Twilight Vs New Moon

Going to begin with a brief abstract here. In essence the original Twilight film was what some might say as “really good” or “OMG amazing”. Secondly New Moon was, to put it nicely, butchered. It’s pretty much a typical Hollywood scandal: “the first movie made money by accident, so the second WILL make money if we force it hard enough” Do we blame Summit Entertainment for bringing on Chris Weitz over Catherine Hardwicke?
We can start with Catherine Hardwicke, her previous credits include Thirteen, which was Golden Globe, Oscar and BAFTA nominated and also her debut film. This probably gave the industry some indication in 2003 what was to come of this talented female director in the business. Lords of Dogtown was also a success and had a large cult following which was her follow up. Then came Nativity Story and the most famous, Twilight. What many people fail to realise is that, it was originally an independent film with an independent film distributor, had a famous independent star (Kristen Stewart famous for many Sundance Festival films) so the whole film wasn’t a big budget industry killer to start off with. That’s the beauty of it and why it was so good. There were no major budgets calling for amazing special effects but instead the director got to direct the actors and give them a sense of purpose. It comes down to intense chemistry. There’s no denying Stewart and Robert Pattinson gave it their all in this performance. You can only imagine that Hardwicke connected with the actors to since she cast them through an audition in her own bedroom. Moving on to New Moon. This is where the fun stops. Chris Weitz directed The Golden Compass just before New Moon which was massacred by the studio, chopped and changed then finally released much to Philip Pullman’s probable disappointment. Granted every director has their ups and downs, Weitz probably just wasn’t best for this film. The film was full of horrible directing on the actors behalves. You know they can pull it off but there was just a lack of direction, they seemed awkward on camera and somewhat agitated. Of course all the actors have praised Weitz’s job, but it’s their job to do so on such a high budget shoot. The special effects weren’t anything to shout home about either.
Fortunately for the studio, there were a few half naked guys in this film that were going to appeal to the mass teenage girl’s fan base so it was never going to lose money, just integrity for all the people who connected so well to the first film. I will say this to authentic first time twilight fans; don’t let this sequel put you off. There was something in the first film that can be compared to some of the greatest love stories in movies, forget the vampire part, it’s just a metaphor for everything that keeps people apart in life. There’s still another two or three movies to come out of this series of books, let just hope Weitz isn’t directing Breaking Dawn.