New Moon revisited

November 23. 2009, under Blogr with No Comments

I finished re-reading New Moon last night to compare the book with the movie details and I have to say it wasn’t that bad of an adaptation. Some little things bother me but they’re forgivable. I remember an interview Stephenie Meyer did in which she said that from what she had seen it fits the Twilight world. I have to agree with her. The following statements include spoiler alerts if you haven’t seen the film.

In the motorcycle scene, after Bella crashed, Jacob said “no more bikes”. This doesn’t happen in the book, but I think it works. I can picture Jacob saying something like that for Bella’s sake. The girl IS a hazard to herself and they don’t use the bikes again. In the book they only show up at the end when Jacob leaves them on Charlie’s driveway.

In the book when Alice shows up, Jacob drives away with Bella and she tells him to stop, Jacob abandoning the car and leaving Bella there confused. The movie scene is different, but it was ok, I understand the time constraint.

I totally get the whole cramming the book in just two hours, so obviously little details are left out and others mushed together. Something that also doesn’t show in the book is Victoria lifting Harry Clearwater, causing him the heart attack. That was interesting.

I don’t know why the Romeo and Juliet movie scene takes place in the school. That didn’t make sense to me. It’s supposed to be in her house after school. But it was funny, Edward got to show off his Shakespeare skills. I think that scene was better than the book.

I wish the birthday decorations were like in the book, with the lamps, the cake, and flower petals everywhere, but that’s ok. The most important thing was the paper cut sequence. Although if the house were all white like in the book, the blood would’ve been more dramatic. I don’t like that they made it look so dark, light and fluorescent was the way to go.

In the book, when Bella visits Jacob during her depression he says he’s 6’5″. Taylor Lautner isn’t that tall, but he looks good. The boy is pretty cute and you gotta hand it to him for working on those muscles to keep the part. I’m glad they kept him as Jacob. He plays the character well.

After Bella jumps off the cliff and falls into the water, in the book Edward’s voice tells Bella not to give up when she’s drowning. In the movie you just see his ghost floating in the water with her. The movie scene gives it a different vibe. I think I would’ve liked for Edward’s ghost to tell Bella not to give up, not in a shouting voice like in the book, but more like a plead.

In the movie, there’s no reason for Jacob to show up at Bella’s school on her birthday and give her a dreamcatcher. I would’ve cut that scene altogether but I guess it was a cute detail since during her depression she suffers from the nightmares. Edward’s gift would’ve been preferable to watch, the CD with his songs. Of course, since they fucked the lullaby scene in Twilight, I can see why they opted to leave that out.

In the voting of Bella’s mortality, I liked that Jasper said that it would be nice for him to not want to eat her. In the book, he just says yes. So that was funny.

The movie that Bella, Jacob, and Mike go to see is called Crosshairs. In the movie it’s Face Punch or something like that. It’s a minor detail that didn’t need changing.

When Bella is walking with Jessica in what’s supposed to be a girl’s night out, the shady guys she goes up to are supposed to be next to the bar and NOT on motorcycles. I guess they decided to make her even more reckless. The motorcycle scene was interesting and I guess it leads to her getting the busted bikes. So this really didn’t bother me.

In Italy, there is NO fight scene. The gratuitous violence was interesting to watch, but there’s NO vampire violence in the book. It’s supposed to be edgy vampire formality. I also don’t get why Caius is so young looking but that really doesn’t matter.

At the end of the movie they blend the marriage proposal with the treaty scene. This doesn’t bother me much either. The book ends with Charlie screaming for Bella to get in the house since Jacob got her in trouble by leaving her bike on the driveway. Charlie loves motorcycles, you know. Right…

All in all, there are details obviously omitted because of time. But there are little things that didn’t need to be changed. What’s up with that? I hate it when they do that.