Twilight: New Moon

Twilight: New Moon

What Harry Potter did for children’s fantasy Twilight has done for teen gothic romance, bringing the undying love and heaving bosoms to a new generation of young women.
Second in the franchise, New Moon starts with characters and relationships established and so quickly sets about getting teen ladies swooning. Edward has decided that he has to go; he barely trusts himself with his love, Bella, and her insistence that he turn her into a vampire like himself doesn’t sit well with his idea of the immortal soul, so he denies his feelings and to save his love, he skips town and leaves Bella to a bit of despair. Cue some ridiculous scenes of teen moodiness, firstly of Bella having the most monumental sulk, camera panning 360 degrees around her as she sits motionless whilst the seasons come and go outside her bedroom window. Then comes childhood friend Jacob who Bella decides would be a good way to pass the time and ease some of the Edward pain, regardless of Jacob’s obvious crush on her. She starts to thrill seek like riding too fast on dirt bikes as the danger instigates visions of Edward telling her to stop, only encouraging her as she tries to bring on the visions again and again and satiate her Edward craving. Wispy hallucinations aren’t the peak of the hysteria, though. Jacob’s reaction to Bella playing his heart is to join up with his dodgy mates which entails cropping his hair, suddenly bulking up and developing the habit of running about in the Alaskan forest in just his shorts. Oh, that and becoming a werewolf. It seems that some of his Native American tribe were not just enemies of vampires, but actively fought them as werewolves. It begs the question of how the Native Americans lost North America to the Europeans, but hey.
As with vampire mythology Twilight picks and chooses from the ‘rules’ associated with werewolves, as the boys retain control over their wolf forms (albeit quick to anger) and are not bound to the moon. Even the frequent, gratuitous scenes of Jacob and his beefcake torso (Twilight’s take on the gothic heaving, corseted bosom, and the source of a messy drinking game) aren’t the peak of New moon’s strangeness - this is reserved for the Voltari, something like the high council of vampires and preening, camp hams to a man, decked out in centuries old regalia as if the shiny-skinned updating of the vampire myth never happened. Michael Sheen is particularly guilty here as head vamp, all bug eyes and wry smiles and no doubt relishing the prospect of outdoing Bill Nighy from their Underworld days.
New Moon certainly isn’t only for ladies prone to corny romance, but everyone else may end up enjoying it for reasons no necessarily intended. Though with the sheer quantities of camp sloshing around it would be hard to believe that the producers don’t recognise some of its more ridiculous appeal.