New Moon: Slaying the Box Office Competition

Swoon. Seriously, swoooooon! There’s a reason people are so bonkers over this “saga”. It knows exactly how to push your every emotional button and drive you crazy over these two mythical protectors (I don’t even find Robert Pattinson attractive! But somehow Edward Cullen is drool-worthy). The end result being a slew of Twihard fans and some slaughtered box office records.

You could say I’m a Stephanie Meyer fan. I’ve enjoyed the entire Twilight series as well as The Host (I love YA novels, and I’m a Sci-Fi nut so it’s kind of right up my alley. Once I picked them up, they literally could not be pried from my fingers). What I can’t stand is all the entertainment hype. I don’ t need to see the stars, constantly plastered all over my magazine covers (No thank you Entertainment Weekly, TVGuide and, yes, even you Maxim!). The screams unleashed during the opening credits, the first shirtless Taylor Lautner (My Own Worst Emeny) scene, as well as the strategically placed ad for Pattinson‘s new movie Remember Me, was enough to make you want to Vincent Van Gogh yourself.

But, luckily, it was worth every second of that agony. Not only did New Moon improve in almost every aspect of film-making and storytelling, but it was still engrossing and entertaining. Will it ever be contender for best movie or AFI’s top 100 movie list? No. It’s will always remain the fantasy version of the High School Musical craze; much like the books will never win a National Book Award. Even those who genuinely buy into all the hype were snickering at certain parts of the film. But at least, be gone fake-looking, sparkly Edward Cullen. Hello, incredibly awesome, gigantor wolf morphing.

Chris Weitz definitely put his CG experience (see: The Golden Compass, another book-to-film adaption) into this one. The fight scenes, the slow-mo action and the sweeping panoramic Forks views were all the better. And Melissa Rosenberg, the screenwriter, who wrote the Step Up screenplay, last year’s Twilight and also worked on the TV show Dexter, provided a more succinct story even with all those cheesy lines.

Not much has changed since we last saw Bella Swan, Edward Cullen and Jacob Black, except that this threesome got a little thicker. Forks, Washington (currently dubbing itself “Home of Twilight”) is still gray and wet. Bella is still a simple, Plain Jane student, but this time Jacob is dealing with some new werewolf tendencies and Edward is throwing a little bit of a hissy fit when it comes to protecting his soul mate. Old vamp/foe Victoria, played by Rachelle Lafevre and by Bryce Dallas Howard in the next installment, also shows that she’s not done with Bella just yet. And throw in the Volturi, the rules-bound, royalty of the vamps, and the meat of the saga has begun to develop. Whereas Twilight was a set-up film, this film is about building, for the audience, the blueprint to where things are headed.

Both Kristin Stewart (Adventure Land, Into the Wild) and Pattinson (Little Ashes,  Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire) often look a little bored, but I think that’s Bella’s main job besides being a quintessential klutz. Both of these two act like they’d rather be anywhere else than in this franchise. Lautner is just scrumptious, feelings I tried to fight every moment he appeared on screen (Seeing more of the Quileute pack also shirtless was awesome but did not help as when they were shirtless, Taylor was more likely to be shirtless). I enjoyed seeing more of the Cullen family, especially Alice, played wonderfully by the beautiful Ashley Greene. And the Volturi, one of my favorite aspects of the book, were excellent to watch with the addition of Dakota Fanning from Push and The Secret Life of Bees as Jane (making great strides towards her adult acting career) and Michael Sheen (Frost/Nixon,  The Queen), who just needed way more screen time.

Will the films and/or novels every be completely worthy of the hype? Not so much, I believe. Harry Potter forged the way; it deserved all the attention it received. I can’t say the same for Twilight, but I can say that the masses have a right to choose their obsessions and flavors of the week, and I won’t turn away from something fun and glossy and entertaining just because tweens are losing their heads over it. I walked out of that crowded and noisy theater with a smile on my face and a desire to reread the books again (I held off so as to not spoil my own perception of the movie). And for me, that was all I was asking of the film.

Want to read more Poptimal reviews of New Moon, check out Robin Reed’s article New Moon: AWESOME