New Moon, new director, new hit?
With Edward gone and Jacob claiming his territory, fans are flocking to see “New Moon.”
Overall, the movie was better than “Twilight,” but that really doesn’t say much. Chris Weitz, the director of “New Moon,” did much more with special effects than the director of “Twilight,” Catherine Hardwicke, and the wolf transformation ended up better than expected. For the most part, “New Moon” flowed well; however, there were still several scenes in which I needed my knowledge of the book for the movie to make sense.
In the story, Alice (Ashley Greene) throws a birthday party for Bella (Kristen Stewart) and she gets a paper cut. In any other circumstance, this obviously would not be a problem, but she is in a house full of vampires. Because of this, Edward (Robert Pattinson) decides that keeping Bella around him is detrimental to her well-being so he leaves, breaking Bella’s heart and promising that life would go on as though he had “never existed.” Months go by and Bella goes through the motions of life while terribly missing Edward the whole while. So much for him never existing.
Finally, Bella decides to hang out with people again. She meets up with Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner), her childhood friend, and finally starts to show some emotion. Throughout the entire movie she wears a vacant stare. An actor needs to have more than one facial expression (unless he is Derek from Zoolander).
Around this time, Bella realizes that she can hear Edward’s voice when she is doing something dangerous. So she starts being reckless, fraternizing with strange men and riding motorcycles. Jacob goes along with all of her hair-brained schemes because he is in love with Bella. When Bella finds out that Jacob can turn into a wolf, she remains friends with him in spite of the fact that wolves are enemies of vampires.
Charlie (Billy Burke), Bella’s dad and some of the guys from the area go into the woods to hunt the wolves. While hunting Charlie’s friend has a heart attack. This is one of the few moments in history where a movie explains something that the book didn’t. The book just says that he had a heart attack. The movie shows the wolves getting into a fight with a vampire right in front of him. That would surely give anyone a heart attack. Meanwhile Bella goes cliff diving for the rush of hearing Edward’s voice again. Going to such lengths to hear voices in your head is completely insane.
In a Romeo and Juliet moment, Edward attempts suicide. Italy is the place to do that and this is where the Volturi comes into play. The Volturi are one of the oldest vampire clans and the closest thing to royalty the vampire world has.
“New Moon” gave the supporting characters more personality, but only a few shots to show it. The appearance of Michael Sheen as Aro, leader of the Volturi, was fantastic, and Dakota Fanning as Jane, part of the Volturi guard, was dazzling and frightening. Unfortunately, the Volturi were only in one scene.
The movie mainly focused on Bella being depressed and lifeless. Kristen Stewart is pretty enough to be Bella, but she didn’t act like she knew how to be Bella. Edward is a tortured, “soul-less” vampire. Robert Pattinson definitely played the soul-less part well, but his expressionless acting simply tortured the audience.
The one redeeming quality of the movie was that Taylor Lautner played Jacob. Though Pattinson didn’t quite reach the bar on looks or personality for Edward, girls couldn’t tear their eyes from the screen whenever Lautner was on it. When Jacob ripped his shirt off to help Bella stop the blood flow from her head, the girls in the audience at the Roseburg Cinema, screamed and cheered and in one case asked to “rewind.”
Making a book into a movie is a feat that rarely leaves the book fans satisfied and “New Moon” is no exception. Many of the lines were too cheesy and delivered in ways that made the audience laugh rather than empathize with the characters. “New Moon” was tolerable to sit through and even somewhat fun to watch. However, I will definitely wait for it to come out to see it again.
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