My New Moon Premiere experience

November 19. 2009, under Blogr with No Comments

It’s not something I like to admit, but I’m a Twilight fan. It disgusts me. It’s something I can’t explain and it shames me to even say so. How this came to be I do not know. I’m not as obsessed as other fans but I share the passion. I wrote about it in Blogger months ago, when I read the books.

Today was the New Moon premiere here in Puerto Rico. I checked the listings to see which would be the earliest showing and where. Plaza las Americas, 10:25am. The good news, it’s nearby. The bad news, today’s a holiday. I wasn’t sure how much hype there would be since I never go to the movies on the first day. I think I did go to see Star Trek on its first day, but I went at night, not the matinée show (I was tagging along with my sister and her friend, that are closet trekkies).

Anyway, my older sister and I got there at 10am and the line was insanely long. I was sporting my Forks High School gym T-shirt to show my fan status. Tickets were sold out for the first 2 shows and it looked like the next one was on its way. The obvious decision was Plan B: San Patricio.

We got there and there was a decent line at the box office. I’m guessing 20 people. A mother told me that the line was long in Plaza since 8am. I wasn’t shocked. I knew that the people expected would be greater than Twilight. People like me that read the books after watching the movie and became fans would be there. Plaza has 4 theatres showing New Moon and San Patricio has 3, all with different showtimes.

San Patricio doesn’t have stadium seating and Plaza Guaynabo’s matinée show was at 2pm. Too late for my taste. All I could do was wait and hope nobody tall would sit in front of me. While waiting in line I overheard conversations and found one to be interesting. It was a girl, I’m guessing she’s in college and a guy probably a freshman in college or high school senior. She was talking about True Blood and mentioned that she liked The Lost Boys, the clueless boy hasn’t seen either of them and I said “The Lost Boys is a vampire classic film. If you haven’t seen it, you should rent it.” The girl agreed and said I had great taste. That was it. I tuned out the mindless conversations around me and waited to buy the tickets. I thought I didn’t have to wait that long for the box office to open. The website last night said 11:45am but apparently they changed it to 12:15pm.

A few people had bought tickets the day before, lucky them. They got to go in before anyone else. Once I had my ticket I hit the concession stand to buy soda and fresh popcorn. The wait made me hungry. My sister got us a seat but I thought it was too far away when I sat down. I didn’t want the tweens in front of me squealing. So I told her to move up front. We found a row that was still empty and not too close to the first row. It was comfortable enough to lean back and see the screen without hurting my neck. I was a little pissed when the row in front of us was filled with little kids but they behaved well.

I had really low expectations for the movie of course. The book is always better than the movie. The only exception to that rule is Bridget Jones’s Diary. But I was quite surprised that the movie was better than Twilight. The script was more faithful to the book and all the important elements were shown. That’s all that really matters.

The rundown: there were well placed images for those not in the know, my sister complained about the decor of the Cullens house since it should be all white (that really didn’t bother me), Jacob’s gift was the wrong one, Sam Uley’s cliff dive looked too fake, the wolf pack renders were good (although I do prefer animatronics like in Underworld), Edward looked more vampire like (noted by my sister), the gratuitous violence in Volterra was interesting to watch but not necessary, and there is no scene at the end of the credits.

It was still pretty enjoyable to watch Bella, Edward and Jacob interact. It kills me that Bella’s character is so stupid and weak, but she’s the same in the book so it doesn’t really matter. At least she’s redeemed in Breaking Dawn. Now THAT would be an interesting movie to watch.