The Twilight Saga: New Moon

Review by Jason Donner

I have so many problems with the Twilight fad that it would take my own series of books and movies to adequately express them.  These simplistically written tomes and their messages about female submission has done untold damage to world culture and the very myth of the vampire.  In just five years, we've gone from Vlad the Impaler who dined with the severed heads of his enemies and who fought in a red suit of armor that looked like a skinned human body to a bunch of sparkling sissies.

Damn you, Stephanie Myer.

Obviously, I wasn't a fan of the Twilight movie either.  It's bad enough when you have this kind of material to work with, but when it's badly cast and so badly directed as well, you take something already damaging and make it truly excruciating.  If the books are written on a third grade level, the movie is in pre-K at best.  At worse, this is something you would show to zoo monkeys but then you might bring on the wrath of PETA by doing that.

The most amazing thing is that, as the last year has gone by, "Twi-hard" fans have started to agree with me.  They've stopped lying to themselves and basically admitted that Twilight was a heap of crap.  Sadly, they started making excuses for New Moon at the same time.  Oh, it's the worst book in the series. There's no way that they can make a good movie about it.

Then Taylor Lautner took of his shirt and all of their doubt was gone.  Once thing is for sure, The Twilight Saga knows its target audience and being a man in my thirties and mostly intelligent, I ain't in it.

So we come to The Twilight Saga: New Moon.  I'm not sure why Twilight is deserving of its own saga, but the intellect in me believes that the makers of this movie has so little respect for their audience's intelligence that they didn't trust them to be able to realize that New Moon was the Twilight sequel without the word "Twilight" in it.

But I digress...

Some time has passed since Bella and Edward met and absolutely no sparks were produced between them.  Bella is beginning to realize - on her birthday, no less - that she is mortal and Edward is not and begins to doubt that he will love her when she's old and gray.  Edward, on the other hand, refuses to turn her into a vampire because he doesn't want to damn her soul.  Given that they have no trouble damning the entire audience with this movie, I fail to see what the big deal is.

When Edward's Sparkling Vampire Family Funtime Revue throw Bella a surprise birthday party, she makes history by being the first idiot to get a paper cut on wrapping paper.  This makes Jasper (the vampire who always looks like he has to poop) go mad and attack her and Edward valiantly saves his woman by throwing her into a glass table.

Wait... what?

Edward decides that his life is too dangerous to involve Bella in and he dumps her like a bad habit.  For Bella, this is the end of the world!  She lies in bed and screams like a toddler who wants a candy bar at the store.  She also becomes an adrenaline junkie because it makes her feel alive and, based on Kristen Stewart's acting, I can understand why we would think Bella is dead during this movie.

Goodness, Bella is just an overdramatic little harpy in this movie!  A spoiled and dour ball of sourness that makes you go from just not liking her to fully hating her.  That's not writing that happens on accident!  That takes talent!

Lo and behold here comes Jacob Black (the fat-faced little Indian kid from the first movie) who has grown up and filled out.   Jacob cares for Bella and loves her despite her complete lack of anything remotely approaching any level of appeal and just when it looks like there's going to be something between them... he dumps her like a bad habit.

Oh, but everything is not as is seems for you see... Jake is a werewolf and he doesn't want to hurt her, but his wolfy loins still burn for her.  Also, he and the other werewolves can read each other's mind because, in the Stephanie Myers universe, every supernatural creature has to have one trait that is impossibly lame.

Meanwhile, after an adrenaline-seeking Bella jumps off a cliff into the ocean and remarkably (and sadly) doesn't die, Edward believes she is dead and plans to reveal himself as a vampire by stepping into the sunlight and sparkling and be put to death.  Apparently, in the vampire world, this is illegal because then the entire world will realize how lame sparkling vampires really are.

It's like Romeo and Juliet told by an illiterate with sock puppets.

Now, can Bella run to Italy and stop Edward from killing himself and showing the world his disgusting and uneven nipples?  Will Edward and Bella be back together again to remind us of the complete lack of chemistry the two of them share?  Will Eclipse bomb at the box office so they will stop making these horrible movies?

New Moon is every bit if not more terrible than Twilight ever was.  The writing is awful and corny, the directing is slightly improved but not by much, and Bella is so annoying and self-centered with a complete lack of any real personality that she could have been replaced with a potted plant and it's unlikely anyone would have noticed.

What's worse is that New Moon continues pushing the skewed submissive nonsense on young girls as its message is, apparently, "The worse your man treats you, the more he loves you."  Seriously, is that what we're telling our young women?  Let's face it, if you were to take away Edward and Jake's supernatural powers, you know what you would have?  A stalker and an abuser!

This movie is awful!  Awful to its horrible core!  There is no heart or an ounce of anything genuine in this hastily assembled juggernaut designed to indoctrinate young women into a submissive lifestyle and to make their panties wet by doing it.

New Moon is not only an affront to cinema, but it's an affront to good taste and the last one hundred years of women's rights.  This is probably one of the most offensive and damaging movies I have ever seen all year and it will be a cold day in hell before any of my daughters sit down to watch it because I love them and I want them to be strong and not dominated and codependent as Twilight apparently wants all women to be.  I have never seen such a misogynistic movie nor a protagonist behave as such a manipulative cocktease.

Team Jacob?  Team Edward?  Sign me up for Team Buffy!