Sequel New Moon outshines Twilight

Ellen Gustavson/Staff Writer

A Romeo-and-Juliet-based romance, complete with sexy vampires and werewolves fighting. What could be better?

Excitement is running high for the movie New Moon, the latest installment of the Twilight series. But is all the hype worth it? I for one was pleasantly surprised with this movie, because it had quite an unimpressive prequel. The stiff, unnatural acting and lame special effects in Twilight made it way too cliché for my liking, and I found myself setting the bar for this one pretty low. But New Moon was overall much more enjoyable to watch, despite having a rather abrupt ending. I give it three and a half stars out of five.

New Moon, based on the second in a series of four books by Stephanie Meyer, picks up where Twilight left off. Bella Swan is living in a perfect world with her vampire soulmate, Edward Cullen, but an incident on her birthday causes him to think he is unsafe for Bella’s world, and the only solution is for him to leave. With Edward gone, Bella spirals down into deep depression, finding she only feels better when she is with her friend (and werewolf) Jacob Black. But a sudden plot twist leads Bella to leave Jacob and travel to Italy in a race to save Edward’s life.

The movie mostly sticks very close to the book. It begins with only a few minor plot differences; after that it stays on track with the book fairly well. Some parts of the book are left unexplained, which might make it hard for someone who hasn’t read the Twilight series to understand what is going on in the movie, but explaining every little thing would have made the movie drawn out and boring.

Once again I found Robert Pattinson, who plays Edward Cullen, to display poor acting skills. His voice is very monotonous and rehearsed; very few times does he utter a line with genuine feeling behind it. He is nothing like the Edward I imagined when I read the books. The reason I liked this movie so much more than Twilight was probably because Pattinson didn’t have such a large role.
Another reason why New Moon was better can be summed up in two words: Taylor Lautner.

Playing the part of Jacob Black, not only is Lautner a much better actor than Pattinson, but he also meets (and very possibly exceeds) the expectations for being a major source of eye candy in this movie. Added to that, his friendly, comical character and some pretty sweet werewolf action make almost every scene with Lautner exciting and fun to watch. Only once or twice did I find myself roling my eyes at what I thought was some pretty blantant over-acting.

My only other complaint was that the ending is very sudden. It was obviously meant to keep the audience waiting in suspense for the next movie, but I think it was a little over the top. Still, no movie is perfect, and I was pleased with this one. New Moon outshines Twilight for sure.

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