New Moon
Okay, so on Friday night I saw New Moon, and, you guys? It was awesome.
It’s been getting a lot of horrible reviews, but it’s really hard to tell (j/k! it’s not really hard to tell! it’s totally obvious) if the movie is actually bad or if movie reviewers are by nature inclined to pan and hate the Twilight franchise and all it stands for because its target audience is young females and LORD KNOWS they can’t stand to see us making choices that reflect buying power. Keep the ladies in their places! Only men should be able to determine if a movie makes millions and millions of dollars at the box office simply by blowing up everything in a seven mile radius (ahem Transformers)! Because honestly, the over-the-top melodramatic romance of Twilight is the lady version of blowing stuff up.
My only concern about the film was that there was going to be too much Jacob. LOL this movie is all about Jacob, I know that, but I’m staunchly anti-Jacob, or at least I used to be. Okay, I’m still anti-book-Jacob-Jacob in the book is a total whiny brat of a tool who manipulates Bella and attacks her with his mouth. I’m also anti the way that Bella tolerates all of that shizz from him, but let’s not put Baby in a corner just yet or whatever. I have a point!
But here’s where it gets tricky: Taylor Lautner(’s chest) made me like Jacob a lot. I finally understood why maybe she might pick him, except of course I knew she wouldn’t (SPOILER!) pick him, because if there’s anything Stephenie Meyer does right in that book, it’s make a contract with the reader (I, the undersigned, Stephenie Meyer, do solemnly swear to make sure that Edward and Bella end up together as vampires at the end of this series) and stick with it! I believe in making a contract with the reader and not veering off in crazy directions when it makes no sense and presenting an unbelievable choice as a legitimate “twist”/solution.
So yeah, Team Edward 4 Lyfe or whatever, but also I get the Jacob thing now, although I still hate him in the books and always will. They were right to stick with Lautner, even though I know he went through many months of unhealthy body building to get them to hire him back, and I cringed for the first half of the movie every time he came on screen because of that awful wig they had him in. He was very likeable and believable as Jacob, and I actually believed the words that were coming out of his mouth. He might be the best actor of the three of them? Although you know I heart my RPATTZ so I don’t even know what I’m saying, crazy talk, obviously. By the way, they played the trailer for RPATTZ’s new movie (March 2010 baby!), Remember Me, before New Moon (of course they did) and it looks super great.
My favorite part of the trailer (aside from RPATTZ) is that his character reminds me somewhat of Neily, who I love. Which is funny, because I always thought RPATTZ would be a more appropriate portrayal of another character in the book, but whatever. Since Remember Me is as close to an All Unquiet Things movie as I think we’ll ever get, I’ll take it!
Secret shame: I now have two RPATTZ posters in my office. It’s okay, I work in children’s publishing-it’s allowed if you have it up ironically. Whenever people comment on it (because they do) I always tell them that he’s watching over me while I work because he loves me and he just wants me to be safe. TWILOLZ!! Gets a laff every time (I don’t think it’s ever gotten a laugh, actually).
So anyway, I thought the stuff between Bella and Jacob in New Moon was sexy and funny. The movie was a lot of fun, actually. A lot of people are using the word “joyless” to describe the relationships the series presents, and while that’s in a lot of ways true, I thought there was plenty of fun here. Lots of smiles between Bella and Jacob, he jokes around with her, even Bella says a minorly funny thing at the end of the movie when Edward’s trying to convince his family not to let Bella become a vampire and she gives him a breathy “Shut…UP” which is way more amusing in the delivery than it is on the page.
I did miss Edward. I do heart him-his hang ups about being soulless and damned are very sad to me, and one of the most interesting things about him. I can’t imagine how depressed he is or must have been for those 90 or so years he’s lived as a vampire. To believe, to truly and steadfastly believe, that there is nothing beautiful or special or good about you, must be such a hard burden to bear, a crushing weight. And if Bella lifts that weight for Edward, then good for him. And also, I get why he left her. People laugh at the whole, “I’m dangerous and I can’t protect you” thing, but he’s right-he IS dangerous and he CAN’T protect her, OBVIOUSLY. Jacob, too. They’re both dangerous creatures who could kill her as soon as look at her, and they’re often getting tangled up in a bunch of nasty supernatural business that she has no defense against. They should both leave her the hell alone, if they really want her to be safe. But they can’t because love or whatever, so fine. But at least he had to try, and that’s commendable.
Also, one final thing, because I’ve been thinking about this a lot. People say that Edward is a perv because he’s an old man lusting after a teenaged girl, even though he looks like a teenaged boy. And while that is not an incorrect theory, per se, I don’t find it all that problematic. While I would agree if it was, say, Carlisle who was dating Bella, because he’s an actual mature man, and was when he was turned into a vampire, I think Edward is probably pretty stunted as a result of all his spiritual and emotional hangups and his general antisocial behavior. He leads this lonely, passionless life, experiences nothing, feels nothing, like a depressed Peter Pan.
Strangely, I’ve never heard the “ew pervert” argument about Jesse, the immortal boy from Tuck Everlasting who falls in love with Winnie, even though he’s a hundred years old by that point and she’s like fifteen or something. Because Jesse’s a boy, not a man. He’s just been a boy a lot longer than most boys are. In that book, Mr. Tuck explains to Winnie how, when time ceases to matter, it ceases to exist. Immortal beings (such as they are) are outside of time and not subject to its rules or the things it brings a normal human-maturity, wisdom, knowledge, age. So Jesse and Edward are not, inside, the equivalents of 100 year old men. They are boys who have stepped outside of time. I think that’s different. And also amazingly interesting.
And now for the coda: how great were those Volturi, AMIRITE? Creepy and pitch-perfectly insane, just like in the book. Except Jane, who was just creepy and awesome. Dakota Fanning FTW! She stole the movie.
Originally published at AnnaJarzab.com