New Moon > Twilight

For those of you who are in a hurry I’ll just come right out and say it. New Moon is a better movie than Twilight. If you are interested in why I think so then please continue reading.

Actually it’s not better in every way but it is in the most important ways. First let me tell you the things I didn’t like about it.

The score and music. I thought the music from Twilight was excellent and fit the story very well. The music in New Moon is completely forgettable and I was actually distracted by it a couple of times. It just felt much less mythical and vampirey and much more like the music from a typical generic Hollywood love story.

Although this movie did a very good job of staying faithful to the book they did leave out the part that I was looking forward to the most. After Edward leaves Bella, she gets back to her room to find that Edward has taken anything and everything that could possibly remind her of him. Her immediate and total devastation is so well written in the book but is completely skipped over in the movie. I was disappointed.

My final gripe is in no way the fault of the film makers as it is part of the story from the book itself and so I was quite prepared to endure it but that doesn’t mean I had to like it right? That being, that for the bulk of the movie Edward is gone and Jcub is left to weasel his way into Bella’s life. I just don’t like anyone messing with Bella and Ed’s destiny.

Now for the good news, yay!

What a difference a change of director can make. I’m so glad I didn’t give up on Kristen Stewart after the first movie. Although I was disappointed in her portrayal of Bella in Twilight I really did feel that she still had Bella locked up inside her somewhere and I was right. She is so much better in New Moon! And if I may say so, they seem to have ignored the fact that she is supposed to be kind of plain and just decided to let her be the beautiful girl Kristen is capable of being complete with magazine quality eyebrows and lovely well conditioned hair. I have never seen K Stew looking this good. She is just so pretty in New Moon. But never mind all that. It appears that her one dimensional performance in the first film was completely the fault of the director. In New Moon she shows a much wider range of emotion and really feels much more like the Bella of the books. Most importantly she is allowed to show that she is genuinely in love with Edward. This was what I found missing from her performance in Twilight and what I was so glad to see this time.

Most of the other actors seem to have gotten makeovers between films and were much more Hollywood if that makes sense. I think that I actually preferred most of their looks in the first movie but I’m glad they let Ashley Greene get rid of that silly spiky hair from Twilight and let Alice become the lovely girl I could see hiding under all those spikes last time. (In case you haven’t noticed before, I just really really ♥ Alice.)

Call me crazy but when an original story is good I generally prefer the movie to stick with it rather than having the director give us his own personal vision which is supposedly somehow based on the book but inevitably takes off in a totally different direction. Chris Weitz has done very well in this regard and except for my previously mentioned disappointment I don’t really have any other complaints about what parts and how much of the book he was able to get onto the screen. Like other movies based on big fat books, there is the inescapable condensing of the story so it is obviously to be enjoyed most by those who have read the book.

Ultimately, Edward and Bella were great together and seemed to me to be much more like they were in the book. This is what is most important to me about the whole twilight story and this movie got their characters back on track and where they should have been from the start. Most everything else is secondary.

Dear Kristen has finally become Bella and Edward is back from Italy never to leave again. I can now look forward to the continuation of the story without worrying if I will ever recognize Bella and Edward from the book up on the screen. I still like the first movie and continue to prefer certain aspects of it to this one but overall I think New Moon gets more of the important things right and is definitely the better of the two films.