New Moon
I just realized I never got around to posting my thoughts on New Moon that I wrote last week. Here they are.
I’m not one to hate on Twilight. While I’ve never really been a fan, I’m forgiving of most of the elements that might annoy a hater - 80% of conversations inexplicably happening in forests, 90% of Taylor Lautner’s screen time featuring him shirtless and in shorts regardless of the weather - but it kinda manages to keep a sort of logic. Yes, the shirtlessness is pretty much because the ladies love it, but the constant transformation into a wolf would admittedly ruin a lot of shirts. Forest conversations are presumably more private than ones in at a diner.
I kinda had to see New Moon, regardless of how I saw the series overall. Director Chris Weitz had no idea he’d be directing this when Twilight One was hitting theatres, meaning he barely had 11-12 months to make what he knew was millions of people’s most anticipated the film of the year. The mere idea of that means I have to give the film some slack and the director some major props. A soundtrack like that doesn’t just create itself.
So my verdict? “Pretty good” was my initial reaction, but it’s quickly moving towards “pretty epic” as the boring bits fade away and some of Alexandre Desplat’s more moving queues settle into my mind. With a comfortable home theatre and Blu-Ray of the film at my disposal, I would re-watch the film as soon as I could, if only because of my odd inability to fully absorb films the first time around. The ideas and possibilities of where the story could go are exciting to me even when, as is most often the case, they aren’t fully explored.
The ideas presented in New Moon, when thought of in the context that millions of tween girls are eating it all up, are pretty scary. But when you remove them from reality as I do with almost every film I see, a lot if it is actually pretty cool. I mean, it would be horrendous if heartbroken 14 year olds started risking their lives in an emo attempt at evoking any sort of ‘feeling again’, but in the context of a mentally unstable protagonist attempting to conjure echos of a lost immortal lover? It’s kind of intense, creepy, and definitely gets a certain emotional response from the audience. And I think some credit has to be given to the audience - how many millions of men have always insisted that violent movies are totally harmless? This is really no different, none of my female friends have yet attempted jumping off a cliff for fun.
So if you’re on the fence, open your mind and jump in. And don’t leave in the first 20 minutes, where pretty much everyone seems to have lost the ability to speak at a normal pace for no reason other than they’re just so emotional. If you can get past stuff like that, just go and enjoy a couple hours at the movies. Or DVD at least. Let’s not get too crazy here.
PS. For a totally great and multiple-perspective review of New Moon, check out the latest episode of The /Filmcast, #77 with Jen Yamato.
