight Saga films are done? You think all the obsessed fans will flee him?
—HannahPenton, via Twitter
"Flee," eh? Well, if there's anything a Twilight fan loves, it's overblown melodramatic wordage. Why merely wander off when you can tear through the woods as if being chased by a bloodthirsty high-fashion vampire?
Fans may love R.Pattz now, but kids also used to obsess over Orlando Bloom and Mark Hamill. The indicators for Pattz's future are not necessarily all that solid...
...and that's based on actual data. You know. Facts.
Like this one:
Pattz is already showing symptoms of the deadly Mark Hamill factor. Moviegoers had so much trouble disassociating the Star Wars actor from his Luke Skywalker character that he removed all mentions of the franchise from his résumé.
After taking the role of Frodo Baggins in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Elijah Wood was so aware of the dangers of Mark Hamill syndrome—"[Fans] were only able to associate him with that role," Wood once observed—that he deliberately picked movies like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind to make sure he didn't get typecast.
"That's the main thing, continue to work and be perceived in a different light with different characters," Wood once explained to an Australian newspaper. (Bloom, on the other hand, has two giant franchises to overcome: Rings and Pirates of the Caribbean.)
And that's exactly what Pattz needs to do more of. Right now. Because according to data pulled by social media agency Karma Media Labs, the kids are having a real hard time separating the actor from the bloodsucker.
Between the fan forums, social media sites and photo and video sharing sites, Karma CEO Lori Dicker concludes that "most of the references and conversations about Robert Pattinson are about his character, and less about him as a stand-alone personality outside of Twilight."
In fact, she notes, "One of the top contributors of content on a popular photo sharing site is named Robert_is_Edward."
And don't even talk to me about Pattz's forgettable turn as Salvador Dalí. Did you stand in line to see Little Ashes? Exactly.
Pattz has another big hurdle ahead of him, too.
He has to prove he can act. Sounds like an unnecessary road block—why please the critics when you can hypnotize fans?—but to survive in Hollywood long term, you really do need talent.
Harrison Ford made huge bank swinging from Star Wars to Indiana Jones. But he would have eventually crawled back to carpentry if directors found he couldn't carry a movie like Working Girl or Regarding Henry. And Pattz has yet to show true chops even in the movies he's already done.
Here's what the Village Voice had to say about Little Ashes: "Pattinson—first presented as a twitchy weirdo...has difficulty conveying cracked genius, at one point seeming to mimic Jame Gumb's prance in front of the mirror in The Silence of the Lambs until settling on just bugging his eyes out."
"Pattinson...is more parody than performance," the Los Angeles Times echoed.
Even Twilight hasn't exactly bowled the critics over when it comes to Pattz.
After watching it, "I checked Pattinson out on Google Images and found he almost always glowers at the camera 'neath shadowed brow," über-critic Roger Ebert concluded.
Of course Pattz could show the world he has staying power starting with his next non-Twi flick, Remember Me. But until then, the jury is far from in.
