New Moon (2009)

I was actually squirming in my seat because I noticed that my butt hurts from all that sitting.

Don't get me wrong, the movie isn't long. But for me, when attention shifts from what's happening onscreen, to what's NOT happening butt-wise... not a good sign.

New Moon is the sequel to last year's Twilight, a love story between the new girl in town and the mysterious pale totally cute dude sitting in the corner in the cafeteria. That's pretty much what happened in the first movie. The sequel deals with heartbreak and abandonment (technically), because after a papercut almost gets Bella killed (she was in the Cullen house at the time), Edward and family leave Forks so that Bella wouldn't be in constant danger. Bella becomes an adrenaline junkie (so that she can get visions of Edward naggingtelling her not to do dangerous things) and goes on the rebound with her friend Jacob, who turns out to be a werewolf.

After some miscommunication, Edward mistakenly thinks that Bella is dead and wants to commit Huge Vampire Faux Pas after vampiric enforcers the Vulturi refuse his execution request. HVFP in this movie means exposing yourself at noon (maximum sunlight) to a group of revellers celebrating the expulsion of vampires in that town. Because it means a LOT of sparkling. I mean, Rob Pattinson isn't exactly short, yannoe. See the irony, people.

Bella makes it in time to prevent Edward's move, though the Vulturi almost kill her for her immense in-knowledge of the vampiric world. After Alice manages to convince the Vulturi with her Foretelling that Bella will eventually become a vampire (we see Bella and Edward running in the woods, where Bella totally $pArK1eD), they let them go, and everyone returns to Forks. Before the movie ends, Bella tells Jacob that she chooses Edward, causing Jacob to leave in a huff, and Edward asking her to marry him (as in, Edward).

Dun dun DUUUUNNNNN!!!

New Moon also marks the first where I actually felt like dozing off. In the cinema. Which has never ever happened before, since I always make it a point to maximize my ticket's worth ('cuz I paid for it), by focusing on the movie before me and not thinking about things like bloody sleeping.
 
The movie could do with a lot less of the scenes where months passed, and Bella moped around the house and yelled in her sleep, because even non-fans and non-watchers of the first movie would've gotten it by then: Bella misses Edward, Bella wants Edward back, and so on. Also, the, "Dear Alice," voice-overs just got tedious after a while, because though kinda unique at first, there were TOO MANY. I shudder to think how that entire section was treated in the book.

The interaction between Bella and Jacob was fun to watch, although I feel that that and the adrenaline parts could be cut a bit (come on, it took Bella half an hour to fall for Edward in Twilight), which would've made the movie shorter than its two hours, and thus, more tolerable. The wolf pack also made for cool chase scenes and CGI; pity they weren't really central to the story.

Also, I don't really like our heroine. At one scene, we see Bella tell Jacob that he can't leave her, that she can't get through getting over Edward it without him (she didn't say it outright, but we all knew what she really meant). Sadly, the fact that bitch's using him hasn't sunk into poor Jacob yet (or he's in denial, I'unno), so he tells her that they can't see each other again, on account that he is a werewolf and it's supposed to be a secret shhhh. I mean, at that point of the movie Bella already knows that Jacob likes her. And in the end she crushes him by telling him that she will ALWAYS choose Edward.


[And the fourth book is gonna be split into two movies. Sigh. At least we have the violent childbirth to look forward to.]

The Vulturi were the highlight of the movie. Headed by Aro and composed of powerful vampires (each with unique mental abilities, outfits sold separately), they are vampire royalty, and they enforce the law that no vampire should expose their existence to the world (which leads us back to Edward's close HVFP). Plus, they all wear black and look really evil, so that's gonna make for interesting times, right?

I was actually looking forward to the part where Bella was running through the courtyards and stuff to try and stop Edward from revealing himself to the world, because that meant that we would get to see the Vulturi soon after. I wish they had more screen time than, what, 20 minutes? I mean, they're not Venom, you know.

Movie also has consistency issues, though very minor. Like the part when everyone finds out that Bella is immune to their vampiric mental abilities (not including biting and hitting and other physical damage). Wouldn't she have been immune to Jasper's emotion-bending at the beginning of the movie?

And was it really necessary to show Bella's dad grounding her? I mean, the movie ended with Bella stopping a fight between Edward and Jacob in the forest. As in, not in / anywhere near her father's house! It's like he never grounded her! That part was so pointless because hellooo, everyone already figured out that the reason the father exists was because the series started when Bella was 17, and therefore, needed a parental guardian.

Score is first-rate, and the soundtrack wasn't bad either, even though it felt like there were a snippets of a million songs throughout the movie. Hearing Muse's Mon Cœur S'ouvre a ta Voix was a pleasant surprise, since I was expecting Uprising, which I didn't like so much. Unfortunately, Muse was only on for 10 seconds. 

One thing I appreciated about was the title of each movie. The previous one was about Edward, so Twilight; this one is about Jacob, so New Moon. The next one is Eclipse: which probably means that she will pick her final choice in that one, since 'eclipse' means half-moon and half darkness. Props to Stephenie Meyer.


Conclusion: New Moon is a romance movie with loads of talky and no action-y (if you know what I mean *wink*). You have been warned.

Random fun fact:

Whenever I try to type 'Bella', I get 'Belal' sometimes. Unlike this story, Belal makes an appearance in Robert Jordan's The Dragon Reborn, and was balefired (read: erased from existence) about five pages later.