Ok then, as some of you may (or may not) be aware, I posted on MovieBob's New Moon thread earlier after seeing his review. I got quoted a lot. In fact, I believe that thread may have my personal record for the thread where I've been quoted the most times. Ever. Quite simply, I summed it up as being that people who haven't seen the film or at least tried to read the books have no right to criticise it. Basically, I hate people who jump on the hate wagon.
But I digress. As it happens, I saw it tonight, extremely late. Friday 20th November was the UK release date for New Moon (or to give it the proper movie title, Twilight: New Moon), and I saw it as soon as it came out. There was actually a showing that a friend of mine saw last night, at midnight, but he said although he liked the film, the screaming fangirls ruined it for him. So I saw a special Adults Only screening (at about 11pm, didn't get back until almost 2am). And now, I bring to you, the review. I make no secret of the fact that I am a Twilight fan. Sure, I hate the sparkly thing as much as anyone. Yeah, I think it's badly written. And yes, I much prefer Alice and Jasper as characters rather than Edward and Bella. But I still like it. It's like a guilty pleasure. Hell, it is a guilty pleasure. But in this review I intend to take a relatively unbiased view and present both the good and the bad, so you can make up your own minds.
So we begin.
Now, the main thing about this film is that, of course, it's a sequel. However, I may as well state from the start. It was actually better than the first film. Yes, I know what you're saying, that for something to be better than Twilight isn't exactly difficult. But the main thing here is that we see much less of Edward Cullen.
Now as I've stated, I'm a fan of the series. But I don't like Edward much. And I realised why, as I was sitting through this film. Robert Pattinson has shown in other projects that he isn't a bad actor. Far from it. He's not the best and I can't ever see him winning an Oscar, or indeed any major movie awards. But he's at least shown that he can act. So what went wrong? As Edward, Pattinson tries to bring out the moody, darker side to the vampire who shines in the sun. He tries to give him an edge. But lines are delivered monotone. He doesn't exactly show much emotion, only giving slight changes when he's happy or sad. And God, is he sad for much of this thing. So when he leaves some way into the film, we get to see Bella shine, for once.
Bit of a ham actor this time around. Not so good...
In the first film, Edward Cullen overshadowed much of the character of Bella. True, she isn't well written in the first place, but at least in a film we see things from a differnet perspective, and Bella doesn't show the same level of devotion to Edward as she does in the book. There is no evidence in the acting of the 'Adonis' and 'Marble Statue' and all the references to her being so plain and him being so beautiful that we see in the book. If any references are there, they are well hidden. This can be attributed to two things. One is the fact that the director was changed for this movie. Chris Weitz has had some success in the past with films such as The Golden Compass, American Pie and About a Boy, and has shown in the past that he is a capable director, showing good technique even if the films weren't too good (I liked all three of those but I leave your opinions to yourselves). And he uses such techniques here. Sadly, Edward Cullen makes several appearances even after he has left, as the visions of a tormented mind that Bella suffers throughout the film. I say she suffers these visions of Edward, though really she seeks them (can't imagine why...). But Weitz adds these in as a device. Partly because, yes, in the book Bella hears Edward's voice in her head. But the visions, Weitz's own creation, help to show the frustration and the turmoil Bella feels when her lover leaves her. And this brings me to the second reason why we don't see all the beauty references, why we see some resemblance of an actual personality with regards to Bella. The actress who plays her, Kristen Stewart.
Not that bad an actress, surprisingly...
Now, in the first film people were quick to write off Kristen Stewart as a bad actor. People said she was no good, and for a while, I agreed with them. But now with Edward gone, Bella really comes into her own. Stewart demonstrates acting skills greater than we imagined when we first saw Bella as a pubescent teenager with a strange obsession with a pale insomniac bloodsucker. While Edward's around she manages to avoid falling into a pit of bad acting that would threaten to overshadow the rest of the performance. While not perfect, Stewart manages to carry much of the first part of the story on her own shoulders (i.e. the bits before Edward leaves and Jacob Black arrives), and she shows emotion on a human level that we saw no sign of in Twilight. This suggests to me that Catherine Hardwicke (Twilight director) wasn't a big fan of the emotion, whereas Weitz is actually a good director who made certain to get his actors to play their roles well. And with Stewart he succeeded. She plays Bella as a much more developed character than in the first film, and although still somewhat of a Mary Sue, this is downplayed in favour of action, as Bella becomes much more reckless and more of a 'take-charge' kind of person. There's still the moping for Edward, but this gets limited to a few occasional comments and pieces of dialogue with Jacob, and several (though excessive, to my mind) scenes where she lies screaming in bed, suffering nightmares about Edward, and her father comes along to comfort her.
But a major part of Stewart's portrayal of Bella, that differs most from the first film, is the emotion she shows when in the closing scenes of the film, she is forced to choose between Jacob and Edward. We all know she goes for the bloodsucker rather than the doggy, but that scene is moving and emotional and one of the best scenes in the film. Despite this, the ending does drag on after the confrontation with the Volturi (the staging of which implies that Weitz wanted the fight scene from the book to actually be entertaining and better than the fight scene from the last movie). But comedy moments are interspersed with the drama and main story of the film, which helps to alleviate the boredom felt in the last few minutes. More alleviation is provided by a short but intense fight scene between Edward and Jacob, tragically cut short by Bella (though I think more likely down to the fact that Meyer was worried that the film might end up turning out to be very good rather than adequate, so she asked them to cut it. I guess we'll never know...). But as it happens, the real star of the show isn't even Bella (though I didn't think I'd actually say THOSE words...). In fact, it's our lovely little puppy dog...
I'm a straight guy and even I think he's pretty hot. Although Alice will always be the one for me in the Twilightverse...
Now before I go into the character review, who else agrees that Taylor Lautner's hair is so cool? I mean, come on, it just looks great and uberawesome. Sadly he cuts it off about halfway through when he becomes a werewolf, which is probably the only part of the film worse than Robert Pattinson's monotone...
But I digress. Lautner's portrayal of Jacob Black surprised me, because in a sense he is more of a star in this story than Edward Cullen. He appears more and has a much greater effect on Bella, one that lasts all the way through the series. But in a way, Jacob is still just a young boy (two years younger than Bella, I might add), and still has the same fears and worries that a guy his age would have. He enjoys hanging out with his friends and fixing up his motorbike, and when his friends start to turn away from him (of course, we later find out they're just becoming werewolves), he's worried and scared. And Lautner plays these emotions brilliantly. Jacob is not that complex a character in the books, but in the movie, Lautner makes him deeper and more complex. He plays the character to be exactly what he should be. A young boy going through a period of change that he can do nothing about. Emotions run high and there are some incredibly tense and dramatic scenes with Bella, where both actors show their true skills and talent. Why they couldn't do this in the first film, I don't know. But together they make this film so much greater.
OK then, I lied. I think the Volturi are much cooler than Jacob, but only because they're actually human eating vampires instead of 'vegetarian'. I mean, even the werewolves don't actually kill humans...
So we come now to an overall view of the story. Most of my views are contained in the character reviews above, and as I say, the film, while not something most people will like, is still better than the first movie. New Moon deals with the darkest time in Bella's life and the actors in general manage to make a better job of showing the audience a good story than they did in Twilight. I preferred the second book to the first one as well, which may be why I'm more favourable towards this film than to Twilight. There are bad points, of course. One major concern was Pattinson's monotone, already covered above. Another problem would be the minor characters. We don't see Jacob's dad at all, despite a strong presence in the book. Bella's friends are just as uninspired and pointless as they were in the first film, although admittedly a humourous interlude in the cinema with Bella, Jacob and Bella's friend Mike, which leads into the werewolf discovery for Jacob, is pretty good. However, mostly, the supporting characters are either not there enough or there too much. The annoying ones are seen all too often and yet we barely see any of the other Cullens (I'm mainly referring to Alice and Jasper, who surprisingly in the book are the only real characters given much development). We don't get to see enough of the Volturi, which is a major disappointment. And there's a big chance for real development in the character of Bella's dad, who instead is only ever there as a MacGuffin in the werewolves' development, or as a shoulder for Bella to cry on.
In addition, the ending definitely dragged on for much too long. Now, this can be appreciated as a book problem more than the film. In the original novel of New Moon, there is a large gap between the confrontation with the Volturi and the final scenes where Edward agrees to turn Bella into a vampire after graduation (Ooooooh! Spoiler Alert!). So the film makes a point of including this gap. Sadly, this seems like a major error on the part of both Melissa Rosenberg (who with screenwriting such credits as Dr Quinn Medicine Woman and Dexter to her name, I expected better from) and Chris Weitz, who could have made it shorter. So after the Volturi sequence ends we get a further 15-20 minutes of dialogue and interaction, mainly between Edward and Bella, then an extremely short confrontation between Edward and Jacob (with an exceptionally short and wasted fight scene), before ending on a slightly rushed note as Edward asks Bella to marry him (I say rushed as the screen cuts to black, then the credits, about two seconds after he pops the question). Not the best way to end the film. In my view this should have been shortened and condensed into a few minutes of dialogue, and the fight scene should have been extended. Also, the time with the Volturi should have been made longer (although brilliant portrayals of Aro, Marcus and Caius, with Aro [Michael Sheen] being played superbly as being quite creepy in a subtle way, yet courteous and charming to the end, albeit somewhat sadistic). In particular, Dakota Fanning as Volturi minion Jane (complete with creepy pain creating power and creepy twin Alec, who can block people's other senses) stands out, as a great performance of a sadistic young girl who seems to enjoy inflicting pain on Edward (especially as both she and Aro seem to have their noses firmly out of joint when Bella proves resistant to her power).
And I understand I'm dragging on a bit, so to avoid boring you (probably too late) I'll come to my conclusion. New Moon isn't a bad film. It's not amazing, but it's not that bad. Although it mainly appeals to the fans of the series, there is plenty to seperate it from it's predecessor and the cast seem to have been forced for the most part into compulsory acting classes between films, which means a better cast on the whole (save, of course, for Robert Pattinson). The film has it's good points and it's bad points, and there are some quite boring parts near the start and near the end. The Volturi scene is too short and needs to be longer, but the brief time it is there we see some of the best parts of the film as a whole. Overall, if you're a fan then I fully recommend you see it. If you aren't a fan then it may be best to save your money, but at least rent it (or better yet, get a friend to rent it) when it comes out on DVD. Or watch it on TV in a year's time. It's not that bad, but you won't want to spend your own money on it unless you're a fan like me. Give it a go anyway, and at least then you can see if I'm not just bullshitting you all with this review (though I'd be the most dedicated troll ever...).
P.S. Please don't turn this into a flame war. If you don't like Twilight and you won't make a civilised comment then don't bother posting, or simply PM me and flame directly to me instead of in the public grounds. Quite simply, I don't want my first ever review turning into a slanging match.
EDIT: I still hate the fact that the vampires sparkle. That's the one thing that will never change. Though a sparkly Ashley Greene would be kind of hot...
But I digress. As it happens, I saw it tonight, extremely late. Friday 20th November was the UK release date for New Moon (or to give it the proper movie title, Twilight: New Moon), and I saw it as soon as it came out. There was actually a showing that a friend of mine saw last night, at midnight, but he said although he liked the film, the screaming fangirls ruined it for him. So I saw a special Adults Only screening (at about 11pm, didn't get back until almost 2am). And now, I bring to you, the review. I make no secret of the fact that I am a Twilight fan. Sure, I hate the sparkly thing as much as anyone. Yeah, I think it's badly written. And yes, I much prefer Alice and Jasper as characters rather than Edward and Bella. But I still like it. It's like a guilty pleasure. Hell, it is a guilty pleasure. But in this review I intend to take a relatively unbiased view and present both the good and the bad, so you can make up your own minds.
So we begin.
Now, the main thing about this film is that, of course, it's a sequel. However, I may as well state from the start. It was actually better than the first film. Yes, I know what you're saying, that for something to be better than Twilight isn't exactly difficult. But the main thing here is that we see much less of Edward Cullen.
Now as I've stated, I'm a fan of the series. But I don't like Edward much. And I realised why, as I was sitting through this film. Robert Pattinson has shown in other projects that he isn't a bad actor. Far from it. He's not the best and I can't ever see him winning an Oscar, or indeed any major movie awards. But he's at least shown that he can act. So what went wrong? As Edward, Pattinson tries to bring out the moody, darker side to the vampire who shines in the sun. He tries to give him an edge. But lines are delivered monotone. He doesn't exactly show much emotion, only giving slight changes when he's happy or sad. And God, is he sad for much of this thing. So when he leaves some way into the film, we get to see Bella shine, for once.
Bit of a ham actor this time around. Not so good...
In the first film, Edward Cullen overshadowed much of the character of Bella. True, she isn't well written in the first place, but at least in a film we see things from a differnet perspective, and Bella doesn't show the same level of devotion to Edward as she does in the book. There is no evidence in the acting of the 'Adonis' and 'Marble Statue' and all the references to her being so plain and him being so beautiful that we see in the book. If any references are there, they are well hidden. This can be attributed to two things. One is the fact that the director was changed for this movie. Chris Weitz has had some success in the past with films such as The Golden Compass, American Pie and About a Boy, and has shown in the past that he is a capable director, showing good technique even if the films weren't too good (I liked all three of those but I leave your opinions to yourselves). And he uses such techniques here. Sadly, Edward Cullen makes several appearances even after he has left, as the visions of a tormented mind that Bella suffers throughout the film. I say she suffers these visions of Edward, though really she seeks them (can't imagine why...). But Weitz adds these in as a device. Partly because, yes, in the book Bella hears Edward's voice in her head. But the visions, Weitz's own creation, help to show the frustration and the turmoil Bella feels when her lover leaves her. And this brings me to the second reason why we don't see all the beauty references, why we see some resemblance of an actual personality with regards to Bella. The actress who plays her, Kristen Stewart.
Not that bad an actress, surprisingly...
Now, in the first film people were quick to write off Kristen Stewart as a bad actor. People said she was no good, and for a while, I agreed with them. But now with Edward gone, Bella really comes into her own. Stewart demonstrates acting skills greater than we imagined when we first saw Bella as a pubescent teenager with a strange obsession with a pale insomniac bloodsucker. While Edward's around she manages to avoid falling into a pit of bad acting that would threaten to overshadow the rest of the performance. While not perfect, Stewart manages to carry much of the first part of the story on her own shoulders (i.e. the bits before Edward leaves and Jacob Black arrives), and she shows emotion on a human level that we saw no sign of in Twilight. This suggests to me that Catherine Hardwicke (Twilight director) wasn't a big fan of the emotion, whereas Weitz is actually a good director who made certain to get his actors to play their roles well. And with Stewart he succeeded. She plays Bella as a much more developed character than in the first film, and although still somewhat of a Mary Sue, this is downplayed in favour of action, as Bella becomes much more reckless and more of a 'take-charge' kind of person. There's still the moping for Edward, but this gets limited to a few occasional comments and pieces of dialogue with Jacob, and several (though excessive, to my mind) scenes where she lies screaming in bed, suffering nightmares about Edward, and her father comes along to comfort her.
But a major part of Stewart's portrayal of Bella, that differs most from the first film, is the emotion she shows when in the closing scenes of the film, she is forced to choose between Jacob and Edward. We all know she goes for the bloodsucker rather than the doggy, but that scene is moving and emotional and one of the best scenes in the film. Despite this, the ending does drag on after the confrontation with the Volturi (the staging of which implies that Weitz wanted the fight scene from the book to actually be entertaining and better than the fight scene from the last movie). But comedy moments are interspersed with the drama and main story of the film, which helps to alleviate the boredom felt in the last few minutes. More alleviation is provided by a short but intense fight scene between Edward and Jacob, tragically cut short by Bella (though I think more likely down to the fact that Meyer was worried that the film might end up turning out to be very good rather than adequate, so she asked them to cut it. I guess we'll never know...). But as it happens, the real star of the show isn't even Bella (though I didn't think I'd actually say THOSE words...). In fact, it's our lovely little puppy dog...
I'm a straight guy and even I think he's pretty hot. Although Alice will always be the one for me in the Twilightverse...
Now before I go into the character review, who else agrees that Taylor Lautner's hair is so cool? I mean, come on, it just looks great and uberawesome. Sadly he cuts it off about halfway through when he becomes a werewolf, which is probably the only part of the film worse than Robert Pattinson's monotone...
But I digress. Lautner's portrayal of Jacob Black surprised me, because in a sense he is more of a star in this story than Edward Cullen. He appears more and has a much greater effect on Bella, one that lasts all the way through the series. But in a way, Jacob is still just a young boy (two years younger than Bella, I might add), and still has the same fears and worries that a guy his age would have. He enjoys hanging out with his friends and fixing up his motorbike, and when his friends start to turn away from him (of course, we later find out they're just becoming werewolves), he's worried and scared. And Lautner plays these emotions brilliantly. Jacob is not that complex a character in the books, but in the movie, Lautner makes him deeper and more complex. He plays the character to be exactly what he should be. A young boy going through a period of change that he can do nothing about. Emotions run high and there are some incredibly tense and dramatic scenes with Bella, where both actors show their true skills and talent. Why they couldn't do this in the first film, I don't know. But together they make this film so much greater.
OK then, I lied. I think the Volturi are much cooler than Jacob, but only because they're actually human eating vampires instead of 'vegetarian'. I mean, even the werewolves don't actually kill humans...
So we come now to an overall view of the story. Most of my views are contained in the character reviews above, and as I say, the film, while not something most people will like, is still better than the first movie. New Moon deals with the darkest time in Bella's life and the actors in general manage to make a better job of showing the audience a good story than they did in Twilight. I preferred the second book to the first one as well, which may be why I'm more favourable towards this film than to Twilight. There are bad points, of course. One major concern was Pattinson's monotone, already covered above. Another problem would be the minor characters. We don't see Jacob's dad at all, despite a strong presence in the book. Bella's friends are just as uninspired and pointless as they were in the first film, although admittedly a humourous interlude in the cinema with Bella, Jacob and Bella's friend Mike, which leads into the werewolf discovery for Jacob, is pretty good. However, mostly, the supporting characters are either not there enough or there too much. The annoying ones are seen all too often and yet we barely see any of the other Cullens (I'm mainly referring to Alice and Jasper, who surprisingly in the book are the only real characters given much development). We don't get to see enough of the Volturi, which is a major disappointment. And there's a big chance for real development in the character of Bella's dad, who instead is only ever there as a MacGuffin in the werewolves' development, or as a shoulder for Bella to cry on.
In addition, the ending definitely dragged on for much too long. Now, this can be appreciated as a book problem more than the film. In the original novel of New Moon, there is a large gap between the confrontation with the Volturi and the final scenes where Edward agrees to turn Bella into a vampire after graduation (Ooooooh! Spoiler Alert!). So the film makes a point of including this gap. Sadly, this seems like a major error on the part of both Melissa Rosenberg (who with screenwriting such credits as Dr Quinn Medicine Woman and Dexter to her name, I expected better from) and Chris Weitz, who could have made it shorter. So after the Volturi sequence ends we get a further 15-20 minutes of dialogue and interaction, mainly between Edward and Bella, then an extremely short confrontation between Edward and Jacob (with an exceptionally short and wasted fight scene), before ending on a slightly rushed note as Edward asks Bella to marry him (I say rushed as the screen cuts to black, then the credits, about two seconds after he pops the question). Not the best way to end the film. In my view this should have been shortened and condensed into a few minutes of dialogue, and the fight scene should have been extended. Also, the time with the Volturi should have been made longer (although brilliant portrayals of Aro, Marcus and Caius, with Aro [Michael Sheen] being played superbly as being quite creepy in a subtle way, yet courteous and charming to the end, albeit somewhat sadistic). In particular, Dakota Fanning as Volturi minion Jane (complete with creepy pain creating power and creepy twin Alec, who can block people's other senses) stands out, as a great performance of a sadistic young girl who seems to enjoy inflicting pain on Edward (especially as both she and Aro seem to have their noses firmly out of joint when Bella proves resistant to her power).
And I understand I'm dragging on a bit, so to avoid boring you (probably too late) I'll come to my conclusion. New Moon isn't a bad film. It's not amazing, but it's not that bad. Although it mainly appeals to the fans of the series, there is plenty to seperate it from it's predecessor and the cast seem to have been forced for the most part into compulsory acting classes between films, which means a better cast on the whole (save, of course, for Robert Pattinson). The film has it's good points and it's bad points, and there are some quite boring parts near the start and near the end. The Volturi scene is too short and needs to be longer, but the brief time it is there we see some of the best parts of the film as a whole. Overall, if you're a fan then I fully recommend you see it. If you aren't a fan then it may be best to save your money, but at least rent it (or better yet, get a friend to rent it) when it comes out on DVD. Or watch it on TV in a year's time. It's not that bad, but you won't want to spend your own money on it unless you're a fan like me. Give it a go anyway, and at least then you can see if I'm not just bullshitting you all with this review (though I'd be the most dedicated troll ever...).
P.S. Please don't turn this into a flame war. If you don't like Twilight and you won't make a civilised comment then don't bother posting, or simply PM me and flame directly to me instead of in the public grounds. Quite simply, I don't want my first ever review turning into a slanging match.
EDIT: I still hate the fact that the vampires sparkle. That's the one thing that will never change. Though a sparkly Ashley Greene would be kind of hot...
