Okay, I just got back from seeing New Moon. And for starters, it is a hellava lot better than Twilight. Seriously.

I’m not going to reveal the entire plot, since everybody who has read New Moon will know what happens. Bella injures herself, causes Jasper to go into a homicidal hobbit spazz rage. Then Edward leaves her yada yada yada.

Since I have friends who will not see it opening weekend, I’ll just disclose what I liked and what I disliked. Warning, here be spoilers:

Likes:
- Acting. Has gotten a million times better in New Moon. I could go on for ages, so I’ll just stick to one case point. Look, I loved Robert Pattinson in The Bad Mothers Handbook and in Harry Potter 4, but in Twilight. Holy shit. His acting sucked. I know he is playing a vampire and vampires can’t cry and all, but that doesn’t mean his facial expressions has to be wooden. But New Moon, especially in the scene where he is asking the Volturi to kill him. Edward looks like he has been through the mill and that he’s taking the break-up even worse than Bella had. He looks like he wants to freaking die and will do anything for that to happen. I felt like crying in that scene, and damnit, I never cry during movies.

- Special Effects: Also improved. In Twilight, if there was a scene where a vampire was running, it was in slow motion and it looked really cheesy. New Moon, we get a combination of both hyper speed and slow motion that doesn’t look half bad. Other examples of special effects that was better: Sparkles. It didn’t look grainy. It was more subtle, but you could still notice it and it didn’t look like Edward was made of glitter. That sounded pretty weird. Werewolf CGI. Looked pretty damn realistic and I liked how Bella was reflected in wolf Jacob’s eye. Well then again, the director is Chris Weitz, who also helmed The Golden Compass, which I never saw. I heard the CGI for that movie was impressive however.

- Felix vs. Edward smackdown scene: In the novel version of New Moon, Jane practically Cruciatus cursed Edward into thinking that he was in pain. In the movie, we get that and we get Edward and Felix beating the shit out of each other (okay, it was more like Felix beating the shit out of Edward). Call me a sadist, but that was really entertaining.

- The scene where Bella, Edward, and Alice are leaving the Volturi: They pass by this big group of tourists and that was the most heartbreaking scene because they pass by this little boy who is about eight or so, and when they are leaving, they could hear the screams. That was just too much for me and I could have sworn my heart stopped for a few seconds.


- Carlisle Cullen fan service: Team Carlisle fangirls, I am just as pissed as you are when Carlisle’s back story was entirely skipped over in Twilight. New Moon makes up for that by including the introductory scene to the Volturi, which has Carlisle in 18th century clothing. HOLY HELL HE IS SMOKING HOT IN A FROCK COAT AND BREECHES. I really mean it. I honestly do.
-

Dislikes
- Editing: About the same level as Twilight. The way the scenes transitioned into each other felt choppy and that were probably was something in between them, it just ended up on the cutting room floor. For example, the scene where the gang leaves Volterra cuts to the next scene where Bella is in her room. I felt like shouting “no, this can’t be a big dream.” If it was, I would have hurt someone. Luckily, it wasn’t, but it felt like there was a huge chunk of the movie missing that should have been there, which leads me to my next point.

- Missing Scenes: I know that New Moon can’t be as long as, let’s say, Lord of the Rings. But there were scenes in the book that were not present in the movie and I was pissed. I’ll give two that I was peeved about. One being the reunion scene at the airport. Mostly because I wanted to see some more Carlisle. Also, it would have made for a smoother transition between the scenes in Italy and in Forks. I think it might have been filmed, but cut out and the last moment, so hopefully, it will end up on the DVD. There is another scene which isn’t as important, but I liked it in the book because I thought it explained Edwards’s character more. That is when Carlisle is stitching Bella up and he mentions why he turned Edward into a vampire. Edward did mention dying of the Spanish Flu in Twilight, but it looked like Carlisle just randomly picked him to be his immortal companion. If someone who has never read the books saw the movies, they would be confused as to why Edward became a vampire. I always thought that Edward was so protective of Bella because he couldn’t let her die because of him, and those who know the story knows that his mum, Elizabeth, had a better chance of survival than her son, but gave it up because she wanted Carlisle to save him. Not her. So I always imagined Edward having this guilty conscience of knowing that his mum would have lived had he died. And he is trying to make up for that by being so over protective about Bella.

- Not enough vampires. Seriously, there are only two scenes with the Cullen family in it. The wolf pack look like badasses, but I have to take my little sister, who is Team Jacob and loves Taylor Lautner like how I love British men, to see this movie next Friday when I’m back home for Thanksgiving, and I need some sort of balance point. If I have to deal with her hyperventilating every time Lautner appears shirtless, I want my suffering to have some purpose. And that purpose means Carlisle.

- The move within the movie: For those who don’t know what I’m talking about, there is a scene in the movie where Bella, Jacob, and Mike see a movie called “Face Punch”. It is implied that it’s rated R, but it doesn’t sound like a rated R movie. And I mean that one of the actors in the film within a film says “I’m going to punch you in the freaking face.” You don’t say “freaking” in an R-movie if you are threatening someone. You are supposed to drop an F¬¬¬¬- bomb because it is an R film, and you have the permission to curse your little heart out. I know that New Moon is PG-13 and kids under that age are going to see it, but I know kindergartners who know how to flip the bird. Sooner or later, they will know what the F-bomb means.

How do I rate New Moon? On a scale of five stars, I would give it a four. New Moon is made more for the fans of the books, and it will deliver. I promise you that. I mean, it really kicked Twilight's ass in the "is the sequel better" department. People who have never read the books or hate it will either be confused or wished that they had snuck in to see 2012 instead.