The Twilight Saga: New Moon (2009)
The brooding and sulking is so palpable in New Moon, the latest film in the Twilight series, that you could probably cut it with a knife. If the filmmakers thought that this would be enough to carry a film for over two hours, they were sadly mistaken. Having never read any of the books by Stephenie Meyer, I can't say as to whether this is how these characters act in them, but if it is true, it would go a long way towards validating the popular opinion that the books are badly written.
This entry in the saga picks up pretty much where the first film left off. Bella (Kristen Stewart) still goes to the same old school in the same little town of Forks. She is still together with her vampire boyfriend, Edward (Robert Pattinson), and living with her dad, Charlie (Billy Burke). So, basically, not a whole lot has changed. Bella and Edward are happy in their relationship until an incident at her birthday party causes one of Edward's brothers to attempt an attack on Bella.
Fearing for Bella's safety, Edward decides to leave, taking his whole family with him. Shortly after, Bella becomes quite depressed at his absence and begins to hang out with another friend of hers, Jacob (Taylor Lautner). They become very close, until he suddenly begins to push her away, much like Edward did. Bella eventually finds out the reason behind this: Jacob is a werewolf and doesn't want Bella to get hurt. Meanwhile, another vampire, Victoria (Rachelle Lefevre), has come back to Forks looking to get revenge on Bella.
This film, much like its predecessor, has its fair share of problems, one of the biggest being the continuous sulking and brooding of the characters. The characters just aren't really given much else to do. Edward leaves Bella very early on in the film after brooding over the incident at Bella's birthday party. Then it's Bella turn after Edward goes away with his family. This is followed by her relationship with Jacob, which is rather awkward because of her recent relationship with Edward, which is constantly on both their minds.
This could all be due to the terrible acting, which is wooden enough to get splinters from. Kristen Stewart is probably the best of the bunch (which isn't really saying much), but again, she just isn't given anything else to do besides sulk in her feelings for Edward and Jacob. However, the film does make a pretty good move in removing Robert Pattinson from most of the film when his character leaves near the beginning. Pattinson's performance was one of the worst of the bunch, never emoting or changing tone.
Another big problem that presents itself is the incredible repetitiveness from the previous film to this one. The first film had several scenes of Edward and Bella trying to make their relationship work with Edward pushing her away several times in order to protect her. This film also has several scenes of Edward and Bella trying to make their relationship work with Edward pushing her away several times in order to protect her (see how annoying repetition can be?), except in this film, he actually does something about it.
After Edward is gone, and Bella starts her relationship with Jacob, she learns that he is also a dangerous creature, though she is not much surprised by anything anymore, even when Jacob jumps in through her window via some interesting acrobatics on a tree. The process begins again. After trying to make their relationship work, Jacob begins to push Bella away in order to protect her. This gives the film a feeling of being stuck in an endless temporal loop, repeating the same actions over and over again.
Throwing werewolves into the mix could have made for a more interesting film, but unfortunately it feels as though the filmmakers forgot about them after devoting a good amount of time to them in the middle of the film. We learn that Jacob has become part of an always-shirtless wolf pack that hunts down vampires, but that they also have a treaty between the two groups. This is suddenly dropped in favor of having Bella rush to Italy to find Edward, leading to a bland and silly climax involving an ancient group of vampires who apparently see that the laws of vampires (yes, apparently they too have laws) are upheld. This ends up dragging the film out for about 30 minutes too long.
Returning to the werewolves, Bella is kept in the dark for a long time about what Jacob really is. It should have been the same for the audience (except for the "Twi-hards" or whatever they're being called these days, that have read and know the books by heart), but unfortunately, every trailer and TV spot that was released for the film extinguished this mystery, making the audience have to sit there until Bella finally figure out what's going on.
The dialogue is also as bad as the previous film. It merely uses the characters as mouthpieces to amplify their brooding, sulking natures throughout the film, never giving them anything meaningful or insightful to say. The screenplay even feels the need to rip off Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, not only in dialogue, but in plot when it has Edward thinking that Bella has killed herself. So he chooses to reveal himself (shiny skin and all) which would lead to him being discovered and probably killed. Can Bella possibly save him in time? With several more books in the series to go, it's not hard to figure out.
Speaking of which, the next film, Eclipse, has apparently already been filmed and is due out for release in June of next year. Once again, it just goes to show that, no matter how bad a film franchise may be, as long as the films continue to make money, the studios will continue to churn them out, and with the amount that these two films have raked in, we can probably expect a lot more of this junk in the future. 2/4 stars.
Now playing in theaters everywhere.
Other films now playing in theaters: Planet 51, A Christmas Carol, Pirate Radio, The Box, 2012
Comments