As huge fans of Kristen Stewart - admittedly secondary fans of the Twilight series because of that association - the ladies at Team 411 certainly have a thing or two to say about The Twilight Saga: New Moon - for better or worse. Of course, you've probably already read the swimmingly positive and content review of mine over at Twilight Examiner, but here's a fresh (and thorough) perspective on the film.It’s no secret I have no great love for the Twilight books. I’ve read them, I
kinda like them. Mostly I like them in spite of their own flaws. We all have
guilty pleasures. Mine is Twilight (and Steven Segal movies). That said, I will
try and leave my source-material issues out of my review of New Moon. It is also
no secret that I consider Twilight: The Movie to be pretty bad. Not outright
awful, not without some redeeming factors, but pretty bad nonetheless. It was
cheesy. It was cheap. It had the worst SFX I’ve seen in a long, long time. So
the bar for New Moon was set pretty low. I had only two expectations of New
Moon—that it improve upon Twilight and make the franchise fans happy—and I’ve
had plenty of time to stew over the second Saga movie and decide if it met those
expectations. The answer is yes. Yes, New Moon was vastly superior to Twilight
and yes, the fans were happy ($258 million happy—that’s a lot of happy). Right
from the outset, it is a successful film. I award it 100 points. I will now
deduct and award more points based on my own system of easily-divisible numbers
which have no relative bearing on each other. So let’s break New Moon down.
Overall look of the movie: +100 points
New Moon looked a bajillion times better than Twilight. It just plain looked like they spent more
money. Having a director familiar with action-y movies and adaptations didn’t hurt, either. Chris Weitz made excellent use of local scenery, as well as Kristen Stewart’s pretty. She looked so pretty. Like—so, so pretty. C-Dub clearly loved photographing her. Even at her lowest, Bella looked prettier than the rest of us combined.
Costumes, hair, and makeup: -125 points for costumes, +50 for hair/makeup
Oh the wardrobe. Where to start? Edward’s
grandpa suit? His old man shoes? How about Alice running around in one painter’s
smock after another? Or her weird penchant for scarves. Did Ashley Greene have
hickies throughout production that had to be hidden? What was with the scarves?
The only acceptable scarf-moment for Alice was the headscarf she wore while in
Italy. Nix the rest of the scarves. Bella’s clothes were okay, but her purple
sweater thingie from the first high school scene was unacceptable. And the
jorts. Dear lord, the jorts. Jorts (jean shorts, in case you didn’t know) are
never acceptable. Why not just put the wolfpack in sweats and track pants? But
no, we get the Jorts Brigade. There was also an abundance of plaid. I get it.
Plaid is big with the Twi-cast. But there was so much plaid in that movie I kept
seeing the “They’ve gone plaid!” scene from Spaceballs in my head. Have the
people of Forks never heard of stripes? Or solids? As for hair and makeup…
Makeup was so much better. The vampire-white was much less pancake-y this time
around—Edward’s face could actually move! The wiggery was better than Twilight,
though Jacob’s wig was ridiculous (hello Static Guard!) and Jasper’s hair
continues to be a tragedy. Still, excepting Jasper’s hair because it was
actually worse than before, everyone else’s was either the same as before or
better.
Special effects: -120 points for the wolves, +85 point for everything else
Um, this was bad. I was so second-hand embarrassed for
Chris Weitz. This was not his fault. He did the best he could with what he had.
He just didn’t have enough time or money. New Moon’s budget was nearly $20
million more than Twilight’s and it still wasn’t enough. And it showed.
Painfully. The wolves were the worst. The animation was atrocious. When they
moved, you could see each sector of the model moving independently of the other.
And speaking of movement, had the animators ever seen a real wolf move? These
CGI wolves bounded around like rabbits. Terrible. I could go on over how bad
these wolves were, but suffice it to say, they sucked. Big ups to the improved
vampire effects, though. The speed effect was SO much better, and the sparkle
effect was, too. I really liked the way Jane’s “gift” was realized, appearing to
lift Edward off his feet in pain. The Felix/Edward fight scene was decent. It
owed a LOT to the Nightcrawler attack in X-Men 2, but other than some minor
visual-plagiarism, the fight sequences were much better than Twilight.
Music: +100 points
It pains me to say it, because generally I
like Carter Burwell, but Twilight’s score was brutal. Epically cheesy. So
Alexandre Desplat barely had to exert himself to top it. But since he did exert
himself, we ended up with a lovely, haunting score in New Moon. There were
moments where the music veered into the overwrought and contributed to the
cheese on the screen, but generally this score is way better, and the song from
the meadow scene is what Bella’s lullaby should have been in Twilight. As for
the soundtrack, can you say “awesomespice”? Not only is the soundtrack great,
but song placement was crucial. Lykke Li’s “Possibility” fit so perfectly into
the “months passing” montage, and Thom Yorke’s “Hearing Damage” made the
Victoria chase one of my favorite sequences in the whole film
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