Rewind: Twilight New Moon
So I decided to do the occasional brief “rewind review.” Since I have no life this is basically me seeing movies or listening to music months after the pop culture discussion ended. Perils of having two businesses, opening a new factory outlet, having a new baby pop up in a couple of weeks, and having been in the hospital in December and missing January. Yeah, I’m out of it.
This first installment is Twilight New Moon. This of course was widely discussed. I confess I could only make it about halfway through the first volume of the series before I couldn’t take it anymore. So I’m definitely not the target market here. My wife, on the other hand, loved the books. She felt only so-so about this one though but liked it a lot more the second time through. After promising her for months that I’d see it I finally did.
Now I was pleasantly surprised by the first film. I thought it vastly superior to the book. Further I thought the director managed to pull off a lot of those subtle moments from High School. You know, the furtive glances in the class rooms and the general teen angst. For all the director’s failings (and there were many) I thought she really captured the core of the book. Far better than the author did. That said she also had some horribly goofy moments such as the tree climbing and jumping.
New Moon unfortunately misses the key romantic aspect of the book. It also falls victim to what befalls most novel adaptations: there’s just too much going on to fit into a movie. So you’re left feeling jerky. The film as a whole just doesn’t flow. Now I’d be the first to admit this is just hard to pull off. Look at the Harry Potter films. Most of them have the same problem. (Although a few, such as Prisoner of Azkaban, managed to avoid that fate) That said there clearly are successes as well. Think Silence of the Lambs, Get Shorty, Lord of the Rings or many more. Still, the typical successful adaptation plays a little loose with the adaptation. Given the place of Twilight that wasn’t likely to happen. So instead of a good film we got a series of disconnected vignettes from the book.
My wife said it plays much better the second time through. That might be. But there are just so many moments where it isn’t clear why things are happening. If you’ve read the book I’m sure they make sense. But you shouldn’t have had to read the book to understand why a character is feeling the way they do. It should come out of the film itself. The first film got this. The second one really didn’t.
Posted on May 17, 2010, in Film. Bookmark the permalink. 9 Comments.
Steve Evans
RJH
Scott B.
John C.
Susan M
Aaron Brown
ninemoons
arandomjohn
kulturblogadmin
Kyle M
Brad
KulturBlogGuest
MCQ
Wm
Rebecca
Ivan
Geoff J
btdgreg
Clark Goble
Aaron R.
Tim J
Ben
NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!
I can’t believe you’re opening up another Twilight thread. Hey, maybe we can keep this going long enough to review Eclipse when it comes out in June. My daughter has already started freaking out about it, and I think you may be able to buy tickets already.
My thoughts on New Moon are already a matter of record, but one thing that I always wondered about is whether the movie’s flaws are primarily a result of the book’s flaws or if they are independent of the book. I have not read the books but my daughter said that New Moon is her least favorite of the series and that it is pretty boring and draggy in parts. Eclipse, by contrast, is apparently her favorite book, so she is looking forward to that movie much more intensely than the last one.
Another amazing part of the Twilight phenomenon is the vampire/werewolf revival that it seems to have spawned. It’s hard to imagine the enormous number of books, movies, TV shows and other undead media even existing if Twilight had not blazed the way. I can’t decide if that’s a good thing or not.
The Twilight hype is really incomprehensible to me. The books, while containing some great ideas, were horribly written. The movies are just as bad.
We went to see the second movie in the dollar theater, and my husband could not believe it when people in the audience cheered because Jacob ripped off his shirt to help Bella (she was bleeding). He left saying it was the best movie he’d ever seen, just because of that alone.
You should power through the books just to get to the last one, Clark. It’ll leave you dumbfounded.
Susan, I believe you’re talking about this part (listen to the crowd).
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACaSD_pGVdw&hl=en_US&fs=1&
Haha. Exactly.
MCQ – look forward to my Eclipse review sometime in December. BTW – I honestly didn’t know it opened in a few weeks.
Tim – I was pleasantly surprised. Not that I liked it or would watch it again. Just that the core was surprisingly good. All the rest of the stuff was kind of dreck. (i.e. anytime “superpowers” appeared) Of course I tend to think the Vampirism and Werewolfism were the worst parts of the second. My point was just that the second was much more flawed than the first. How much of that was the book I can’t say. However even if it were the book they could easily have smoothed those elements up a bit with the script, direction and editing. There are lots of movies superior to the book.
BTW – while MCQ’s review was as bad as mine, he had kind words for the first one. “The two stars, Kristen Stewart as Bella and Robert Pattinson as Edward, do a remarkable job of inhabiting these characters and getting the feel just right.” To which I’d agree. Sadly they couldn’t salvage the second film in the least.
I saw the first film without reading the book. Seemed a little lame.
I was forced to listen to the 2nd book on my ipod (because my husband ok’d my daughter listening to it and suddenly she was and I thought I’ve got to at least read it so we can discuss it). It was TORTURE to listen to it.
I finally got the book from the library so I could read it instead. I can read really fast and I admit to a little skimming when nothing is going on. Sooooo much better. I could try to enjoy it.
Saw the movie soon after reading the book. Not too bad. Made more sense than the first movie because I had read the book and knew the characters.
So I have to go with listening is torture (it would take 15 hours…..can you imagine having to listen to Bella crawling in the forest for so long?) Movie ok. Reading the book in 2 hours best.
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