Special guest critic Adam Perry weighs in on New Moon and Terminator: Salvation
´"Ten million flies can´t be wrong. Eat more shit."
-G.C. Hill
How long did it take Twilight to storm the most mundane hill in the world, that of mass appeal? The book Twilight came out in 2005, the final one, Breaking Dawn, in 2008. There are also apparently unpublished retellings and second parts to books one and two. The third book is called Eclipse, the second, New Moon. I think each book sold over ten copies. The author is Stephanie Meyer, a Mormon. She has never seen an R-rated film, except for parts of Interview with a Vampire.
The first film, directed by Catherine Hardwicke, came out on November 21st, 2008. Twilight the movie looked as though, from it´s exceptionally atrocious previews, like everything was saturated in grey. Maybe those were the creative differences that drove Hardwicke from the film, although it was allegedly the production timeline for New Moon. It took three hundred and fifty-seven days for New Moon, re-titled The Twilight Saga: New Moon to appear onscreens, unless, like me, you were in Spain, in which case it came out two days earlier than it did state side.
I saw the first trailer for New Moon before Where the Wild Things Are. It was a single scene, consisting of Kristen Stewart, the heroine, being threatened by an unseen attacker, and a shirtless Taylor Lautner, who nearly went the way of Hardwicke himself, run and turn into a wolf, defending her. The effects were so horrendous looking that I thought to myself, I have to see this film. Twilight´s extremely poor-looking production value and foolish greys had already tempted me, and here was new moon, with a release date falling on my birthday, tempting me again. The first full trailer of the Chris Wietz directed film looked so awful I couldn´t believe it was from a real movie, thus solidfying my need to see it.
However, things, as always, did not go according to plan. I had an opportunity to travel with a good friend, and although it meant missing both Bad LT. Port of Call New Orleans, I had to leave the country. However, as was to be expected, New Moon was playing worldwide, even earlier than in the states! I bullied my friend, a reluctent fan of the first film only, not the books, into seeing New Moon in spanish.
Since I knew nothing of Twilight or New Moon's plot, the movie did not make much sense to me. I know that New Moon starts on Bella´s birthday (because I remembered from Spanish class that cumpleaños means birthday), and that she is almost assaulted by one of her vampire lover Edward´s friends. This prompts Edward to leave the story, which I figured out because I was only seeing shadowy images of Robert Pattinson, which let me know he was in those scenes only in Bella´s mind. I knew that she was growing close to the Ducky-like Jacob (soley in personality, as Jacob is muscular enough to shame any gym-going man), who turns out to be a wolf also. Then Bella travels to a foreign country I didn´t know because I don´t speak spanish, Dakota Fanning showed up for no reason, some ancient vampires lead by Michael Sheen let Edward go, and he and Bella return to the states. The film ends with the most anti-climactic confrontation between werewolf and vampire.
I knew when I was supposed to laugh, as the audience´s laughter told me something funny was happening, and more importantly, when I wasn´t supposed to, which would be when I was the only one laughing, usually at Robert Pattinson´s hilarious ghostly images.
First, the good. The soundtrack, the entire theatre letting out a collective orgasmic gasp the first time Jacob appears shirtless, and any time Robert Pattinson is on screen.
The bad. The differences between vampires and humans in this series seem only to be strength and agility. Nary a fang or even a bite is shown, and vampires walk about during the day time freely. I´m all for reinventing the wheel and everything, but it should be reinvented with talent, not a bunch of illogical and, frankly, uninteresting stylistic choices.
At least Chris Weitz allowed a color other than grey into the film. Next job: getting Kristen Stewart to crack a smile. Current grade: A for a hilarious time. I plan to watch and review both Twilight and New Moon in english.
This morning I re-watched Terminator: Salvation. I had seen it in theatres and left taking only the discovery of Sam Worthington with me as a positive, hating the rest. This was mostly because the trailer for the film that debuted with The Dark Knight looked amazing, with the best Nine Inch Nails song (the day the world went away) playing throughout. However, upon second viewing, the film can be seen as, if nothing else positive, ambitious. Unlike the first three Terminator films, which were exaclty the same film no matter what any one says, McG and his crew cooked up a plot that did not just involve running from a machine that is unstoppable until film´s end. He split the movie into two parts, one that followed Christian Bale as the fourth person to play John Connor (yeah, I´m counting The Sarah Connor Chronicles), and the other following executed criminal Marcus Wright, played by the revelatory Sam Worthington. The film lumbers along inoffensively and is even somewhat satisfying, but it has three major problems that can make it flunk-worthy to purists.
1) the marginalization of John Connor.
for the main character of the film, John Connor is actually outmatched by Marcus Wright for screen time. It doesn´t help that the scenes he does have are full of tired shouting and predictable struggles with superiors, while Wright is an interesting, compelling, mysterious character that the audience will find way more interesting and exciting to follow. As John Connor, Christain Bale doesn´t really bring anything to the table, not giving a bad performance, but certainly not making the audience miss him when he is gone.
2) References to the other films
there are three of these that I find intolerable, one somewhat O.K. Young Kyle Reece, suprisingly not terribly played by Anton Yelchin, tells Marcus Wright "Come with me if you want to live." strike one. The second, which is atually somewhat more subtile, is Wright teaching Reece to tie his shotgun to himself, as Michael Biehn does in Terminator 1. The third is John Connor telling his wife, this time played by Bland, I mean Bryce, Dallas Howard, "I´ll be back." Not only does infuriate me to think how much that original line is taken out of context as it is, this "homage" solidified it. The fouth, and most unforgiveable, is a fake Arnold as the main terminator at the end of the film, revealed as though it is a huge surprise. Don´t treat me like an idiot McG, especially not after the dollars I pumped into Charlie´s Angels I and II and all the time I spent defending you, I know that ain´t Arnold Schwarzzenegger. Absolutly pointless.
3), and finally. the hated PG-13 rating
No, I did not want to see Moon Bloodgood naked. I wanted the old fashioned, and never abandoned unbrideled carnage of the first three films. Even the huge action set pieces that plagued Rise of the Machines were filled with the requisite creative blood-letting that had defined the franchise. The decision to make the film PG-13 felt purely financial, not artistic at all, and the bitch of it all is that Terminator: Salvation was a financial disappointment.
The film is worth it to watch simply for the Marcus Wright storyline, but mediocrity, along with the above stated issues, weigh the film down. It depends on the viewer as to how much. Marcus Wright parts, A-, Christian Bale: C-, film C plus (there is no plus sign on this spanish keyboard)
thanks for reading guys. -Adam
