Like most self-respecting human males, I hadn’t heard of Twilight until the first film came out, and ever since it did, there’s been a deluge of vampire-y stories; True Blood, The Vampire Diaries, Mona the Vampire, etc.
Let me briefly outline the plot of the Twilight saga so far based upon a single viewing of each film and very little background knowledge. Bella Swan arrives in a town mostly inhabited by male models, (most of whom seem to end up saving her after she wanders aimlessly into danger) and starts causing trouble with a local family; the Malfoys, I mean, Cullens. It does seem slightly unbelievable that nobody else at the school has noticed the whole vampire issue, since the family are paler than Englishmen in Magaluf, sparkle in sunlight, and are super weird. Anyway, Bella gets into all sorts of scrapes with Edward “Draco Malfoy” Cullen, with whom she falls in love, and who turns out to be into the weird stuff – namely blood. Hilarity ensues, and randomly placed action sequences come as a welcome break from the love-struck teenage-angst heartbreak nonsense that goes on throughout both films.
The one rule of both films is this: why wear a shirt when you could not wear a shirt? Frankly, I haven’t seen so much male nudity since I rented “Hot Stableboys 5” by accident (not as good as the previous four); but they’ve all got six packs and are secretly vampires and werewolves, so apparently it’s fine.
If you haven’t seen New Moon, look away now, because there’s a chance that this might spoil it for you. But nothing spoils it as much as actually watching the film, so you should probably just read this instead of watching it. I’m doing you a favour. Really.
New Moon is the “sequel” to the original Twilight, despite feeling (to me) like it had nothing to do with the first, with Bella’s moaning being the only constant. Wah, hot werewolf boy loves me, but I’m in love with the vampire from the previous film, wah. I felt a bit cheated; it was a bit like watching a Rush Hour film without Jackie Chan, where we instead just watch the annoying one running around being annoying for a whole film. And, as much as I fancy Kristin Stewart, she is definitely the annoying one. New Moon essentially consists of an hour of gratuitous top-half nudity, followed by a slightly more surreal half where we meet the Vampire leaders, who seem to live in the Vatican.
It was when Bella seemed to stumble onto the set of an olive oil advert; an italian hill-top village full of robed religious types, that I realised quite how ridiculous the whole thing is. Oh, and it’s all very Romeo and Juliet. Except there’s the added complication of the werewolf that’s in love with Juliet, and Romeo’s a vampire, and Juliet’s actually a bit annoying.
And would someone PLEASE just do it? The tension is killing me. I almost don’t care who gets it on, just show me anything that isn’t a buff American boy with a six-pack and abs steelier than Edward Cullen’s stock facial expression. Though I would argue that’s probably due to a combination of constipation and a century’s worth of sexual frustration.
