Twilight Saga

Twilight Saga › Opinion › Reviews › Twilight New Moon: Edd's Review

Twilight New Moon: Edd's Review

Review published by edd on 19th Nov 2009.
There are currently 3 Comments. We're interested in hearing yours!

My opinion on the second book in the Twilight saga is fairly well known, I believe it to be the weakest, by a considerable margin. It has now has followed in the footsteps of its predecessor and hit the silver screen, and it is slightly depressing to realise that at this point it doesn’t matter what the studio releases – it will make more money than the GDP of Africa, something I find slightly depressing! Having said that – the fans don’t need to worry - this is, in fact, a rather good movie, and substantially better than the book!

I obviously went into the movie with some trepidation; New Moon just irritates me, with it’s excessively emo story line, and seemingly confused character personalities. However, this doesn’t come through in the film. From the off, It appears the actors have grown into their roles a little better, there’s less awkwardness all round, although you can at times see where Kristen Stewart is struggling valiantly against some poor writing. You can also see the budget has increased something that was sorely needed for this series to make an impression – some movies can be amazing on a low budget, but the Twilight novels, with their not infrequent supernatural fight scenes, are not amongst them. At times in fact it seemed the budget might have gone a little too high – I’m fairly sure they did the plane taking Bella to Italy in CGI, which caused a bit of a WTF? moment on my part. Surely there’s plenty of footage of planes that could have been used with much less effort?

I was seeing the movie at the pre-screening in Leicester Square’s Odeon in London. The movie was late due to the cinemas attempts to wait for a surprise guest (Michael Sheen (Aro)) – unfortunately, he had been filming for Top Gear, and ended up not making it through being stuck in traffic. Instead they got Jamie Bower (Caius) up onto the mini-stage to say a few words, generally praising the Twilight fan base, and telling us we were going to love it. We then had a couple of trailers, (Nativity and Astro Boy), and the movie began (to the tune of various levels of audience screaming!)

So. We all know the basic plot. The beginning worry of Bella about her age is brought across reasonably well, if it does feel a little uncomfortable (especially to those of us who are already older than she is!). Her surprise birthday party was well done, and we got to see the first of several fights in the movie, as Edward, and indeed all the Cullens, fight to keep Jasper away from Bella. Immediately it looked much more realistic (as realistic as vampire fights can look, at any rate!) than the fight at the end of Twilight, probably down to the increased budget, but some of the slow motion scenes seemed slightly ill-chosen, as they ended up coming across more comical than dramatic. Robert Pattinson then plays the part of the emo-overprotective-confused person that Edward is supposed to be at that point – as understated as possible which is what it needs. Unfortunately, he can’t save what is, for me, the weakest part of the story. The decision to leave Bella appears, if anything, even worse on screen that it does in the book. I actually laughed at it at one point, these actors playing the role so seriously, when what they said sounded like a (admittedly, bad) joke.

So then we get emo Bella. Fortunately, the writer of the screenplay excised most of what I believe to be the worst paragraph in the book and indeed the whole series (“It was a crippling thing, this sensation that a huge hole had been punched through my chest, excising my most vital organs and leaving ragged, unhealed gashes around the edges that continued to throb and bleed despite the passage of time. Rationally, I knew my lungs must still be intact, yet I gasped for air and my head spun like my efforts yielded me nothing. My heart must have been beating, too, but I couldn't hear the sound of my pulse in my ears; my hands felt blue with cold. I curled inward, hugging my ribs to hold myself together. I scrambled for my numbness, my denial, but it evaded me.”), but the character still comes off just as excessively angsty as she does in the book at this point – you just want to leap up and slap her and tell her to snap out of it. Billy Burke is, once again, excellent as Charlie, and manages to play the role of worried father who doesn’t want to lose his daughter with apparent ease.

Bella eventually finds she can see Edward when she’s in danger – not in entirely the same way as in the book, but in a way that speeds the plot along. She then gets the bikes and ropes Jake into helping her build them. Cue a montage (as all good films need!) of the bikes being constructed, and the fateful first ride that results in Bella coming off her bike. This then allowed for the first major piece of fan-service in the film, Jacob practically rips his shirt off to use as a bandage, causing the first significant screams of the movie from the audience! Surprisingly, unlike Twilight, none of the kissing scenes drew a significant screaming – maybe it was just this audience. I’m not complaining too much however, leaving with my eardrums in tact made a nice change!

Bella then goes to the movies with Jake and Mike – the movie they went to see (“Facepunch”) sounded absolutely hilarious, and I want it to be a real film! Then both the boys go home sick, and Bella goes through losing Jake as he becomes a werewolf, which included one of the best acted scenes in my opinion, where she confronts him on the reservation, and he sends her away. Kristen Stewart here manages to play the role exceedingly well I felt here, and was thoroughly believable as someone losing her one last real friend. This is of course followed by working out what he is, (after we see the confrontation with Laurent) and their reconciliation. (Which of course, they use as an excuse to show a werewolf fight – Jake vs. Paul!). Of course now the werewolves find out what Victoria is after, making their job easier. This then leads to a dramatic slow motion chase scene for the werewolves at about the same time Bella is heading up to the cliff to jump off.

So she jumps, Alice sees her, and the chain of events leading to Italy begins. We see Edward petitioning the Volturi to kill him, and their refusal. At the same time, we are shown Alice and Bella racing across the Italian countryside to get there. Bella make it in the nick of time of course, and are taken to see the Volturi again. At this point, we meet Jane for the first time, and I have to say, Dakota Fanning plays her very well, even in the short time we see her. She is creepy and threatening – just as she should be. I was unsure about her casting at first, but it works! The interview with the Volturi does not go exactly to the book – it is used to again show off a vampire fight, and the scene showing Aro reading Alice’s mind… well I can’t do it justice in the written word. You will have to see it and join the mass O_o that seemed to be felt around the room! But the end result is the same; Bella, Alice and Edward are released, on the condition that Bella is a vampire before the Volturi sends someone to check on her.

We then get the scene back at the house where Bella is home, and Charlie ground her for “the rest of her life”. We do not get to see Edward interacting with Charlie – which I was quite looking forward to, so I will have to wait until the release of Eclipse to see it! Then follows the meeting between the Cullens and Bella, where they decide she is to become one of her It occurs basically as the book lays it out, apart from Bella finally telling Edward to shut up, something I think we all wanted to do at one point or another! They do skip over the bit where she tries to get turned into a vampire there and then – she comes straight to the conclusion it would be better to wait until after graduation. We next saw a confrontation between Edward and Jacob, which (for once in this film) doesn’t (quite) turn into a fight. It’s quite interesting how emotive they have been able to make Jacob in his wolf form in the movie, at times though it is perhaps taken over the top. The ending felt a little forced, but Jacob leaves after Bella begs him not to make her choose, and Edward lays down his condition (for being the one to turn Bella into a vampire) as the last line of the film: “Marry me”, before the screen cuts to black (cue screams of “NOOOO!” from the audience!)

So. Thoughts. Overall, I liked it. It was certainly far better than the book, and it made for quite an interesting movie. Chris Weitz has certainly done a good job, I like his directing style, although I’m beginning to see a pattern in his excessive use of CGI – it was not as over the top as The Golden Compass was, but certainly in several places was used more than was needed I felt. One significant change I discovered in watching this movie was my alignments shifted. I never really clicked with the character of Jacob in the books; there was just something not right about him, hence I have been on “Team Edward” (In spite of the fact there’s a whole lot not right about him as well!). On the screen however, Jacob was a far more sympathetic character, (Kudos to Taylor Lautner for bringing the character to life), and I found myself shifting to “Team Jacob”, even if the character did lose points for acting (albeit with good reason!) like a prat at the end of the movie. This was of course helped by Edward being an absolute idiot all the way through this film! I like it when a fairly faithful adaptation of the film makes me feel differently about the story than the book does, it makes for some interesting analysis of what I actually enjoy about the characters. I am slightly dismayed to be saying this given the relative merits of the source material, but I enjoyed this film far more than The Golden Compass. Having said that, it is still the weakest book of the trilogy, and the bad dialogue did still shine through in several places, which occasionally gave the movie a disjointed feel, and helped remove the sense of immersion. On balance I rate the film a 7/10.

Comments (3) — Add Yours

Post a Comment

You need to be logged in to post comments.

No account? Feel free to register an account.