New Moon, the Movie: One Fan's View

By Niti

November 20, 2009 was the premiere of New Moon, the second installment in the Twilight Saga Film series, and also the sequel to the movie Twilight. Twilight and New Moon are both a part of Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight Series. Twilight, the novel, was first released in 2005 after being rejected numerous times, but once released it became an immediate best seller. The noveldebuted #5 on The New York Times Best Seller List but in later months rose to #1. After tremendous success, a movie adaptation of the novel was released in November of 2008 which grossed in more than 382 million dollars worldwide. After much success in the box office, New Moon was called for a film adaptation.

Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner take stage in the Twilight Saga Series, who portray Bella Swan, Edward Cullen and Jacob Black respectively. At the end of the Twilight, Edward Cullen rescues Bella Swan by sucking the venom from her blood; the story ends peacefully when Edward takes Bella to prom. On the other hand, New Moon is more centered toward how Edward leaves Bella, and in turn Bella becomes closer to Jacob Black. Both Twilight and New Moon just have this touch of romance that tends to touch the heart of the audience whether you’re reading the novel or watching the movie.

Personally, I’m a fan, I must confess. However, I’m not a big one. The overall picture of the Bella and Edward relationship is very entertaining and sweet in my opinion. This series reminds me much of William Shakespeare infamous tragedy Romeo and Juliet, which is by far one of the best pieces of literature I have ever read. Through my eyes, these two pieces of literature have many similarities since both stories have the lovers from different worlds, danger is present when the lovers are together and lastly society keeps them apart. Twilight and New Moon are simply a more modern version of Romeo and Juliet, just adapted to fit more to the current time frame. Both are marvelous pieces of literature, thus both have resulted in tremendous success. Through conversation with my friends, I feel as if I keep on hearing that they enjoyed New Moon more than Twilight. However, almost all of them failed to answer why they felt that way. It seems as if they just liked the continuation of the tale, and simply just the romance and obstacles that Edward and Bella endure. Even though the acting in the movie was not spectacular, the plot of the story seemed to override that fact. Overall, it was a well rounded movie, although in my opinion the book was better in numerous ways like it always seems to be.

In terms of the box office, New Moon has showed great success as the box office as it set records as the biggest midnight show with $26.3 million. It also set the biggest single-day opening in the U.S.A with $67.2 million beating The Dark Knight. At the end of the opening weekend, New Moon grossed in $142,839,137 domestically which is the third highest opening weekend only behind The Dark Knight and Spider-Man 3. Internationally, the New Moon grossed in $247.9 million which is the 6th highest worldwide weekend opening total.

In all, the Twilight Saga has been quite successful as it has a wide fan base, not only in the United States but worldwide as well. This ongoing saga continues with the premiere of the third installment in the Twilight Saga, Breaking Dawn on June 30th 2010!