Theme Day Thursday p2

movie: Twilight 2 New Moon
starring: Taylor Lautner, Kristen Stewart
genre: Drama
year; 2009
format: DVD

plot: Bella begins having visions of herself aged, with Edward still young. This causes her to go through a big bought of insecurity about her relationship and life. She then spends her birthday with Edward's family, and once again the reminders hit hard that she is human, while they are not. She starts to beg Edward to turn her, but he refuses, and instead breaks up with her and moves away from town. Bella can not seem to accept this, running away to the one place she feels connected the most to Edward; the woods on the edge of town. Her unconscious body is then found by one of the locals. We see her spend the next few months in a horrible depression, isolating herself from everyone, and suffering from night terrors. In a moment of pure desperation, she puts herself in a highly dangerous situation, activating a psychic link to Edward. She then becomes addicted to this psychic link, and continues to become more and more reckless. These leads her to rebuilding her relationship with Jacob. After witnessing some of the guys cliff diving at the rez, she learns from Jacob that members of the community have become divided. Meanwhile, the school is a buzz with talks of what everyone is calling a bear attack not far from the edge of town, as she plans a group "date" in which she invites Jacob along. Once there, Jacob is overcome by jealousy, which causes him to act out and threaten one of Bella's male friends. We then see Jacob join "the pack".  While this is happening, a second group of vampires move into the area having learned that Edward's family no longer live there. With the entire pack now having gone through their full transformation, they expose themselves and hunt down the second tribe of vamps. Bella has yet another vision of both Edward and Jacob facing off against each other. This forces her to confront members of the community, unaware they are werewolves. One pack member takes it too personally and tries to attack Bella, just as Jacob comes to her rescue. She confesses to Jacob that she is the reason the second tribe of vamps are hanging around, and therefore the reason the lycantrhope had been triggered in the entire pack. Once again, Bella puts herself in danger on purpose in order to have once more psychic link with Edward. Only this time, believing she's dead, Edward plans his own suicide. Alice then arrives in town to inform Bella of this, and takes her half way across the planet to save Edward. When they return, Jacob and Edward do in fact have a verbal confrontation, forcing Bella to finally choose between them.


I've talked about this film a few times over the years. One of the things being that the werewolves in this are more interesting than the vampires. That pretty much goes for the entire franchise in my mind. The werewolves characters are just more developed than the vampires.

The meat of this story is the relationship between Bella and Jacob, and how they are both keeping parts of themselves locked away from the other. Even though they both desperately want to connect. The barrier between them is loyalty. Loyalty to what Bella has made herself believe is the perfect relationship; and loyalty to family. In this case, both Jacob and Bella. As Bella has wormed her way into the Cullens lives. Both are in turn keeping themselves locked away from their own self.
Jacob has only partly accepted his own nature to this point. As if denying it will make it less so. Bella, has done the same thing with the fact she knows a "perfect" relationship doesn't exist.  There is a scene where Bella is on a dirt bike, has a small accident; and lets her guard down for a brief few seconds when she tells Jacob she's attracted to him. She quickly retracts her response down playing it.  You almost get the impression she's punishing herself for realizing there could be someone else for her.

Another big theme here is moving on. The very fact the vampire aspect of the story is based on Romeo and Juliet and how extreme the characters react when faced with difficulty, shows they aren't as mature as they think.  Here, we have Edward an immortal vampire over a hundred years old, who acts like the perpetual teenager he's suppose to be hiding as; as well as Bella who is a couple of years older than Jacob, both acting like drama queens. While Jacob, who's life really has transformed into something unwelcome and unrecognizable to him, is handling it with more grace and maturity.
For Jacob, conformity has to happen. There is no other option at first glance. But, as the story progresses, we see him stand up for himself defying his "pack" when he not only tells Bella the truth, but decides to protect her. He's forced to choose between his family or his own desires.

This is one story where the hero does not win, does not get the girl and does not die in the process. He still has to get up in the morning, face the people who hurt him the most, and he does it. I think that's why this is the most interesting of the sequels.

The subplot of lycanthropy is a perfect metaphor for growing up and dealing with the unexpected. The duality that lurks within us all and how we deal with it.

Okay folks, I'm going to keep it short and end it here. Don't forget, this is part of my Hallowe'en project and that puts us at 321 Days till Hallowe'en 2018