When you can live forever, what do you live for? New Moon, of course. At least some fans felt this way before seeing the second installment of the Twilight saga.
Kristen Stewart (Bella Swan) returns for The Twilight Saga: New Moon. This time, she is faced with the emotional distress of Robert Pattinson (Edward Cullen) leaving her to promote her safety after an incident with his family put Bella in danger. After they leave, Stewart dives into a role of playing a depressed character facing the difficulty of letting go, while being attached to her best friend, Taylor Lautner (Jacob Black) who ends up being as much of a danger to her as vampires. She can never seem to find a normal person to gain a relationship with.
The three characters above were what made up the movie, more particularly Bella and Jacob. Any character other than those didn’t get much screen time. There were many other figures used in the novel who seemed to dwindle away from existence for the majority of the movie. Even Edward’s time on screen was rare. Team Jacob fans must have been happy.
You can certainly tell that the movie was heavily condensed. After all, it was taken from a 550 plus page book and had to be compacted into an approximately two hour film. They didn’t use their restricted time wisely, however. The movie was rushed in any spot that didn’t involve dramatic effects. For people who enjoy romance, these scenes may appeal to you, to me, however, they cut down on the overall quality. It made the movie a little slow in spots, when I know they left out many other scenes that could have been included.
Twilight fanatics also may be annoyed by the subtle changes in plot throughout the movie. While the movie keeps the basic idea of the novel, a lot of elements were missing, and a lot were thrown in and even more were switched around and put in the wrong order.
The scenes that were tossed in, or overly exaggerated, left out more important ideas such as character personalities. After reading the books and then watching the movie, you can really feel the loss of personalities in the characters. I don’t understand how anyone that hasn’t read the books could fully interpret the characters and their true personalities and roles. Jacob for example, who was humorous and witty for a good majority of the book, seemed to share Bella’s angst too soon in the movie. Perhaps it’s more contagious when on the big screen.
I will give the actors credit. While I’ve heard a lot of critique on them, I liked them more in this movie than in Twilight. I especially liked Lautner’s role as Jacob. He fit the personality well, and fell right into his role with ease. He was certainly one of the best actors on the set, and perhaps his distinct perfection of playing his character is what makes the others seem less fitting. I just wish there would have been more of his character’s fun side, since he made the audience laugh when in his humorous prime.
The aspect of the wolves in the movie also made me switch from being on the vampire’s side to wanting to “run with the wolves.” The whole gang of werewolves did amazingly well in portraying their roles, and provided entertainment that the grave side of the world involving vampires couldn’t. The two forces contrast against each other nicely in this movie to provide several angles of mood.
The movie centered on dramatic romance for the majority of the time. If romance is your thing, New Moon won’t let you down. If drama is a good combination to this, I suggest you go see it. If these don’t fit your favorite categories, I suggest waiting to see it rather than spending the money to go to a theater. Even with the bits of humor, the ever soaked city of Forks left the New Moon characters in cliché romantic moments in the rain and focused on the idea that a rainy city is miserable. Overall, this movie gets 4 stars out of 5 from me, due to its rushed plotline. The characters were enjoyable, the images were excellent and the emotions, while perhaps stressed a little, were played nicely by their actors and actresses.
And no worries, if you didn’t get enough romance with this movie, there is always the release of the third installment, Eclipse in the Summer of 2010.
By: Samantha St.Clair
sorry but ive gotta disagrree with u about the score of this movie not only was it an awful concept when it was a book but its now an awful movie based on an awful concept, this series takes all the lore we know and loved about vamires and werewolves and turns it on its head on top of that the movie was corny over all and i know rocks that act better than the like of pattinson and lautner this doesnt even deserve the title of movie… it deserves a 1 out of 5 and thats being charitable.
Terrible, terrible movie..please don’t watch it hahah.