Jamie
Bella is totally in love with her vampire beau Edward. So she’s devastated when he breaks up with her and leaves town. Over time she grows closer to her friend Jacob, who turns out to be a werewolf, and eventually learns that Edward is going to kill himself. Can she save Edward (and perhaps get the guy) before it’s too late? Find out in… The Twilight Saga: New Moon.
How?! Boy it was hard to write that little synopsis. That’s because the plot of this film isn’t what you would expect. You expect a beginning, middle, and end to a story. Here you basically have just a long middle. Bella and Edward are totally macking on each other… hard. Her birthday rolls around and all the Cullens are psyched. During the party, though, Bella gets a cut and Jaspar almost attacks her. Realizing that she’s not safe around the monsters that they are, Edward convinces Bella that he thinks she’s like real uggo and junk and he and his family bounce. Bella basically mopes around for months until she finds two things to keep her going. The first is a new risk-taking attitude that occasionally brings forth a ghostly apparition of her lost love. The second is her rekindled friendship with Jacob, the newly muscle-bound, soon-to-be werewolf with a heart of gold, who helps her take risks and forget Edward. When Bella learns that Jacob is a werewolf she also learns that they are the mortal enemy of vampires and are currently the only thing protecting her from the eeeevil vampires from the previous book who want to kill her. In the process of jumping off a cliff for her ghost boyfriend, Bella inadvertently makes Edward think she has killed herself. This results in Edward deciding to kill himself too by making a spectacle of himself and forcing the powerful vampire coven, the Volturi, to kill him. Bella rushes to Italy and stops him just in time, but she comes to the attention of the Volturi who decide she must die or become a vampire. “Happily,” thinks Bella, who just wants to bone Edward forever. Back in Forks the Cullens all decide that she will become a vampire and Edward sulkily agrees. He then puts forth his only terms… they will be MARRIED. Bum bum bum! THE END
Why?! Why indeed. I feel like this is generally thought of as the weakest of the series mostly because Edward totally disappears for the majority of the book. He does so for love, because he’s afraid that by being around him Bella will always be in danger and soon realize that they are all just soulless monsters. He’d rather her live without him than die because of him. Unfortunately Bella’s only purpose or motivation is loving Edward so that all doesn’t go very well. Because you know it’s inevitable that they’ll be together this entire thing seems pointless. Jacob’s purpose is… I guess just to be a slab of meat to ogle. I don’t know, the introduction of werewolves into the story seems a bit much. With so many monsters around how is this all kep a secret?
Who?! I think we could definitely have a newish category here for Love Triangle. A classic trope in film, here we technically have two. The first is a lackluster triangle of Bella, Mike, and Jacob. Jacob dunks on Mike there, who just comes off as a sad sack who thought for a moment he could pull Bella. Then at the end we finally get the set up for the big bad of Love Triangles with Bella, Edward, and Jacob. I for one am all for Edward dunking on Jacob. While I definitely understood Jacob’s role in the series better this time around, I still thought he was super lame.
What?! The big product placement for the Twilight Saga (at least in the first two films) is Edward’s Volvo he drives. He’s Tokyo drifting all over the place saving his beautiful Bella. As for props for sale, let’s just say we could all dress like Edward forever and ever with all the props that you could have bought from this film.
Where?! I think most of the Twilight films are primarily Washington films with maybe one or two other spots sprinkled in. The first one had Arizona. This one had a brief jaunt over to Italy for Bella to run through a fountain and save her sparkly vampire boyfriend. I do believe that when Edward learns that Bella may have died he is in Rio de Janeiro, but that was based on the briefest of glimpses and I didn’t care to double check. Washington is actually important to the plot. A.
When?! Classic road trip through time as we are treated to the many months of Bella’s senior year in high school. Although we really don’t get a lot of school in this one. Just her moping in a chair as the months pass by in intertitles. It’s a solid B. We always kind of know what time of the year it is.
I actually did not mind the first Twilight on rewatch. Bella is not nearly as bumbly stumbly “oh how can a super sexy vampire ever love little ol’ me?” as I remember. The relationships all kinda makes sense and it’s really not that bad. New Moon is terrible. Kristen Stewart is forced to scream her head off in despair over Edward, which is silly. Taylor Lautner is thrust in our faces and he really struggled to keep up. Not to mention the fact that him turning out to be a werewolf is such a wild coincidence it’s amazing it’s not mentioned constantly. Like isn’t it weird that your long time family friend turned out to be a werewolf, the mortal enemy of your supernatural vampire boyfriend? Anyway, we then get a finale that finally starts to promise a lot of weird vampire stuff but in the end just delivers the classic Twilight moral that Edward won’t turn Bella into a vampire until they are married. We get it, you are a monster if you have premarital sex. Can we just get to the sexy part already? Patrick?
Patrick
‘Ello everyone! If I wrote this book series I would call it Super Sexy Vampires: And Their Super Sexy Werewolf Counterparts. Really highlight the sexiness of everyone involved. Let’s go!
P’s View on the Preview – Spoiler alert I had already watched all of these films before. So I knew what I was expecting. Basically the first film is okay, much better than you would expect (see the review below). And the last one is actually really good. And then this one and the fourth one are both just boring. It was very unlikely that that opinion would change on the rewatch. What was I expecting? I was expecting to be bored. I was hoping I’d maybe change some of the opinions, but … in reality I was expecting to be bored.
The Good – The last third of the film isn’t too bad. From the point where Bella goes to Italy and we learn a bit about the Vampire Council and Bella’s abilities and stuff, the film definitely picks up a bit. Lautner is actually a bit better than I recalled, his hair just looks ridiculous for half of the film. There is a lot of decent work going into the film, it just … is kind of just a third of a film with a bunch of filler. They could have probably compressed the middle three films into a single film. I don’t even remember what happened in the third film if I’m being honest.
The Bad – Can I just make Tyler Lautner’s wig as the worst supporting actor? Is it a Planchet? I guess not, but it is truly atrocious. Speaking on that, riddle me this! Why even make Lautner younger than Edward and Bella? Why is this part of the story when adapted? Bizarre choice. Just boring and mopey. Nothing happens. It is just Edward being like “I have to bounce, sorry.” And the Bella night terror screaming over and over for half the film is a bit much. The first two-thirds of this film is just an abomination.
The BMT – The series feels like it should be some sort of Fifty Shades of Grey for us but … it just isn’t. The two that qualify are both merely boring. Two of the three that don’t are better than you would expect. And overall if you can tolerate how cheesy all of it is everything is just that, tolerable. I suppose that will be its legacy. It is better than you would expect and borderline ultimately. Did it meet my expectations? Absolutely … it was boring and kind of pointless. That is what I expected. I gained a bit of respect for Lautner this time around. Pretty impressive what he did for the role, and he parlayed it into at least being modestly famous for the rest of his life. That’s nice for him.
Roast-radamus – A bit of a shout out to Setting as a Character (Where?) for Washington state for sure, and specifically Forks (if that is even a real place). I … think I’m going to leave it at that. I don’t even think it gets any superlatives in the end. How disappointing Twilight.
StreetCreditReport.com – Actually really surprising that it doesn’t seem to make any of the several year lists for 2009. I would have thought someone would have thrown Twilight a bone out of pure spite. It did get a little bit of a shoutout for Worst Werewolf film for the series. There are a few lists for vampires but it didn’t make any of those. Once again, this proves that only insane people would be Team Jacob.
You Just Got Schooled – As I said, I’ve seen all of these films before. But I’ll just review the first film (Twilight) which I illogically rewatched. My experience though was mostly the same. The first film is actually rather good in the first two thirds. You are learning about vampires, everyone has a bunch of teen drama and stuff, and the lead actors are pretty solid. The last third was like they felt like something needed to happen so they had some other vampires come in and mostly that bit is lame. But overall the film is a lot more entertaining than one would think, and far far better than the middle three films in the series. It is only a bit worse than Breaking Dawn Part II which is likely the only above average film of the bunch. I’ll give it a C+. This series should have never gone with the love triangle. Team Edward all day.
Cheerios,
The Sklogs
Bad Movie Twins 