The Ultimate Twilight Rundown, Part 2: New Moon (2009) and Eclipse (2010)

So it's fall here in the Pacific Northwest and the weather has changed. As one of my friends put it, Seattle currently has perfect "traipsing through the fog in a top hat and scarf, looking for Cockney prostitutes to vivisect" weather.

This creepy, Gothic feel actually makes me appreciate even more what Catherine Hardwicke did with the original Twilight movie. Which just makes these next films just so... so... so much worse.

THE ULTIMATE TWILIGHT RUNDOWN, PART 2 -

New Moon (2009)

The new director to take the helm of this series is Chris Weitz, director of The Golden Compass and co-director of American Pie. That, um, doesn't exactly bode well...

I really cannot stress to you enough how bad this movie is. Every stereotype and assumption about why Twilight is terrible is confirmed in this movie. Let's start with what I first noticed and liked about the FIRST film: the look.

Unlike the Gothic, creepy, blue of the original film, New Moon has a constant warm, golden tone that feels incredibly jarring after the previous movie. The dead and cold tone of the vampire world was part of what made the first Twilight vaguely interesting, but New Moon takes almost all of that gloominess and originality away. Instead, we are replaced with a golden-toned carbon copy.

Yes, summery, warm colors. Just what I want from a vampire film...

This brings us to the next problem: plot. Literally, the whole plot from the first movie is replicated, but this time with werewolves instead of vampires.

Yes, Bella meets a boy (this time a side character from the first film, Jacob) who is attractive but strangely mysterious; he stays distant but is clearly interested; he hints that he must stay away from her for some vague reason; she becomes more attached/intrigued; then we find out that he is a supernatural creature. Again.

The worst part about this movie, though, isn't that the plot is a complete (and worse) rehashing of the film that we just saw previously, but that it doesn't end there. Seriously, this movie is SO long. By the time I thought the movie was over, at about 97 minutes in, there was still another half-hour to go. UGH!

Also, for the record, the naturalness of the acting from Hardwicke's original Twilight is long gone; now every character is unrealistic and over acted. While the vampires stay mostly the same, Jacob can't seem to deliver a line without it seeming forced, and Bella has lost much of her nervous charm in favor of a sulkiness that is far too overdone to be believable. Even the teenagers at Bella's high school seem like they forgot how naturally they acted under Hardwicke's directing and seem ready to chew the scenery to shreds.

Okay, let me start at the (somewhat) beginning of the story: Bella and Edward are still together after film #1. When we see them again, they are reading Romeo & Juliet in English class. The insane amount of time and emphasis on this clearly foreshadows that there will be a parallel plot-line in this film; I swear, if either Edward or Bella doesn't try and commit suicide because s/he thinks the other one is dead by the last twenty minutes, I'll eat my own spleen (spoiler: I won't have to).

"A rose by any other name would still be a stupid metaphor..."

For a completely contrived reason, Edward decides he can't be with Bella and leaves town. Bella falls into a depression, and the following montage seems to indicate that she doesn't leave her bedroom chair for a full year. I don't think that's actually humanly possible, but that's what the ridiculous editing seems to imply.

So. Much. Sulking.

Bella's friend Jacob (who is clearly a werewolf) starts spending more time with her, expresses concern for her (because she's in love with a vampire, and he's clearly a werewolf), and seems to constantly want to tell her something (probably that he's a werewolf) but yet is always holding something back (that he's a werewolf), and finally tries to push her away in order to hide some terrible secret (it's that he's a werewolf).

Yes, this is what a normal teenage boy looks like. Totally.

Finally, GASP, the big reveal: oh my God, guys, JACOB IS A WEREWOLF! WHO WOULDA THUNK?! Literally no one is surprised except the character of Bella. (I cannot tell you how bored I was at this point in the movie. Seriously. So bored.)

But the worst part is that somehow Twilight tries to turn werewolf-ism into a gay metaphor. I think. It didn't actually make much sense. At least X-Men 2's gay metaphor made some story-line sense, but it just doesn't follow logically at all in the story of Twilight. But still, at one point, Bella earnestly asks, "Can't you just try not being a werewolf?" To which Jacob replies, "It's not a lifestyle, Bella! I was born this way."

 *cue Lady Gaga here* Ugh.

Even after the complete re-hashing of the first film, however (just a reminder: this lasts for over 90 minutes of the movie), we finally get to the Romeo & Juliet parallel: Edward learns that Bella may possibly be dead (she's not though) and decides to smash his phone and fly to Italy to force some panel of super powerful old vampires to kill him. Because... um... reasons?

Honestly, there's no explanation as to why Edward can't figure out a way to kill himself and instead needs this panel of old Italian vampires to kill him. I mean, sure, they're clearly going to be our antagonists in a later film, but it doesn't make logical story sense now. It also doesn't make sense that Edward doesn't double-check that Bella is actually dead.

But anyway: Bella and Edward's sister Alice (the one who can occasionally see the future) rush to go save suicidal Edward. How do they get to Italy? No idea. Why doesn't Edward kill himself before they get there? Again, no clue. Why can't they figure out a way to contact him to tell him Bella's not dead before flying the approximately 14 to 15 hours (not including post-flight driving time) to go find him? Again, no logical sense whatsoever. All we know is that Alice and Bella magically get to Italy just in the nick of time for Bella to dramatically run over to Edward through a religious parade of some sort and stop him from killing himself.

Europe! That means this film is "artsy," right?

It was amazing how much I didn't care at this point. Seriously impressive how much this movie squished and squashed any sympathy and caring for any of these characters that I once had.

The worst part about the film's painful mediocrity is that there is a much more interesting vampire movie behind this one. After Edward is saved by Bella, the two love-struck characters (and Alice) are forced to appear before the bloodthirsty Italian vampire panel, known as the Volturi.

Awwww, look! It's Dakota Fanning.
What a cute little bloodthirsty serial killer.

As we are treated to the Volturi vaguely threatening our protagonists (who clearly won't die because there are three more movies in this freaking series), we hear humans screaming and being devoured off screen.

SERIOUSLY?! THIS MOVIE TEASES US WITH ACTUAL BLOODSUCKING AND VICIOUS VAMPIRES AND DOESN'T SHOW IT AT ALL?! Hardwicke at least gave us what she could, but this movie gave us nothing but sparkling vampire "vegetarians" for a few minutes, lots of sulking, and CGI werewolves when we COULD have had Volturi viciousness! Ugh. I am so done with this series. This movie felt like it was five hours long, even though it was "only" 2 hours and 10 minutes. This was just awful.

Rating: a painful 2 out of 5 bites
(it would be lower, but at least the film-making was "okay")

----------------------

Eclipse (2010)

God, I did not want to watch this movie. New Moon was just so painful. If the original Twilight made me hopeful, New Moon killed that hope and then stomped on its twice burned ashes.

However, this Twilight film was put back in the hands of a competent vampire film director: David Slade, of 30 Days of Night fame (he also directed the pleasantly creepy psychological thriller Hard Candy). This seemed like a good sign, and sure enough the movie starts out deceptively dark. In a dark, rainy Seattle setting, a young man is bitten by a mysterious vampire and starts to transform. The music is dramatic and the scream the man lets out is bloodcurdling.

Wow, okay. That's... surprisingly a strong opening. The setting is gloomy and dark, the city setting feels original, and the tone is sinister and mysterious. This feels like a vampire movie, folks! Holy crap, we might have another decent movie on our hands!

But, no, that doesn't last long. Cut immediately to Bella and Edward making googly-eyes at each other in a field of flowers. They read Robert Frost poetry to each other, and immediately the movie is back to being everything terrible about Twilight: namely the love story.

For the next hour or so, we're apparently supposed to care about Bella's graduation, her relationship with Edward, the fact that Jacob also has feelings for her, and the fact that she's trying to decide whether to become a vampire or not. But these things are clearly not worth caring about. At all.

Yeah, this is totally as interesting as screaming vampire victims.
Totally.

I will say that Eclipse is more interesting and certainly better directed than New Moon. For one, there are fewer continuity errors (there were distracting amounts in New Moon), and Slade's movie even makes a few attempts to go meta - for example, allowing Robert Patterson's Edward to quip about Jacob: "Doesn't he own a shirt?" And that's cute and occasionally funny. However, it's still a Twilight movie, so a few moments of self-awareness aside, we still have a boring love triangle and a lack of anything interesting for a good majority of the film.

The movie is at its best when we cut back to Seattle and the action going on there. In that plot-line, an army of young vampires is being created and gathered by the rogue vampire Victoria (a minor villain from the first Twilight films). This is fascinating, and I remain convinced that a vampire movie directed by Slade and set entirely in urban Seattle would be a great film to watch. For those scenes, the tone is dramatic, dark, dirty, and gritty - and honestly intriguing and fun.

See? Burning cars. Gritty.

But then the plot and the love triangle force us back to Forks, where Bella is cooing over Edward and crying over Jacob. And so the movie becomes horrible all over again.

It turns out that the young Seattle vampire army is being created to go to Forks, WA in order to hunt Bella. There is a loose reasoning for this, but it doesn't matter except that it means that the actually-mildly-interesting Seattle landscape and plot-line is over. Boo. 

We do get this cool shot of the vampire army walking
out of the water though. That's briefly awesome.

An odd thematic tie between the Seattle plot-line and the Cullen family, however, occurs in a series of flashback stories with an overarching theme of makers manipulating their progeny with promises of love. Both the main young vampire from Seattle and Edward Cullen's Texan brother (don't ask) Jasper have stories where their vampire makers manipulated them through fake showings of love to achieve their own end. Now, this seems like it raises questions: is Edward manipulating Bella? Is Bella willingly being manipulated? However, while the stories would imply that these questions needed to be raised, the main plot promptly ignores these questions in favor of focusing on which cute guy Bella will cuddle with in her tent.

Spoilers: both of them

Also, it says a lot when Jacob and Edward seem to have better
chemistry with each other than either of them have with Bella...

The young vampire army soon arrive in Forks and the vampire Cullens and the local werewolves briefly team up to fight the Seattle vampires in what might be the most boring "epic battle" I've ever seen. If nothing else, it's the most boring vampire/werewolf battle I've ever seen, which is saying quite a lot since I sat through Underworld.

The battle ends with Edward and Victoria facing off against one another in a fight that is actually interesting and brutal. Again, the hint of a vampire movie that could be - this movie actually does a decent job of making Edward seem like a cold, ruthless jerk of a vampire (intentionally or not). A movie that focused on him without Bella might actually be worth watching. After all, the battle ends with him doing this to Victoria:

Okay, this is probably the best shot in the whole movie.

But instead most of the film is still Jacob and Edward fighting over Bella's attention, and both the werewolf and the vampire making insistent confessions of love (as well as several examples of emotional blackmail) to Bella in order to convince her to choose one of them over the other. This gets repetitive quickly.

If that wasn't enough, at the end of the film, the Volturi show up AGAIN. And this time, instead of slaughtering a horde of humans, they slaughter a horde of young vampires. The scream that one of the young vampires lets out is as bloodcurdling as the scream from the film's beginning, and once again it makes me think of how much better these films would be if we followed the Volturi instead of the Cullens. 

So.

Much.

Better.

Then the Volturi leave, and the film cuts to a field of flowers with Bella and Edward sitting in the center, making love-sick faces at each other. Wait, what...? Haven't we seen this scene before? Yes, this is LITERALLY THE SAME SCENE from the beginning of the movie.

So nothing about the characters' lives changed. At all. Seriously, we may as well have not even sat through this movie! No one grew or seemingly learned any lessons! It was all just a repeat of the love triangle introduced in the last movie and a seemingly purposeless battle. 

Ultimately, Eclipse is better than New Moon, but just barely. And this leaves me very little hope for the two part monstrosity that is Breaking Dawn. Yes, I have more Twilight to watch after sitting through these two movies: that might be the most horrific vampire story Twilight has told me yet.

Rating: 2.5 out of 5 bites


To be continued in PART 3.  God help me.