A review for non-Twilighters and Twilighters, alike.
Artwork by Rebecca Holt
There are two kinds of people reading this review on The Twilight Saga: New Moon: the kind of people who know nothing about Twilight (the non-Twilighters) and people who know everything about Twilight (the Twilighters). The first part of the review is for the non-Twilighters, but for all you Twilighters scroll down.
Welcome to the world of Twilight!
In order to understand New Moon, non-Twilighters must begin by understanding the first installment of The Twilight Saga: Twilight, which begins with Bella Swan moving from Arizona to Forks, Washington to live with her father. While living in Forks, Bella meets Edward Cullen, a vampire who lives in town with his family. Edward and his family are “vegetarian” vampires, which basically means they do not drink human blood to feed their appetites, but drink animal blood instead. The Cullens keep their vampirism a secret, but Bella uncovers the secret by noticing Edward’s ice-cold skin, aversion to sunlight and by doing some internet research.
In the midst of the vampire drama, Edward and Bella fall deeply in love. Their love is what drives The Twilight Saga to such popularity. Despite all odds, Edward suppresses his vampire cravings and Bella suppresses her fear in order for their Romeo and Juliet love to be reality.
New Moon begins with Bella’s eighteenth birthday party at the Cullen’s house. While Bella is opening her gifts, she receives a paper cut from the wrapping paper. Jasper, Edward’s brother, starts to attack Bella (unable to resist the scent of her blood). At that point, Edward makes the decision that it would be best for him and his family to move away for Bella’s safety. Edward takes Bella into the forest and breaks the news to her and then leaves: Bella is heartbroken. She tries to search for him in the forest, but has no luck and ends up getting even more lost. She is found later that night, curled up and emotionally distraught. Bella then drags on with her life for a couple months being depressed and alone.
Jacob Black (Bella’s father’s best friend’s son) rescues Bella from her depression. They are around the same age, and have known each other since they were young. Jacob is a Quileute Indian who lives on a reserve near Forks. Jacob and other Quileute teenage boys are turning into werewolves as a defense mechanism toward vampires. Bella discovers this secret and is let into the werewolf world like she was let into the vampire world.
Bella and Jacob decide to fix up two motorcycles and spend all their spare time with each other. When getting close, Bella discovers that Jacob can fill the empty heart that Edward left her with, and she finds comfort in Jacob. While riding the motorcycles, Bella discovers she can “see and hear” Edward in her head. Bella then purposely does dangerous things to make Edward appear to her. One of her stunts was to cliff dive. Alice, Edward’s sister, has a vision of Bella jumping off the cliff. (Vampires have “special powers”: Alice can see the future, Edward can read people’s minds, Jasper can control people’s moods, etc.) Because Alice saw Bella jumping off of the cliff, Edward could read it in Alice’s mind, which led Edward to believe Bella was trying to commit suicide by jumping off a cliff. Both Edward and Alice were oblivious to the fact she was cliff diving.
Edward, still deeply in love with Bella, could not bear to live on this earth without her, so he devised a plan to kill himself. He was to travel to Italy and see the Volturi family, the most powerful vampire family that controls the vampire world. Edward decided to go to them and ask to be killed (In case you did not know, vampires are very difficult to kill).
Because Alice can see the future, she saw that Edward was going to the Volturi and decided to travel to Forks to see if Bella was really dead, which she was not. Alice tells Bella everything she knows about Edward going to the Volturi, and the two decide to go after Edward and show him that Bella was not dead. By making this decision, Bella chooses Edward over Jacob, and breaks Jacob’s heart.
Alice and Bella travel to Italy, and Edward sees that Bella is alive and does not have the Volturi kill him. After the Volturi meet Bella, they decide that she is too much of a risk to the secrecy of vampires for her to know, and she must either die or be turned into a vampire. Bella wants to become a vampire and has asked for it since she first fell in love with Edward and found out he was a vampire; it is the only way for them to be together forever. The closing scene in the film is Edward promising to turn Bella into a vampire himself as long as she marries him.
New Moon is a great movie if you like fantasy and love stories. The vampires and werewolves create a fantasy world that almost seems real (because of the exceptional special effects). There are several fight scenes in the movie that are perfect examples of that: Edward and the Volturi fighting; the werewolves and vampires fighting; and the vampires and vampires fighting. Edward and Bella’s love is a magnet for moviegoers. Their love is unbreakable and breathtaking; it can be seen in every scene in which they both take part. The love between Jacob and Bella can also been seen although it is a different kind of love. Jacob loves Bella almost as much as Edward loves Bella, but Bella loves Jacob as a friend. Both the love and fantasy drive New Moon to the top of the box office charts.
Now, Twilighters, lets get down to business!
New Moon was a better movie than Twilight was, but still was not as good as the book (but that is expected from all books turned into movies).
One aspect of the movie that was much different from the book was Bella. Kirsten Stewart does an awful job at portraying Bella’s emotions. One example is when Edward leaves Bella in the forest. Bella doesn’t even cry, which is completely different from the dark and emotional scene that is in the book. After she is found, Bella goes into her deep depression, which takes less than two minutes in the movie but is a large portion of the book (about 20 pages).
Bella finally comes out of her slump when she reunites with Jacob. In the book they spend quite a lot of time fixing up their motorcycles and joking about their ages and in the movie they show very little of that. This really makes the onscreen relationship not as emotional and deep as it is in the book.
The werewolves in the movie were very disappointing. In the book they are huge, intimidating, and their fur color resembles their natural hair color. In the movie they look like oversized, cuddly house dogs and their fur colors are far from their natural hair colors. Jacob’s fur should be black (as it is in the book), but it is red/brown in the movie. The werewolves in the book can read each other’s thoughts, which is a big deal in the book but is only brought up once in the movie. Also, the power struggle between Sam and Jacob for leader of the pack is not mentioned at all in the movie, but is a critical experience in the book. These differences with werewolves may be attributed to the fact that the book New Moon is written from Jacob’s perspective, and the movie is not; but still, it should have been included to make the movie a better representation of the book.
As there were disappointing aspects of the movie, there were also pleasing components, as well. With the new director, Chris Weitz (The Golden Compass 2007), came some changes that were for the best. Victoria, Rachelle Lefevre (The Pool Boys 2009) dyed her hair to make it a deeper red compared to her strawberry blonde in Twilight, which is a better representation of the fire-red described in the book. The running vampire scenes in Twilight were corny because it was just sped up clips of the actors running. In the New Moon, the vampire running is streaky and flashes between a shot of the actor running and shots of blurs. The running effects in New Moon were a more realistic version of how it is described in the book.
Let’s be honest: Edward in the book is the beautiful one, and Jacob is the not so beautiful one, but in the movie it is switched. When Edward takes off his shirt in Italy we were chanting, “put it back on.” but when Jacob is shirtless for 90% of the movie we were in awe. Jacob stole the show when Edward was supposed to; that was disappointing – but still not at the same time – because of how amazing Jacob looked.
Basically, the ending of the movie ruined it for most people, even though Twilighters already know what the outcome is. The ending is just so abrupt and a cut off. There was no expecting that it was the final scene until the screen went black afterward. Although right after seeing the movie the ending seems disappointing, when looking back it’s fitting, and I could not see it end any other way.
Overall, New Moon was a great movie that captured the essence of the book and was a fantastic sequel to Twilight. Hopefully Eclipse, the third book in the saga will live up to its potential and be better than Twilight and New Moon.
