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I took my little sister to see the original Twilight film. Then I read the book to see if the film had, as claimed, deviated too far from the source material. And I've pretty much been making "emo" jokes since then.
To be fair, I'm using emo where "teenage angst" would be more appropriate, but... well, let's review:
- Bella seems to be wanted by every single guy at the school,
- Being this popular seems to irritate her intensely,
- Edward's tortured by his own inner demons,
- They can't be together because of his animal impulses,
- Neither of them will shut up about this stuff,
- "I was unconditionally and irrevocably in love with him." QUOTED FROM ORIGINAL TEXT.
...
Which is sort of the point. I mean, this is how the Brontës' work became classics. Yes, it's bordering on self-parody, but that's what Melodrama is. And if there's one defining quality to the original Twiglet novels, it's melodrama. I mean, it's not my cup of tea, but it's harmless enough. It's certainly not as bad as that damn period where people would keep trying to convince me that The Da Vinci Code was gospel.
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But teenagers taking themselves seriously is always inherently amusing. So when I went into New Moon, I wasn't expecting to enjoy it, so much as tolerate and mock it. Everybody I know has either loathed or derided this film. Most have refused to go see it, which is why I went alone. I just wanted to give it a fair shot before I went back to making jokes about it.
Here's the short version. It's one of the best treatments of teenage angst on film I have ever seen. It's got a subtle sense of its own ridiculousness, something the first film really lacked, and this gives it a warmth it desperately needs to counteract the angst, without compromising the overall mood of tormented teenagerhood.
Kristen Stewart seems to have finally found a way to make Bella into a reasonably likeable character, while still maintaining the awkwardness and lack of confidence that made her inexpressibly annoying in the first film. Even in the period where she's just been dumped and is sulking, there's a certain sense of stubborness, a sort of "No. I'm not 'going on with my life'. You abandoned me, you broke my heart, and there's no way I can find you to get back together and/or have you beaten up. The only thing I can do to get back at you is to waste my life sulking. So sulk I shall."
Mark Kermode described it as "Heroic Moping", and I actually can see what he means. There's a lovely scene where the camera's revolving around Bella as she sulks her way through 3 months. It's all done through the images outside the window as she never moves, and it definitely works, especially when contrasted with her agonised screaming during her sleep.
These scenes could descend into farce, but they manage to make it work by switching the focus to Bella's Dad. You find yourself watching a man having to deal with his daughter's pain, and being totally unable to find a way to help, except by just being there, puts the audience in just the right place to care about Bella, because her dad does, and we like him.
Another supporting character who needs his due is that poor, dumb loser whose name I can't be bothered to remember. You know, the guy at the film whose only role is to make Jacob look cooler. Where's his team? Seriously, dude. Time to head down to the nuclear lab and start hunting for bugs, because god knows you're not beating Pecs O'Puppydog and Broody McSuicide with your super chronic stomach disorder abilities.
And then there's Pecs himself. This should be the most dislikeable role in all of recorded writing. "We're going to need you to look like a Greek God, be good with your hands, be sweet and tolerant about the female lead's deep-seated emotional problems, except when you're in a ferocious temper, in which case you'll just be all man, baby."
What saves Taylor Lautner from joining the Wesley Crusher hall of fame is the fact that his scenes are the first time we see Bella actually happy. Let's face it, Edward and Bella might be "irrevocably in love", but they're not friends. They have next to nothing in common, and they spend all their time together brooding or soliquising. But Bella and Jacob actually seem to get along as people. They do fun stuff together, they kid each other around, she starts smiling. I'm not sure we saw Kristen Stewart smile in the entire of the original Twilight film.
Of course, then the werewolf thing kicks in, and it all goes to hell. It's actually quite a nice touch, which must be in the original book, that just as she finds a new guy, she gets exactly the same damn experience. "I need to be away from you, it's too dangerous, I can't explain, sorry, bye".
And when they finally do work through that, guess who's baaaack! Seriously, Jacob and Bella spend most of the film getting thiiiis close, to the point where I'm stone-cold certain that there's an outtake where they just go for it.
There are two vampires worth mentioning in this film, and neither of them are Robert Pattinson. Firstly, Alice is awesome. Bubbly and pixey-like, she seems to be fine with what she is, and makes a brilliant counterpoint to Edward's tormentedness. Her scenes with Jacob are simply hilarious. Plus she's got mad car-stealing skills.
And then there's Michael Sheen's ridiculously fun turn as the King of the Vampires, placing him in the unique position of having played a Werewolf, a Vampire, a sitting British Prime Minister, and Brian Clough. Now THAT'S a CV. His scenes are going to turn up on Youtube, and if you like campy horror, you must see them.
It's not without its flaws. Yes, there's some appallingly bad dialogue between Bella and Edward. But as they're supposed to be teenagers in love, that's hardly inappropriate. And it's balanced by my favourite line of the film "It would be nice not to want to kill you all the time."
And yes, Edward seems to spend most of his time looking tormented and pained and Twiglety.
But it's countered by the section when he gets into a knock-down fight with 3 super-powered vampires. (Incidentally, here's an interesting aside. He loses, and yet gets everything he truly wants, not despite losing, but because of it. You could probably write a decent literary thesis based around that particular concept. Not to mention the fact that it looks pretty cool when he smashes the guy into the marble stairs.)
And the wolves don't look quite right. Bit too CGI. But they're still cool CGI, and you get the right feel of massive bear-like strength and size, which is what's actually important.
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So, that's my review. Now, what I can't figure out is why the geek crowd has taken so against these completely harmless books and the above average movies based on them.
Well, here's the obvious answer: because they're sheep, desperately trying to fit in with their own particular crowd, doing the exact kind of weak-ass crap that makes school such an appalling trial for every last human being to pass through the hallowed doors of education. But let's be generous, and assume that maybe 10% of them actually have some functioning originality or self-insight, and of those 10%, at least some of them saw the damn film. I have to assume that it touched off some communal nerve or some political point that caused them to take against it. But for the life of me, I don't know what it is.
It's even as if it's overly Hollywoodised. Hell, this is a mass-mass-market film, where at one point the Volturi are "delivered" a tourist party, including little kids. We hear their screams, while our heroes have to simply keep walking away because doing anything would get them all killed. I don't know of any film that wouldn't play that up as a big deal, with lots of "keep moving" "but can't we...?" "we can't risk it..." type dialogue. But here, it's all done through looks and body language, and it's creepy as all hell because we're expected to understand that that's what would happen. That's some damn impressive scripting, direction and respect for the audience's intelligence.
There's also a rather nice scene where we get to see that Edward's issues with "turning" Bella mostly stem from his religious beliefs, whereas Bella's response is effectively "yeah, I don't believe in any of that, you go right ahead and 'damn' me, I'll be fine with it". For all the talk of Mormonism and the religious messages, the fact that the main heroine's completely atheistic seems to have been overlooked.
Bottom line? If you want to watch a film about teenagers in love, which treats their pain as something other than a running joke, you'd be hard-pressed to find a better film in that field than New Moon.
If you don't, there'll be another comedy about geeks trying to get laid soon enough. Chris Weitz may have moved on, but Judd Apatow can't live off his savings forever.
