So I Saw New Moon

New Moon is For Lovers

Tonight while googling New Moon, I found this photo of Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson, the stars of the Twilight sequel's New Moon. It is my new favorite. 

So. New Moon. New Moon is the second in the Twilight trilogy of star-crossed lovers, vampires, and werewolves that came out on November 20th and broke all the box-office records. My mother, twin, and I are obsessed with the story, having read them before the movie came out. (Yes, I am pulling that card.) It's not so much the 17-but-actually-108-year old Edward Cullen that really draws us in (though he is played by rogue-ishly handsome and wildly haired actor Robert Pattinson), but the story itself. The two main characters are in love. They're kept apart by uncontrollable forces (here, the fact that he is undead and that she is human.) They fight to be together and overcome adversity. Hey, a good love story is a good love story.

There are a lot of crap movies made lately that are targeted at women and the stereotypical things that women like. Cooking, romance, repentant ex-boyfriends. Etc, gag. Must I remind you about 2009's female-oriented films like Julie & Julia, Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, Sandra Bullock's The Proposal, AND My Sister's Keeper? Not only are these movies major downers, they make you either end up crying with emotion, crying with joy, or just crying because the dialogue is terrible. And while most of the time I'd like to opt out of the female genre entirely, I do proudly admit that I love Twilight. The dialogue is admittedly terrible, but at least it didn't make me cry.

Twilight doesn't really have any of those traditional and pesky elements like "feelings" or "emotions." Well, they actually do, but it's all on the inside. In fact, more than half of the time the characters are seemingly so caught up in thinking about how they feel that they don't really express them aloud or to each other. While this does create the major obstacles in the plot for the characters (attempted suicide, jaded lovers) it is something I can really get behind: people talk about their feelings too much. Twilight doesn't. I choose Twilight's angsty quiet brooding over analyzing the minutiae of a relationship anyday. ANYDAY. While I actively avoided all the other romantic comedy and chick-targeted gagfests, I was all aboard the New Moon train. Toot toot.

This strategy is also very true to real-life teenage romances. No teen really knows what they're doing at that time anyway- confused angst is inevitable.

Twilight does specialize in super sexy elements of "danger". Edward loves Bella, but he wants to bite her. Odds are bad for them, but they work hard against all odds to stay alive and be together. In real life if a guy had to stave off the urge to kill you everytime you touched, a restraining order would (or should) be involved. But Edward's constant battle between love and thirst just serves to rev up the sexual tension from 0 to 60, promptly send all unsuspecting 13 year old hearts aflutter. But the best part of the movie for me is the fact that the plot is entirely driven through dark looks, heavy sighs, terrible dialogue, and a general lack of tear-jerky parts. Win.

The audience in my theater was filled with (as expected) a bevy of 10-13 year old tweens, as well as a lot of older women attending the showing under the guise of "taking their daughters to the movies." There were maybe six 20somethings in the theater, of which my group accounted for half of them. I think I saw one guy, maybe. I thought that was very brave of him.

If you're not going to see it, here's what you missed of Twilight: New Moon
*More than half of the movie was entirely emoted through brooding and wordless, pensive stares. A lot of the movie we, the viewer, were (I guess?) supposed arrive at our own interpretations of the character's true feelings through the variations of their sighs and eye movements. Nearly every scene with Edward, the vampire, opened with Edward's hands in his pockets, looking stoic and distractedly off to the side. I'm gonna go with 25 of the total 30 scenes started this way. So I arrived at the conclusion that Edward has a lot of feelings. That's like half the plot there, so if you're only reading this far in the post, feel free to take your leave now. You're welcome.

*All the characters are riddled with some serious inner conflict. There was a lot of this:

and this:

 

As my friend Kate used to say, "No words, just feelings." I think it sums up the character's interaction quite nicely. Why talk about our feelings when we can just try to send them telepathically to each other? It's hard to talk about a love that endures past death without sounding contrived anyway.

*There was a gratuitous amount of Taylor Lautner's abs. And not just abs- Taylor Lautner's abs in jean shorts, or "jorts", proudly named by my friend Ben who loved his own pair once. The jorts were a dominant part of Jacob's (and Ben's) ensemble. Moving on.

Taylor plays the character Jacob, the reticent native american teen/werewolf. Mind you, he's a 17-year old in real life, but the way the older women in my theater behaved he may as well have been George Clooney. In the real world these women could be put into jail for lusting after a barely-legal like Taylor. But with the striking popularity given to "Cougars" lately, this probably shouldn't be shocking to me. Personally, I felt a little weird thinking he was hot as he was because he was young. I can only imagine how I'd feel if I had a son his age. Hopefully, more than a little wrong. 

*My favorite scene of the movie? Bella, the angsty and dreadfully insecure protagonist, played by Kristen Stewart, falls off her motorcycle and hits her head against a perfectly placed lone rock. As you do. Her friend, Jacob, aka Taylor "Jorts" Lautner, comes to her rescue. He decides to wipe up some of the blood from her head after her accident, which is a good start. But he stands up in what can only be described as slow-motion soft-core movement, and then peels off his gray tee shirt. The camera pans up from his shoes and suddenly all you see are abs-abs-abs. And then he hands her the shirt. Wasn't I supposed to be concerned about Bella?? Yes. But with the placement of this scene, you get the feeling that the director just gave up ad gave in to what all the prepubescent girls wanted. You know what I'd be pissed about if I was Bella? If I just got a concussion I would be pretty upset if someone tried to upstage me with their nakedness. Even if he looked like Taylor Lautner.

Not surprisingly, this action illicited shrieks of glee from the pre-teens and their mothers. It was, honestly, so unbelievably over-the-top that I couldn't help but laugh. My twin fervently believes that the director, Chris Weitz, was trying to embrace the hokey campy nature of the script in a tongue-in-cheek way. Verdict's still out.

It's kind of like the time that I saw Harry Potter after seeing the SNL parody where Rachel Dratch had such a spot-on Harry Potter impression that when I finally went to see the actual movie, I couldn't stop laughing because I just imagined it to be Rachel Dratch as Harry. If the director DID knowingly make New Moon as parody-ing as he could then the guy needs an award. Because New Moon was hilarious, even when I didn't think they meant to be. It was a parody of itself.

*Interestingly enough, the New Moon's official symbol depicts the shadow of the moon moving right to left across the screen. This is actually a waxing moon, not a waning moon that preceeds a "new moon." Thus, the logo is scientifically incorrect. You'd think that as the title of the movie was New Moon someone on the production team might take the time to fact-check that their image of the moon was accurate. But you would be wrong. But what can we expect from the angst-ridden sexually tense sequel to Twilight?

While I wasn't obsessed with the movie (or even involved in the story enough to not laugh during the movie) would I see it again? Hell yes, at least twice more. Though exactly why I was was entertained was most probably not the director's true intent, I was thoroughly entertained throughout the whole thing and recommend it highly. The New Moon poster Dan got me in my bedroom wasn't just put up to be a conversation piece.