Why New Moon Stinks
Posted: Tue Dec 01, 2009 4:42 pm
OK...with all the hullabaloo over 'New Moon" I decided to watch it and "Twilight" over the Thanksgiving break.
My reaction? "Can I have those wasted hours of my life back please?" It was a mopey, angst-ridden, gothic-overload, break-the-vampire-lore-rules mess. :-2(As a high school teacher, at least I can count it as "shareholder research.")
So I looked around an found a guide by Locke Peterseim that says it way better than I could...
The Non-Twihards' Guide to Why New Moon Stinks
As much as I admire Kevin Smith and adore his films, and as much as I really like his mix of the profane and the touching in Clerks II, there’s one scene that always makes me cringe. The sharp-tongued Randall relentlessly mocks two restaurant customers with his prolonged rip on The Lord of Rings. What hurts most isn’t just that a geek like Smith is hating on my beloved Trilogy, but that his and Randall’s mockery is valid: Seen from a hater’s perspective, LOTR is a whole lot of people walking from one place to another, just to drop a ring in a volcano and then go home.
So I have some empathy for Twihards when someone tells them the object of their pop-culture obsession sucks. That includes those, like our Erika, who love the books but are disappointed in the films--and those, like my teenage niece and some of my decades-past-teenage friends, who think the Twilight films are just the most awesome movies ev-er.
But that said, here are some of the things I hated about New Moon the movie. Erika has already done a fine job of detailing why New Moon fails for fans of the books. Well, I haven't read the books, have no intention to--I'm simply taking the film version on its own terms, as someone who loves imaginative horror-fantasy films. Sure, some of the general non-Twihard public's disdain for the Twilight films is simple, knee-jerk mockery of anything teenage girls love to squeal over. But from a cinematic and storytelling point of view, these films do little to correct that dismissive attitude. Here's why:
1) Nothing happens. Seriously. Both films are just hours of Bella and whatever Famous Monster of Filmland she’s in love/lust with this week sitting around talking about their feelings. (“I love you, Mummy, but your heart is wrapped too tightly! “Frankenstein’s Creature, it’s like you’re afraid of the fire that burns in my soul!) The moping and the brooding and angst and the yearning and the infinite sadness. It’s all so hollow, so shallow, and wrapped in such awful dialogue. Its melodrama has all the weight and emotional punch of a collection of sad-face notebook stickers.
2) The Ridiculous, Amateur Narrative Structure. In both Twilight films, after 90 minutes of Bella being sad or confused or frustrated in the woods, a bunch of plot suddenly erupts in the last 20 minutes. To a non-Twihard, New Moon plays like a Twilight turducken: One narrative (about Bella and Edward) is cut in half and stuffed with a whole ‘nother plot (about Bella and Jacob), and then all of that is taken and shoved inside an even larger, thinner story (about the Volturi and the larger Vampire World’s rules and hierarchies). Things mope along for ages with Bella and Jacob in the woods, and then, like an old phonograph player needle being quickly scratched across the record, that all stops and we have to Run Rush Fly Hurry to Italy where it seems a whole different movie has been waiting to start.
3) Supernatural Treaties and Rules. As a LOTR fan, I get the love of arcane rules and ancient histories. But Jackson’s films were careful to use that stuff to enrich their stories and to explain background details with a certain amount of finesse. New Moon just tosses random “rules out willy nilly and then quickly moves on to more moping. I’m sure all this stuff about the Volare or whoever and the vamp-wolf treaties is fully explained in the book, but in the film it’s capricious and fleeting. And since so much of the flimsy “plot seems to turn on all these rules and treaties, it leaves the film, once again, feeling shallow and shoddy. Which points to the larger problem¦
4) The Films' Lack of Appeal to Anyone Outside The Fan Base. Star Wars, Star Trek, Lord of the Rings, Batman, and Harry Potter are have lasting success because they work hard to bridge the gap between hardcore fans and the mainstream, non-fantasy loving viewers. People who don’t like science fiction still love Star Wars, people who don’t like swords & sorcery fantasy still flocked to the LOTR trilogy, people who thought superhero flicks were silly enjoyed The Dark Knight. Those films were inclusive—they function first and foremost as general rollicking and moving entertainment with messages about responsibility and heroism, then second as genre pieces.
In contrast, the Twilight films feel so insular, so specifically focused on pleasing a very specific demographic—one that finds watching a teenage girl brood and be sad for two hours endlessly engrossing. New Moon is not going to convert any new fans (which makes it feel even more like a cheap, craven cash grab by the studio). But as a geek, I get that the very exclusivity of the society is part of its appeal. Twihards love their books and films even more because The Rest of the World Doesn't Get It! (More on this fandom phenomenon later this week when I look at Boondock Saints.)
5) Bella, the Girl Who Stands Around. We’ve come all the way from the ‘50s just for this? A heroine whose primary purpose, whose only skill seems to be waiting for men to show up and then watching them fight over her? The Twilight films are telling young woman that the most important thing they can do in life is find a good man, living or undead, and just love love love him, no matter what. Which brings us to¦
6) He Only Disfigures Me Because He Cares. It’s one thing to reinforce the perpetual myth of the Sexy Bad Boy, the dangerous lad--be he vamp or wolf--who can’t control his deeper, scarier nature. But it’s quite another to show a woman who still lives with and loves a werewolf who clawed half her face off. Yes, it’s a powerful visual reminder of the werewolves’ struggle to control their lupine ‘roid rage, and a wake-up call for Bella with Jacob. But it’s also a pretty awful lesson for young viewers, painting clear anger issues and domestic abuse as a romantic sign of how strong your love is for one another.
7) Our Love Lives Forever; Everyone Else is On Their Own. In Italy at the end, Bella and Edward are so relieved to be reunited in their eternal moping that, in order to stay alive and together, they impotently watch as a couple dozen innocent tourists are led to their very gruesome, cold-blooded murder at the hands of the Volturi. Think about that for a second. These are your heroes. And they just watch those people shuffle off unknowingly to their death. I can’t think of any other literary or cinematic hero (not counting clear anti-heroes) who would have done that. In any other, more competent, more morally grown-up story, Bella and Edward would be later taxed a very steep and tragic price for such cowardice and selfishness.
8) Forfeiting Your Soul Forever As a Sexy-Cool Fad. While a few of the vampires in the film—including Edward--express their concern that Bella wants to give up her mortal soul and become damned just so she can be with her pale boy toy forever, in the end they all go along with her wishes, with several of them acting as if it’s just the bestest thing ever. Many more sophisticated, grown-up vampire tales have drawn their dramatic juice from the disconnect between the sexy coolness of being young and hot forever and the loneliness and pain of living an eternity without a soul. And yet, this film treats it like getting your ears pierced. Bella wants to become a vampire because she doesn’t want to get old (boo-frakkin’-hoo, sister--welcome to the club) and most around her, including Meyers and her books, seem to support that shallow, immature desire. Again, in any other, more thoughtful series, Bella’s nagging, whining demand to be “changed would eventually come back to morally bite her on the butt, so to speak. Here’s it’s presented and rewarded as just one more oh-so-romantic gesture that shows how deep and intense Bella and Edward’s love is.
And finally, 9) Peter Facinelli. Carlisle, the Cullen Brood's Vamp-pa, is the series' only reasonable, adult presence. Still, it’s hard to take the bottle-blonde Mr. Jennie Garth seriously as the sage voice of vampire wisdom when he looks like the lost Feldman brother.
My reaction? "Can I have those wasted hours of my life back please?" It was a mopey, angst-ridden, gothic-overload, break-the-vampire-lore-rules mess. :-2(As a high school teacher, at least I can count it as "shareholder research.")
So I looked around an found a guide by Locke Peterseim that says it way better than I could...
The Non-Twihards' Guide to Why New Moon Stinks
As much as I admire Kevin Smith and adore his films, and as much as I really like his mix of the profane and the touching in Clerks II, there’s one scene that always makes me cringe. The sharp-tongued Randall relentlessly mocks two restaurant customers with his prolonged rip on The Lord of Rings. What hurts most isn’t just that a geek like Smith is hating on my beloved Trilogy, but that his and Randall’s mockery is valid: Seen from a hater’s perspective, LOTR is a whole lot of people walking from one place to another, just to drop a ring in a volcano and then go home.
So I have some empathy for Twihards when someone tells them the object of their pop-culture obsession sucks. That includes those, like our Erika, who love the books but are disappointed in the films--and those, like my teenage niece and some of my decades-past-teenage friends, who think the Twilight films are just the most awesome movies ev-er.
But that said, here are some of the things I hated about New Moon the movie. Erika has already done a fine job of detailing why New Moon fails for fans of the books. Well, I haven't read the books, have no intention to--I'm simply taking the film version on its own terms, as someone who loves imaginative horror-fantasy films. Sure, some of the general non-Twihard public's disdain for the Twilight films is simple, knee-jerk mockery of anything teenage girls love to squeal over. But from a cinematic and storytelling point of view, these films do little to correct that dismissive attitude. Here's why:
1) Nothing happens. Seriously. Both films are just hours of Bella and whatever Famous Monster of Filmland she’s in love/lust with this week sitting around talking about their feelings. (“I love you, Mummy, but your heart is wrapped too tightly! “Frankenstein’s Creature, it’s like you’re afraid of the fire that burns in my soul!) The moping and the brooding and angst and the yearning and the infinite sadness. It’s all so hollow, so shallow, and wrapped in such awful dialogue. Its melodrama has all the weight and emotional punch of a collection of sad-face notebook stickers.
2) The Ridiculous, Amateur Narrative Structure. In both Twilight films, after 90 minutes of Bella being sad or confused or frustrated in the woods, a bunch of plot suddenly erupts in the last 20 minutes. To a non-Twihard, New Moon plays like a Twilight turducken: One narrative (about Bella and Edward) is cut in half and stuffed with a whole ‘nother plot (about Bella and Jacob), and then all of that is taken and shoved inside an even larger, thinner story (about the Volturi and the larger Vampire World’s rules and hierarchies). Things mope along for ages with Bella and Jacob in the woods, and then, like an old phonograph player needle being quickly scratched across the record, that all stops and we have to Run Rush Fly Hurry to Italy where it seems a whole different movie has been waiting to start.
3) Supernatural Treaties and Rules. As a LOTR fan, I get the love of arcane rules and ancient histories. But Jackson’s films were careful to use that stuff to enrich their stories and to explain background details with a certain amount of finesse. New Moon just tosses random “rules out willy nilly and then quickly moves on to more moping. I’m sure all this stuff about the Volare or whoever and the vamp-wolf treaties is fully explained in the book, but in the film it’s capricious and fleeting. And since so much of the flimsy “plot seems to turn on all these rules and treaties, it leaves the film, once again, feeling shallow and shoddy. Which points to the larger problem¦
4) The Films' Lack of Appeal to Anyone Outside The Fan Base. Star Wars, Star Trek, Lord of the Rings, Batman, and Harry Potter are have lasting success because they work hard to bridge the gap between hardcore fans and the mainstream, non-fantasy loving viewers. People who don’t like science fiction still love Star Wars, people who don’t like swords & sorcery fantasy still flocked to the LOTR trilogy, people who thought superhero flicks were silly enjoyed The Dark Knight. Those films were inclusive—they function first and foremost as general rollicking and moving entertainment with messages about responsibility and heroism, then second as genre pieces.
In contrast, the Twilight films feel so insular, so specifically focused on pleasing a very specific demographic—one that finds watching a teenage girl brood and be sad for two hours endlessly engrossing. New Moon is not going to convert any new fans (which makes it feel even more like a cheap, craven cash grab by the studio). But as a geek, I get that the very exclusivity of the society is part of its appeal. Twihards love their books and films even more because The Rest of the World Doesn't Get It! (More on this fandom phenomenon later this week when I look at Boondock Saints.)
5) Bella, the Girl Who Stands Around. We’ve come all the way from the ‘50s just for this? A heroine whose primary purpose, whose only skill seems to be waiting for men to show up and then watching them fight over her? The Twilight films are telling young woman that the most important thing they can do in life is find a good man, living or undead, and just love love love him, no matter what. Which brings us to¦
6) He Only Disfigures Me Because He Cares. It’s one thing to reinforce the perpetual myth of the Sexy Bad Boy, the dangerous lad--be he vamp or wolf--who can’t control his deeper, scarier nature. But it’s quite another to show a woman who still lives with and loves a werewolf who clawed half her face off. Yes, it’s a powerful visual reminder of the werewolves’ struggle to control their lupine ‘roid rage, and a wake-up call for Bella with Jacob. But it’s also a pretty awful lesson for young viewers, painting clear anger issues and domestic abuse as a romantic sign of how strong your love is for one another.
7) Our Love Lives Forever; Everyone Else is On Their Own. In Italy at the end, Bella and Edward are so relieved to be reunited in their eternal moping that, in order to stay alive and together, they impotently watch as a couple dozen innocent tourists are led to their very gruesome, cold-blooded murder at the hands of the Volturi. Think about that for a second. These are your heroes. And they just watch those people shuffle off unknowingly to their death. I can’t think of any other literary or cinematic hero (not counting clear anti-heroes) who would have done that. In any other, more competent, more morally grown-up story, Bella and Edward would be later taxed a very steep and tragic price for such cowardice and selfishness.
8) Forfeiting Your Soul Forever As a Sexy-Cool Fad. While a few of the vampires in the film—including Edward--express their concern that Bella wants to give up her mortal soul and become damned just so she can be with her pale boy toy forever, in the end they all go along with her wishes, with several of them acting as if it’s just the bestest thing ever. Many more sophisticated, grown-up vampire tales have drawn their dramatic juice from the disconnect between the sexy coolness of being young and hot forever and the loneliness and pain of living an eternity without a soul. And yet, this film treats it like getting your ears pierced. Bella wants to become a vampire because she doesn’t want to get old (boo-frakkin’-hoo, sister--welcome to the club) and most around her, including Meyers and her books, seem to support that shallow, immature desire. Again, in any other, more thoughtful series, Bella’s nagging, whining demand to be “changed would eventually come back to morally bite her on the butt, so to speak. Here’s it’s presented and rewarded as just one more oh-so-romantic gesture that shows how deep and intense Bella and Edward’s love is.
And finally, 9) Peter Facinelli. Carlisle, the Cullen Brood's Vamp-pa, is the series' only reasonable, adult presence. Still, it’s hard to take the bottle-blonde Mr. Jennie Garth seriously as the sage voice of vampire wisdom when he looks like the lost Feldman brother.
