New Moon (marketed as The Twilight Saga: New Moon) is a 2009 American romantic fantasy film. It is based on the novel of the same name by Stephenie Meyer and is the sequel to 2008’s Twilight. Directed by Chris Weitz, the film stars Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, and Taylor Lautner, reprising their roles as Bella Swan, Edward Cullen, and Jacob Black, respectively. The film begins with Bella on her 18th birthday; Edward with his not so impressive introduction into the scene brings Bella to his family house for a birthday party they had planned for her. All goes wrong when Bella gets a paper cut and Edwards’s brother Jasper goes crazy and tries to kill her. In the end Edward comes to realize that he and his family are to dangerous for Bella to be around and pretty much dumps her.
The movie pretty much lost me for a moment where Bella goes through a depression of sorts that I have never seen. Kristen Steward who I liked in the first movie completely over acts her nightmare scenes, where she screams abruptly as if Freddy Kruger himself is tormenting her dreams, I actually wonder at some point if I was watching leaked scenes of the remake of Nightmare on Elm Street. In most cases I’ve seen, when you’re depressed you’re quite and at times cry yourself to sleep, not scream and beat up your pillow as if it could fight back. Eventually her father tells her, he wants her to go back with her mother, while I’m thinking he needs to send her to a nut house but the movie eventually moves on from this over dramatized crap.
When she finally meets up with her old friend Jacob to fix a broken down motor bike, you see a well laid out development between the two, with a few laughs in between. I myself felt connected to it because I’ve had the experience of gaining a best friend who you come to fall in love with but feel you can’t have. It leads to a similar bath that Bella followed in twilight where she eventually discovers the truth of Jacob being a Werewolf. Unlike the boring discovery of Edward being a vampire, Jacob comes to the rescue in a beautiful and well executed transformation to his wolf form to fight off his clan from harming Bella.
The plot follows the same formula that the first film did but in a more productive way, maybe it’s the Werewolf’s that where done fantastically compared to the butchered, glittered, lifetime channel Vampires from the first film. The 3rd act in the end loses some momentum when Bella, who’s with this great looking guy, who is obviously in love with her decides the only way she can see Edward is to jump off a cliff (SMH) where she almost drowns, wolf boy saves her, and I got to add, when he saves her with CPR once again Steward forgets her character was drowning and forgets to spit up the water when she wakes up from, again almost drowning. Anyways Edward gets a word of the attempted but isn’t told she lived through it. He decides that he can’t live anymore.
Now the plot picks up again with the real introduction since they were briefly mentioned in the beginning, The Volturi who are the family that run the sparkly vampire nation. Michael Sheen, yes Mr. Lican (Underworld) himself is in this film, who plays the leader Aro. A great addition to the cast and pretty interesting character to see on screen with his sinister ways and even what I would consider more of a cameo by Dakota Fanning who plays Jane who has the power to torture people with her mind. Edward on a suicide mission decides to piss off these people by showing the public that he is a vampire by walking out in day light. Now honestly people, if you saw a half naked guy walk outside and start to sparkle, would the first thing that came to mind be, holy shit vampire. Come on Meyer, couldn’t you think of something else Edward could do to piss off the Volturi family.
In the end, Bella saves him in a predicable manner which leads to a short lasted battle and a redundant cliffhanger but all in all I thought the movie was great and a lot better than the first film. The special effects where great and well executed compared to the smallville effects from the last film. The wolfs where the best part and probably the only point to go see the film, while there was no science behind them compare to some films that try to make it seem plausible for these things to be possible which I prefer. The transformation was too simple and boring. They explode into their wolf forms, compare to something that would make sense like physically changing into the wolf, because of this lack of detail, it makes it harder to imagining them turning back to their human form, which is obvious in the film since none of them revert back on screen. As a visual artist, I would find it unimaginative on Meyers part to have them just explode back to their human form. Even with the few complaints and basic boy brakes up with girl, girl finds new boy, girl goes back with ex boy story line, I would recommend it to all who like a good fantasy, 3.5 out 5 stars from me, even a 4 if you want.
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