Twilight: New Moon – Old Hat
I attended the midnight premiere of teeny-bopper sensation Twilight: New Moon, this morning. Having re-read that sentence after writing it, I am probably as baffled as you are as to why I agreed to go along with it. Suffice to say, I have a friend who is a big Twilight fan, and I didn’t want her to have to brave the crowd alone, so agreed to do a solid for her while also fulfilling a morbid curiosity to figure out what this Twilight phenomenon was all about.
And hey, I figured maybe there was an outside chance I could find something to like about Twilight. I mean, I love the song “Twilight” by ELO (which is initially what I thought the movies were a derivative of), I didn’t completely 100% loathe Underworld, another Vampire/Werewolf genre piece, and, way back in the day, I actually thoroughly enjoyed Interview with the Vampire.
Of course, I realize that the genre didn’t start with Ann Rice either, but there does seem to be a great deal more substance in these pieces as we trace them closer to their original source. The new genre of Vampire fare (including HBO’s True Blood) seem to be what happens when you make a copy of a copy of a copy. The whole thing gets incredibly fuzzy, and the quality drops off the table.
While standing in line amidst a throng of teenaged (and wistfully nostalgic honorary teenaged) girls, I asked my movie companion whether the traditional vampire rules applied to these Twilight vampires, and I learned the following:
— Twilight vampires are not harmed by garlic (heck, they are so chic they probably grow their own basil to make pesto for their vamp-dinners)
— Twilight vampires are not harmed by crosses (hard to keep up a proper goth look without them, I suppose)
— Twilight vampires are not harmed by stakes to the heart (this would piss off Van Helsing to no end)
— Twilight vampires are not harmed by the sun…
The sun? These vampires aren’t hurt by the sun? What exactly makes them vampires, again? Sure, they drink blood, but so does Billy Bob Thornton, and he ain’t no vampire either. I mean, there are quasi-precedents for this, like Blade, the Daywalker but even Blade was a huge anomaly in the vampire world, as he wasn’t 100% vampire.
You see, when Twilight vampires are exposed to the sun, they… well… they twinkle. Basically, when Twilight vampires have sun shined on them, they look like Mariah Carey. Jesus, could we soften up this monster legend any more? How about instead of fangs, the Twilight vampires have candy corn incisors, and instead of blood, they really lust after gazpacho soup.
The strange thing is, even after watching the entire movie, I learned almost nothing more about Twilight vampires that made any kind of sense at all. The movie is a perfect replication of the mind of a teenaged girl. The main character (a 17-year old girl) Bella, basically sits, and pines for her vampire boyfriend for 90% of the movie. She becomes depressed, she listens to her Ipod, she throws tantrums, she hangs out with the local neighborhood boy (the modern incarnation of Pacey), and melodramatically fakes suicide over and over in the hopes that her passive-aggressive vampire boy, Edward (Dawson), will come to save her. She sulks, she cries, she thinks about going to live with her mom, and then she goes off on a spontaneous (and random) jaunt to Italy to frolic with the tourists.
As expected, the movie was instantly forgettable — even now, details of the “plot” are rapidly falling out of my head. But, honestly, I can’t even say I disliked this movie as much as the Time Traveler’s Wife. Time Traveler’s Wife seemed harmful on several levels (in part by implanting the desire to marry abusive husbands). Twilight: New Moon is about as harmless as you can possibly get. And frankly, there are many movies from my teenage generation that mirror this plot exactly. Teenaged girl pines until she discovers a magical world of new powers and boyfriends?
Exhibit A: Teen Witch
Exhibit B: Labyrinth
Exhibit C: The male 80’s equivalent: The Lost Boys
So, yeah. I don’t think it comes as a surprise to anyone that a money-driven sequel based on a tired genre brings absolutely nothing new to the table. What’s disturbing is that no one seems to expect any blockbuster these days to bring anything new to the table. Is it possible that our pop-culture is stuck in some kind of mobius strip of bad children fare, followed by bad teen-aged fare, followed by bad superhero blockbusters, followed by bad middle-aged life dramas? Christ, American media is depressing.
Please read the books…the light bulb will go on and you’ll better understand the phenomena. Stephanie Meyer’s books are wonderful books that deal with love, choices, immortality, friendship, family, sacrifice and believe it or not Virtue!
New Moon was a solid adaptation of the book…which is probably the 3rd or 4th best book of the bunch. Read the books and discover…!
@DJRickSauce: You Twifans are all forgetting one of the most basic idea of movies: it is the movie’s job to captivate the audience and make them forget they’re sitting in a crowded cinema, on the floor at a friend’s house, or streaming from megavideo.com. It’s not up to the audience to do homework before forking out $20 to see a crap movie.
If the movie failed to give a full and proper story on it’s own, then I’m sorry, but the movie just plain failed. There are plenty of adaptations that fail, so don’t feel bad for the Twilight Saga, you guys just need to accept the fact that movies should be good enough to watch on their own. Take LOTR, for example; personally, I didn’t like the books, but the movie was amazing. A true blockbuster. Unlike this Twilight crap.
I’ll admit that the books tell an excellent story, and indeed, they deal with love, choices, immortality, blah blah blah, but the movie lacks any depth and keeps returning to the shallows of teen angst in order to drive the story line. It’s pathetic.
Just about anyone can make valid points of criticism or praise involving this movie. Just like a cheesy romantic comedy via Kate & Leopold, it follows a formula that falls somewhere in between Romeo & Juliet and Bram Stokers Dracula – only this time its laid out by Stephenie Meyer in her books.
As a woman and English major with time to kill, I picked them up and found the thing I loved and hated most about the series was Bella and Edward’s relationship. They always seem at odds with their own urges and ultimately eachother – “I love you but I want to suck your blood” or “I love you and I want to be with you forever, which is only possible if you let me throw away my human life and become a member of the undead so stop caring about how wrong that is and just (un)kill me already”. If you’ve read the books, you understand why these actors look so emotionally constipated most of the time. It has been written.
The dialogue in the books is achingly, if not painfully simple as are the emotions – which strike deep chords in those who wish to pursue them. If you don’t (which to pursue them), there is simply no way to get you involved in the story because they are the constant focus of the plot (and I mean that literally – the book is full of intimate exchanges, and VERY little action or even emotional revelation past a certain point. There are numerous references to Edward and Bella’s individual stubbornness coming from every character’s mouth).
That said, perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that overall there is little action/excitement in the books – for example: the third half of the fourth book builds towards a possible “war” between great powers and ends in such an utterly impotent fashion, that the above LOTR reference, while noted, simply cannot possibly apply. LOTR was such a sweeping epic as a piece of literature – with histories and characters and a richness of emotions unparalleled by so few – that to compare the two stories (and what a director could do with them – let alone the sometimes irrational differences between the two fan-bases) is to compare bouillabaisse to kumquats.
So I will say this movie did the book justice, even though the pacing left something to be desired, because in the end, no director could change the books or presentation enough to make the movies more palatable. Because it is the staunch fan base who will shell out the money to see these films again and again, and they are the ones who will and need to “get it”.
REally good review. I read the first book in the series an believe me it is a helluva lot easier to read than LOTR.
Twilight book and movie audience actually is A LOT more than exclusive to “teeny-boppers.”
When you begin with books as unpalatable as ones which make vampires “sparkle” in daylight, I doubt there’s much a film can do to redeem the story (though I can’t understand how Uwe Boll missed out on the director sweepstakes for this in the first place. This cries out for someone with his subtle touch. 😉 ). Either way, I sometimes wonder if there isn’t some kind of eleventh dimensional satire going on here; it’s hard to imagine something this ridiculous being intended as serious work.
Twilight is the best movie i ever watched. I really love the vampire love story theme and i like Bella Swans character.