The story in the movie "New Moon," mirrors the
book; the main differences are that due to time, the movie mercifully
leaves out some things and cuts short many lengthy scenes in the book.
For example, in the book, many, many pages must be torturously consumed
by the reader while the self-absorbed heroine, Bella, mopes unceasingly
after Edward. The various minutiae of the trip to Italy in the book,
which adds nothing to the plot or characters, is left out and replaced
by a jet flying in the sky.
Hordes of teenage girls gasped and made other squealy teen girl noises
throughout this movie whenever Bella's hunky friend Jacob appeared, or
when her undead boyfriend, Edward, kissed her. Jacob appeared shirtless
in most of the movie and was filmed from angles to show this off, and
Edward was shirtless for part of it. This certainly was not necessary in
most scenes, but clearly the movie's producers are in touch with today's
teen girls and know the effect this has. Maybe they figure that
cultivating lust at a young age will bring in future customers for the
more adult fare. This does not help the abstinence argument, a defense
of the books used by many who applaud the books because Bella and Edward
do not become intimate (sexually charged scenes continue in the third
book as it devolves into a teen bodice ripper toward the end when Jacob
essentially forces himself on Bella, who does not really fight back).
But abstinence is not refraining from sexual
intimacy due to outside conditions or because one is forced to refrain.
Abstinence at heart is a desire to remain pure outside of marriage.
Neither Bella nor Edward has this desire; it is the possibility that
Edward's strength could kill Bella that restrains him. In fact, Bella
pleads off and on throughout the books with him, but Edward refuses
because he does not want to harm her. "We can't be intimate because I
might kill you." This is abstinence?
The actor who plays Edward certainly is so pale in
the film that he does look dead. Wait - that's right -- he is dead.
Jacob, the werewolf, is a lively contrast to the pasty faced Edward.
However, it is Edward that Bella pines for, and she asks to be turned
into a vampire so she can be with Edward forever (and also, this way
they can be intimate without her being harmed). Bella voices this desire
to herself or to others throughout the book, so often that it becomes
tiring. Aside from her total infatuation with Edward, wanting to be with
him every single second, this is a constant thought in her mind. The
movie shows Bella's willingness to leave her family, friends, life as a
human, and to forfeit her soul, to become one of the undead. Why this
point does not disturb the legions of fans (or the parents of the teen
fans) but rather makes it romantic, I am not sure. My only conclusion is
that the culture is so deadened to evil and death, that death itself is
becoming insidiously attractive (death is also made attractive at many
points in the Harry Potter series, which perhaps laid some
groundwork for receptivity to this series).
Another disturbing element is that Bella discovers
that when she endangers herself, she has visions of a disembodied Edward
warning her against being reckless. So what does she do? She becomes
more reckless because that is how to have this vision. She takes a ride
with an older man on a motorcycle; she herself rides a motorcycle very
fast and then falls off. She even literally jumps off a cliff (and
almost drowns). A favorite parental line in response to a teen wanting
to do what their friends do is, "If they jump off a cliff, would you do
it?" Well, here is the heroine doing that very thing in order to conjure
up Edward. Parents should shudder. Unfortunately, too many of them
(mostly mothers and grandmothers) are instead joining in the
vampire-fest.
Lest we forget that vampires are attracted to
blood, when Bella has a paper cut at the home of the Cullens' (Edward's
vampire clan), Bella becomes just another tall drink of blood to them.
Later, other vampires pronounce her smelling "delicious." In fact, the
books harp on the fact that Edward is first drawn to Bella because of
the smell of her blood. This continues to attract him to her. Edward has
to fight to control his desire to drink her blood. I do not find this an
appealing characteristic in a young lady's boyfriend.
So we have a heroine who lies to her father (in the
books, it is more pronounced than the movies), has a boyfriend whose
initial and abiding attraction to her is her blood, who endangers
herself on purpose in order to "see" Edward, who wants to give up her
human life to become a vampire, and who has no real defining character.
In fact, all the characters, except for maybe Jacob, are rather shallow.
In truth, the humans in this saga are as empty of authentic humanity as
the vampires.