Are you on Team Jacob or Team Edward? Really, that is the question that is suppose to be on everyone's mind after the monstrous NEW MOON opening this past weekend. The first film in the Saga was only watchable if you played a drinking game that enabled you to do a shot every time Bella played with her hair. For the second film I came up with another drinking game where if you see Jacob without a shirt (total of 5 scenes) or Bella do a painfully on the nose VO (9 count), you have to take a shot. Little did I know that not even 14 shots of the hardest alcohol you could find would make this smoking pile of shit worth watching.
I am guilty of a lot of things in life, but the one I feel the worst about is recommending the Twilight books to friends, family and loved ones pre all the crazy buzz and there wasn't even a movie in the works. The first 3 books work splendidly. Stephanie Meyers figured out a brilliant scheme to show teen angst, loneliness and sexual confusion through her heroine Bella on the same level as J.K. Rowling did for Harry Potter towards the later books. At the end of book 3 (SPOILER ALERT) Meyers decided to all of a sudden start preaching her Mormon ways into a novel that was completely absent of it previously. It comes in a chapter that has Team Edward discussing sex w/ Bella for nearly 30 pages. Once this happens, Meyers voice became the characters voices and all I could think was of a mom trying to instruct her kids on the pluses and minus's of abstinence. The books jumped the shark and never recovered. I started book four and gave up about 100 pages in. It was a new famous author succumbing to the pressures of the publishing world and rushing her material. It all fell apart. J.K. Rowling never rushed a Potter book. She took a painfully long time in between each novel, agonizing her readers yet rewarding them at the same time.
So what about films? Why do 2 films suck so much monkey nuts when they made such compelling turn paging young adult novels? Here's my list of reasons in no particular order:
1) Acting/Directing
Oh it's bad. How bad? In the most emotional sequence in New Moon, Edward leaves Bella for most of the movie. It has been awhile since I've been a teen, but if your teen heartthrob who promised to protect you no matter what left, wouldn't you shed a tear? Well, Bella doesn't. To make matters worse, we get two young stilted actors talking their lines in monotone voices with no body language between them. Over the shoulder cut back to an over the shoulder cut to a slow moving dolly of two actors standing completely still during what is the emotional levity that's supposed to take us from Act 1 into Act 2.
2. Pop Music does not substitute for Musical Composition in a Movie
The ENTIRE New Moon soundtrack, 13+ songs are in this movie and they play over the most emotional moments. Are we watching the CW or are we watching a movie? I get the tie-ins to what truly is one of the best soundtracks of the year, but seriously folks, how do we take a scene seriously if the filmmakers insist on taking the audience out of the moment with the flavor of the week moody alternative music? It just doesn't work.
3. Change the Source Material
The best adaptations are the ones that create their own voice in their translation to the screen. Harry Potter was awkward and flawed until Alfonso Cauron conjured up some magic by changing not only the style that Chris Columbus established in the first two, but also the core story. He still gets his characters from point A to B for the following sequel, but he does so by adhering to filmmaking/screenwriting 101 rules. Twilight and especially New Moon fail in this area. The movie is identical to the book. The second act of New Moon is so muddled with nothing happening on the screen. This movie easily could've been 90 minutes or less instead of the 2 + hour run time currently. Audiences need something, anything to happen in the second act to get us thru to the 3rd.
4. Team Edward = Pussies
Seriously, Edward is a wimp. He's so in love with Bella in that we are going to be together for eternity there's no room for his character to grow outside of adjusting his thousand mile stare at her. Monster movies where humans fall in love with the monster work because the man behind the monster is worth getting to know, in the Twilight Saga there's nothing worth getting to know behind Edward. He loves Bella but he's a vampire. On the page, we got paragraph upon paragraph about Edward's beauty, kindness and love for Bella thru her eyes. It made it real. She viewed him like a teen would view the love of her life and the reader was able to get involved. On the screen, there's no getting inside of Edward, he's a blank stare with some serious bed head.
How to fix the series and actually make the films watchable to anyone over the age of 15?
1. Hire a director who actually has a vision for the material and is not a cog in the machine for Summit. It has worked for Harry Potter and it would work for The Twilight Saga since the 3rd book is the most cinematic, except for the atrocious ending. Guy Richie is doing Sherlock Holmes, Spike Jonze did Where the Wild Things Are, Wes Anderson got Fantastic Mr. Fox, etc. Studios that take risks and hire directors that actually have a vision either succeed or fail, but one thing is for sure, the experiment is more interesting than the current daytime Soap Opera like quality this franchise has already achieved .
2. Special Effects
Make them realistic. Look at what it did for District-9. The Wolves in Twilight look like CGI. They don't breath realistically, and their movements are taken directly from leftover bad CGI on shows like Smallville and Supernatural. Actually, Smallville and Supernatural have better CGI work than The Twilight Saga. Heck, even the poorly scripted Spiderman 3 had amazing effects that kept audiences semi-interested while New Moon looks like CGI subcontracted from a foreign visual effect company thats never even read the books.
3. Get out of the book trappings
Simple. Don't copy the books word for word! People don't need to see Bella in pain from losing Edward for nearly 70 minutes of the film. It's like watching Wings of Desire with no insight into life, as perceived by a committee of producers who think they know what it feels like to be a teen.
4. The Acting
Get a director in their that pushes his actors to do things outside of their range. Even if it involves ruffling some pre-diva feathers the results will be well worth it.
Final Thought on New Moon
New Moon is the worst movie of the year. I knew it was going to be awful, but what I didn't know is just how ridiculously awful. A terrible script, horrible directing, sloppy editing, and a film score that feels like a Hanz Zimmer Thin Red Line reject. There's nothing redeemable about this feature except for Charlie, Bella's father played by Billy Burke. In film #1 he was forced to be a dad that doesn't 'hover,' while in film #2, he's an awkward parent that sees his daughter suffering. He uses sly humor, natural 'Friday Night Lights' like acting and pure charm to capture every scene he is in. If only the 3 lead actors could take a cue from him, maybe just maybe there would have been more to commend.
To all the Team Edward and Team Jacob fans out there, do yourself a favor and go back and watch the complete Buffy the Vampire Slayer series, especially the love triangle of season 2 between Angel/Buffy to see how monster romance is supposed to be handled.
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