Do not mess up a winning formula - bring back Catherine Hardwicke & Carter Burwell!!!

Rating: 2/10 (19 November 2009)

I watched Twilight before actually reading all 4 books - several times.To be fair, New Moon was the least of my favorites - I am Team Edward. So far I have seen this movie twice, hoping that by the 2nd time it might do something for me. I was disappointed. From the opening scene, I wanted - expected something to grab me - be it the scene or the soundtrack.. but it fell flat. The film's director or maybe screenwriter tried to reproduce the book faithfully, yes it's closer to the book, but in doing so, the first half just dragged on, and the music score did not help.The pace was so slow, the dialogue just fell flat, Edward's eyebrows were too bushy (they were plucked/trimmed in the 1st movie), the Cullen's contacts looked nothing like the 1st movie. Alexandre Desplat is a great music scorer- but his style does not suit this movie..there were scenes that required music, but there was none. Whoever picked the songs for the soundtrack ought to be shot.
I bought my daughter the CD a month ago, and the songs almost sound the same.Nothing grabs you like in the Twilight Soundtrack. Say when you hear "Super Massive Black Hole" you know it's from the baseball scene, or "Eyes on Fire" when Bella was imagining Edward in her bedroom. Fans still will buy it tho, no matter what.
The pace picks up on the 2nd half when Bella cliff-jumps,and Alice rushes back to see her thinking Bella tried to kill herself. From there the pace quickens, to the point where I thought they were rushed-- from Bella & Alice's trip to Italy to stop Edward from killing himself (or being killed by the Volturi),to meeting them (Volturi)at last, to the Cullens coming back to Forks, etc...it looked like the last half was heavily edited - and badly at that. The scene that Alice shows Aro (to prove to him that Bella will turn into a vampire eventually) made me cringe - that of Edward & Bella running in the woods - people actually laughed in the cinema..it looked really ridiculous and sappy.
Twilight was made on a measly $30M budget, but Catherine Hardwicke made do with what was available successfully, it was a winning formula. Hiring Chris Weitz for New Moon to "take it to the next level" unfortunately, was a disappointment considering they had more $$$ to play with. The CGI was better because they had more money, but that's about it. Weitz hired Desplat whom he worked with previously - but it just didn't work. It looked different, sounded different but for all the wrong reasons. New Moon should have been bigger & better than Twilight, but it's not.
I hope the director does not mess up the 3rd movie - my favorite book--and I hope the people behind the production wake up to their senses and hire Carter Burwell to do the music score. He did a great job with Twilight, anything less would be a crime.
Bitterly disappointed.