Disclaimer: Don't bother reading if you are an easily-offended Twilight fan or if you haven't watched the movie (there are a few spoilers).


Before I get into this, I will say that I have read the books.  It might have been morbid curiosity that nudged me to finish them (the fourth one was painstaking), but I eventually did.  My friends that knew my previous disdain for the series wanted to know why I would waste my time reading something that I was certain I would dislike.  Well, I blame it on my education.  All my life, I heard variations of the advice, "You must know and understand what you do not stand for lest you look like an ignorant fool."  More than just saying "I don't like it", I was taught that I needed to know exactly why I didn't like something--I needed to be able to give examples freely. 

Ok, here they are.  On Friday night, Dean and I, along with our friend, Michael, plopped down in the dark Cinus theater at Sillim with our popcorn, kimbap, and Vitamin water.  It was cold, windy, and wet day.  The last thing I wanted to do was slip into a little dress and heels and taxi my way over to Apgujeong.  Going to a movie sounded like a good idea, although the only English movie playing in the nearby theater was New Moon.  I also happened to have two free movie passes!  And even though I still openly despise the series, that morbid curiosity remained.  Like that ever popular train wreck analogy, I was kind of keen on watching something terrible.

I wasn't disappointed.  Slowly chugging in past the two hour mark, the movie aims to have it all: love triangles, coming of age angst, big decisions, action, romance, drama, and fantasy.  But the love triangle was about as predictable as a Korean drama ("She dies of cancer?!? REALLY???"), the action was lacking, the romance was unbelievable, the CGI outdated, and the acting stale. 

Let's start with the storyline.  Bella and Edward love each other, so much that--after what can only assume has been a few months--she's willing to throw away her mortal life (friends, family, and so on) for her sparkly beau.  But Edward can't let her do that! After a bloody incident at her 18th birthday, Bella is promptly dumped.  In a scene full of awkward stammering, lip biting, and nervous eye movements, Edward leaves Bella so devastated that she literally falls down in the forest and doesn't get up. 

After she is rescued by a shirtless member of the local native tribe, she proceeds to lead a pathetic existence.  She only finds her spark for living in doing stupidly dangerous things, claiming herself to be an adrenaline junkie.  So she and her now really muscular friend, Jacob, start hanging out a lot so she can make a motorcycle.  In the books, I'll admit that Jacob was my favorite character because he is written as much more human than the others.  He's far from perfect, he clearly won't get the girl in the end, but at least he doesn't sparkle and he isn't so pathetic that--when heartbroken--he doesn't just lay down and wait for someone to rescue him. 

So Jacob and Bella become closer, though she flat out tells him that she can't love him.  Bella continues to do dumbass things, Jacob finally goes through puberty/becomes a werewolf, until finally, Bella jumps off a cliff.  I'm-so-quirky-Alice returns to Forks, thinking she will find a dead!Bella.  Instead, the two end up jetting off to Italy to save Edward, who will certainly think that Bella is dead. 

Bella reaches her marble-chested, liquid amber-eyed vampire just in time, but they are still called down to the dungeons to meet the Volturi.  A supposed ancient clan of vampires, this select handful of blood-suckers enjoys art, history, and meeting other fancy vampires.  This last part is witnessed when the head of the Volturi takes the center stage.  With exaggerated gazes and lines such as "...Intruiging!" and "...Fascinating!", he was by far my favorite character in the whole damn film.  Can everything really be so intriguing or fascinating after hundreds of years in existence?  I guess so.  Dakota Fanning also appears for what seems like the most gratuitous/pointless casting in the series. 

So in the end, the Cullens go back to Forks, promising the Volturi that they will turn Bella into a vampire in the near future.  And after all the werewolves, vampires and Italians, Edward--ZOMG--proposes to Bella.  And that's how it ends.

Once written, it seems weird that the film would feel so empty.  But the frequent and over-long stretches of dialogue between Jacob/Bella and Bella/Edward drag the film down.  The dialogue is so clunky, so cliche, so vapid.  It plateaus and fails to have a rise or fall that is necessary to drive the action forward and to flesh out the characters.  This is something from which the books suffer, as well.

As for the acting, it actually got worse for the second installment.  You always hope and expect that a second installment would have better acting, since the actors have had time to study their previous performances and can feel more comfortable with their co-stars.  The Harry Potter series, for example, suffered from poor acting and dialogue in the few two films before ultimately gaining more constant and solid footing with the third and the films that followed.  However, Harry Potter's lead actors also happened to be 11, 12, and 13, so...yeah. Anyway, a bad mix of a bland script and forgettable performances make the acting nothing to write home about.  Bella's nightmare screams stood out as hilariously bad, for example.  The opening scene in the field featuring old Bella and young Bella was also painful to watch. 

As for the music, it was good, but not fitting for this film.  Like the first installment, the soundtrack contains a heavy mix of indie favorites.  But whereas the first movie felt more indie (it definitely wasn't as big budget as this second part), the second movie feels so big that the music is usually out of place. 

What else is even worth mentioning?  The CGI wasn't great.  The cinematography wasn't great.  At least the first movie had some great landscape shots of the northwest.  This one, not so much.  The villains are lame in that I didn't feel any kind of apprehension about them.  Victoria may look the part of a villain (beautiful, cold) but we aren't given enough fear of her.  We see some chase scenes and that's about it. 

Oh, wait, I know something I was annoyed with.  There was a scene involving Sam and his lady, Emily.  We hear the back story of how her face was mutilated from when Sam lost his temper. Permanently scarred on half of her face, she still sticks with him.  I guess we're supposed to think this is loyal and deeply romantic, but it just made me feel sick.  If this were a real situation and one of my friend's faces was mangled by her boyfriend and she'd decided to stick with him, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be all, "Ohhh, I understand. He just lost his temper.  He probably wouldn't do it again but you never know."  Gross. Thanks.

So my dark interest in the Twilight series continues.  I feel like I have to see how they do the third one, and--more importantly--the fourth one. 

Anyway, that concludes this poorly-written and spur of the moment New Moon review. 

And as for teams...? 



Team Bella.  Here's hoping she grows a spine.