I’ve always been a fan of Kevin Smith’s movies, but the man has also made a brilliant side career out of making appearances and just talking to people. The man can pontificate like no other.
So in honor of the New Moon inspired Twilightapalooza here at Insert Credits featuring Erron and I ripping the series apart and Chelsey defending it, I bring you Kevin Smith talking about New Moon. Enjoy.
Fans of the Twilight series, rejoice! This movie will deliver exactly what you’re after from a Twilight movie — sparkly vampires and werewolves are not a rare commodity in the second installment of Twilight. But for the rest of us like the experience is more like the morning after a night of hard drinking: sitting through New Moon leaves you with an an awful headache and the taste of vomit in your mouth.
Throw out everything you know about Twilight. Forget the legions of brainless, screaming fans. Forget the equal numbers of disgusted haters. Forget the fact that the “vampires” sparkle. Forget absolutely everything you love or hate about the Twilight series when you read this next line.
New Moon is a bad movie.
As is often said on the internet, “I’m no expert on [relevant topic], but…” I’m no expert on the making of films, but with an estimated budget of $50 million one would think the creators of this piece of film could get a few things right. The werewolves, for example, look terrible. Like they took an old-school robotic wolf puppet and modeled that in CG and said “Yes, this fits our vision.”
Thankfully the werewolves in this film are afflicted with Incredible Hulk syndrome, and while there are plenty of shots of them shirtless their pants somehow always survive the change from man to wolf and back again.
A large chunk of the movie is told through voice-over in the form of Bella writing to Alice Cullen, who we are to believe is her dearest friend in the world; the only person who truly understands everything Bella is going through. While everyone else seemed to accept this quickly enough, I was left confused. Having never read the books my only frame of reference for the relationship between Alice and Bella was the previous movie where the vampire girl had half a dozen lines, none of which promoted anything in he way of character development.
The few times you see Bella’s school friends leaves much of the same impression. There is a shot near the beginning of the first day back to school, where all of her friends are totally stoked to see her. Then the next time Bella hangs out with one it’s a complete 180. Apparently Bella has been spending all her time with the vampires and her friends don’t really see her as a friend anymore. But when did that happen?
There are several points in the movie where Bella is engaging in potentially life-threatening situations (motorcycles, cliff-diving, etc) and sees some kind of vision of Edward when she does. But is it really him, or is it a ghost, or a fantasy, or a memory, or some kind of hallucination? The movie manages to get across that he isn’t actually there, though he somehow offers salient advice to whatever situation he might be in.
It’s points like these that make New Moon a bad movie. It’s a bad movie because instead of adapting the book to the best of it’s ability it is an obvious cash grab. Shirtless wolfboys and brooding vampires are what the fans of these movies expect and hey, the movie delivers at the expense of acting, story or character development.
As a short aside, while I was sitting in the theatre jotting notes about this two girls were sitting next to me. At one point one of them looked over and said “What are you writing,” in a completely serious tone. Having heard all about those fucking crazy Twilight fans I decided to play it cautiously. “Twilight review,” I replied. “Oh,” she said. “It better be a good review.”
Needless to say, I assured her it would be a good review. I’ll say it right now, I’ll lie to avoid getting stabbed by a teen girl.
Today marks the launch of our third podcast here at Insert Credits: Book and Film. In this podcast we’ll take fifteen minutes each week to look at the differences and similarities between a book, usually the one featured on the Bookcast, and any movies that have been based on that book.
In this week’s episode we continue our focus on Twilight in anticipation of the release of New Moon next week. Insert Credits staffers appearing this week include:
Andrew: Who hasn’t seen the movie but has read the book and didn’t like it.
Chelsey: Who has read the book and loved it and seen the movie but hated it.
Erron: Who hasn’t read the book but has seen the movie and hated it.
It promises to be an interesting week as we duke it out over the merits of the series and where they went wrong with the movie adaptation. If you’re reading this article from the main site then you can listen to the podcast in the player below or click the download link. You can also point your podcatching software of choice to the Book and Film feed.
Podcast (bookandfilm): Play in new window | Download
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Worldwar: In the Balance by Harry Turtledove
