The Twilight Saga: New Moon is the saga's most dramatically uneven entry and its most emotionally committed, a film that replaces Hardwicke's atmospheric Pacific Northwest melancholy with a more conventionally staged romantic drama whose central emotional premise, Bella's grief at Edward's departure, is handled with enough sincerity to give the picture a dramatic core. Chris Weitz's 2009 sequel is not the equal of the original, but it is a more earnest and more dramatically ambitious film than its critical reception suggested, and its willingness to spend a significant portion of its runtime in the absence of its most commercially valuable character is a creative decision of courage that the franchise's more commercially cautious subsequent entries did not always replicate.
At a Glance
Director: Chris Weitz
Runtime: 130 minutes
Starring: Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner, Ashley Greene, Michael Sheen
Release: 2009
Critics Rating: ★★ (2/5 stars, dramatically uneven but emotionally committed)
Audience Rating: ★★★ (3/5 stars, divisive but valued for Lautner's Jacob and the Volturi's introduction)
Review Breakdown
Plot
Following a birthday accident that convinces Edward that his presence endangers Bella, he leaves Forks, plunging Bella into a months-long depression visualised through a striking time-lapse sequence. Her gradual recovery through her friendship with Jacob Black, revealed to be a werewolf, is interrupted by a misunderstanding that sends Edward to the Volturi, the vampire world's ruling council, seeking death. The introduction of the Volturi gives the saga's mythology a political dimension that the subsequent entries develop with considerable effect, and the most effective structural decision is the use of the Volturi's arrival to give the saga's mythology a scale and a complexity that the more domestically focused original had not attempted.
Characters
Taylor Lautner's Jacob is the most important achievement, a character of warmth and physical presence whose friendship with Bella gives the middle section its most dramatically credible human dynamic. Lautner's physical transformation and emotional directness give Jacob a presence that makes him the saga's most immediately appealing character and the film's most important casting success. Michael Sheen's Aro is the most enjoyably theatrical new addition, a Volturi leader of extraordinary camp menace whose scenes give the final act a comic energy that the more dramatically serious passages do not always achieve. Sheen's Aro is a performance of extraordinary theatrical commitment that gives the Volturi sequences a comic energy entirely at odds with their dramatic function and entirely effective as entertainment. Stewart's Bella is given the most dramatically demanding arc, and her portrayal of Bella's depression and recovery is the most emotionally committed performance in the picture, communicating the character's grief and her gradual return to engagement with the world with a physical specificity and an emotional precision that the more conventionally staged passages do not always match.
Tone
Weitz replaces Hardwicke's atmospheric visual identity with a more conventionally staged approach, a decision that gives the film a broader visual accessibility at the cost of the original's distinctive atmospheric register. The months-passing sequence is the most visually inventive passage, a time-lapse of Bella sitting motionless at her window as the seasons change around her that communicates her depression with a visual economy and a dramatic force that the more conventionally staged sequences cannot match.
Meaning / Themes
The central concern is the relationship between love and identity, and the question of what remains of a person when the relationship that has defined them is removed. Bella's depression and her gradual recovery through her friendship with Jacob give the film a dramatic exploration of grief and resilience that the saga's more action-oriented entries do not attempt, and the willingness to engage with the psychological reality of romantic loss with a seriousness and a specificity that the genre's more conventionally optimistic treatments do not always permit gives it a thematic dimension that its critical reception did not adequately acknowledge.
Direction
Weitz's direction is competent rather than distinctive, maintaining the saga's narrative momentum without adding anything to its visual identity. His most effective directorial achievement is the months-passing sequence, which demonstrates a visual imagination that the more conventionally staged passages do not always sustain. Alexandre Desplat's score provides a more conventionally orchestral sonic identity than Burwell's work on the original, maintaining the saga's emotional register without the atmospheric distinctiveness of the first film.
Cultural Reception
New Moon received poor reviews on its release but was a massive commercial success, grossing over $709 million worldwide to become one of the highest-grossing films of 2009. Its commercial performance demonstrated the extraordinary loyalty of the franchise's fanbase and established the Twilight saga as one of the most commercially significant franchises of its era. It is now regarded as the saga's most dramatically uneven entry, a film whose central grief narrative is more affecting than its critical reception acknowledged.
Who Should Watch
Saga followers who want to see Jacob's expanded role and the Volturi's introduction. New Moon is the saga's most emotionally ambitious entry and its most dramatically uneven, and those who engage with its central grief narrative will find it a more affecting experience than its critical reputation suggests.
Final Verdict: The saga's most dramatically uneven and most emotionally committed entry. Lautner's Jacob is the most important achievement, Sheen's Aro is its most purely entertaining new addition, and the months-passing sequence is the saga's most visually inventive passage. It is not the equal of the original, but it is a more earnest and more dramatically ambitious film than its critical reception suggested.
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