New Moon Recap by Nick Ganssle

My brother is far braver, and far funnier, than I am:

New Moon is an anagram of No Women. . . . . The irony’s so thick, you could cut it with Edward Cullen’s impacted wisdom tooth

By Nick Ganssle
Today at 5:32am
For those of you who don’t know(so, basically, everybody except that creepy emo kid sitting in my window with a look on his face that declares a combination of, “I want to vomit,” and, “I want to screw you”), I am currently sitting at my laptop with a splitting headache, a painfully empty stomach, a chapter to read in History, some packing to do, and exhausted abs. And yes, I am covered in glitter. Thanks for noticing. In case you haven’t guessed, I just got back from the 12:10am showing of Twilight: New Moon. And, No, I did not get kicked out. All money goes to the house(a.k.a. Nick Stevens).

A little backstory… My friend Christa and I thought it would be a great idea to get a bunch of people to go to a midnight showing of New Moon, and laugh our asses off. I caught a showing of the first Twilight in the UConn Student Union theater, last year, and it was actually an enjoyable experience. It was enjoyable, because everybody in the theater was laughing the majority of the time. We thought we could emulate that tonight . . . Or get the crap kicked out of us by a swarm of twelve-year-old girls. Whichever.

Final count was thirteen. Always a good sign. Christa couldn’t make it to the same showing as us, so she was forced to watch it in a different theater with fewer cohorts. I mourn for her. She was a good soldier and she died bravely. It was torturous for her in her final hours, but she a strength that none of us could imagine. I have no such strength. Were it not for my twelve confidants, I might not have made it.

31% of us were drunk . . . when the movie started. Have you ever seen the sobering effect that kinky romance novel can have on the weak of heart? By the end of the night, there wasn’t so much as a tipsy stutter left in the room.

We got there early. The lights dimmed. The previews started. The new Sherlock Holmes trailer was a therapeutic spa in a world gone mad….. And then it happened. The countdown.

The movie was about to start. All of us knew it. We didn’t know if we were gonna make it to the dawn. We started saying our goodbyes… just in case. And the more I said goodbye, the more I started to hear it. The clapping. Quietly. Like golfers on a nearby green. But then the quietly started to grow. The clapping, the clapping. Like arrows on a shield. Louder, now. Too agonizing to ignore. Too insistent to dismiss. The clapping, the clapping. Louder. Louder. Like the thundering hooves of the horsemen of the apocalypse. The clapping. The clapping. That damned clapping! The uproarious clapping of that estrogenic crowed.

It had to be a dream. It had to! This . . . This *clapping* couldn’t be real!

It was the horrible noise of those viscous, bastard, prepubescent teens, reveling in the glory of a slaughter-to-be. Preparing themselves for the gut-wrenching, soul-tearing cry of the woman who took their insatiable mate: Edward.

None of them would stop until they had caught… Edward.

They were excited, so very excited. They were thrilled at the thought of a second doomsday. The first hadn’t quenched their thirst for death. They wanted more, oh so much more.

A full moon appeared onscreen. It edged off to the left, revealing the movie’s title: N . . . O . . . O . . . (at this point I prayed that we had mistakenly walked into a midnight showing of High Noon) (we hadn’t) . M . . . . . . W . . . E . . . N . . .
Fade out.

Unfortunately, the worst was still to come.

An inexplicable, incomprehensible dream sequence occurs. The only coherent part was when Bella turned into her grandmother. That was a sign of her fear of aging while Edward stays forever young.

Eventually the real Edward shows up. The whole front row(the thirteen of us) laughed at the super-slow-mo shot of Edward walking. It gave us time to appreciate Robert Pattison’s . . . *cough* . . . acting.

This is followed by a scene where Edward may or may not be masturbating while reciting Romeo and Juliet. He also embraces his inner(and outer) emo by expressing suicidal thoughts to his girlfriend.

Also, apparently “saving” Bella means punching her backwards into a granite wall and table and slicing her arm open in the process.

Eventually Edward decides to leave. Dick. Anyway, by this point, we’ve made it through about a half hour of the film. In the scene where Edward says he’s going to leave, Bella returns to her usual, brink of orgasm self, and the front row starts to laugh again (much to the chagrin of the fans sitting behind us). The moment where we completely lost it was when Bella was panting and Edward said, “I’m leaving.” Bella said (still panting), “I’m coming.” We lost it. Edward replied, “I don’t want you to come.” We lost it again. Bella looks at him, feeling affronted, and replies through labored breaths, “You don’t want me to come?” You get the idea.

That was the first time somebody told us to shut up. That was also the point when my laughter started to ebb off. I wish it hadn’t, but let’s face it, I didn’t exactly *want* to get kicked out, my stomach was completely empty, and my abs felt like they’d been pummeled by Mickey from Snatch.

Other high points of the film were:

1) The scene where Bella is humping the motorcycle as she hallucinates Edward.
2) The fact that all of the werewolves suffered from the Incredible Hulk syndrome. They never wore shirts, shoes, or the bottom of their pants, because when they turned into a wolf, their clothes would rip off. Somehow, the pants would survive.
3) Jacob removing his shirt to dab the gash in Bella’s head. Seriously, try this move sometime.
4) The fact that Bella is unfazed when Jacob parkours his way into her bedroom window, but is concerned and impressed when he can jump out of it.
5) The fact that it isn’t until like twelve scenes later that she figures out Jacob is a werewolf. Honestly, she looks completely surprised when she sees him change.
6) There was this action scene that was set to techno music. Seriously, it was the most beautiful blend of emo shots, stupid shots, awesome shots, and shots that made you want to screw the person sitting next to you. All set to techno.
7) Dakota Fanning. (Needs no explanation)
8) The fact that the last thirty minutes of the film contains more indecision than a thousand old ladies standing in a blockbuster trying to pick between Sleepless in Seattle and You’ve Got Mail. You could make an entire drinking game based on people saying, “No, wait!” and “Hold it! Wait a minute!”
9) The fight scenes that tried to be V for Vendetta. Admittedly, they were decently cool.
10) The chase scene set to techno. This was actually genuinely fantastic. It was a seamless combination of emo shots, awesome shots, stupid shots, and shots that make you want to screw the person sitting next to you.
11) Pretty much anytime Bella “shares a moment” with anyone.
12) The action movie they go to see(Face Punch). A genuinely funny scene that genuinely tried to be funny. They are rare, but far more common than in the first movie.
13) Edward leaning over Bella’s bed saying, “You can go to sleep,” as he strokes her with the all the sketch of a sex-offender in training.

There was a great moment when Bella finds out that Jacob is a werewolf. Another werewolf said, “Well, the wolf’s out of the bag.” About 70% of the theater actually laughed. Off to my right, I heard a buddy of mine make the “Oh, he’s so clever,” riff on it. But then, Dan, sitting next to me, says with the most beautiful mock-conviction and frustration I’ve ever heard, “Cat. It’s “Let the *cat* out of the bag.” It’s cat!” I lost it.

Also, may I just take this moment to say . . . Edward is a DICK! He is completely self-centered! He doesn’t have a good enough reason to live, so when he thinks Bella’s dead, he decides to kill himself! He only thinks about himself and his own wants and needs. When he leaves, it isn’t because he is afraid that Bella will lose her life. It’s because he’s afraid that he will lose the one thing that makes him want to continue his life. He’s willing to leave her broken and depressed and without emotional direction, just so he can protect his will to live. He puts his life above her happiness.

Now, Jacob, on the other hand, is a real man. He protects Bella at the risk of his own life, but when he cannot have her, he isn’t completely incapacitated. Because, unlike any of the other characters, he actually has a life worth living. He’s willing to live with or without Bella. He’d prefer to be with Bella, and he does everything he can to make that happen, but when it doesn’t work out, he goes back to his life. Jacob fixes up two motorcycles for Bella, knowing that she’s only using him. When she starts acting suicidal, he puts his foot down and stops it when he can.

There it is. I’ve said my piece on the matter.

The pattern for most of the film seemed to be: Bella and someone(usually Jacob) would “share a moment”. We’d laugh uproariously. (Yes, the dialogue was that bad.) Our laughter would die off. Then, suddenly, there would be a mood-crushing moment to “break the tension”. The audience would laugh as we sat in stony silence.

By the end, however, the majority of the theater was laughing with us. By halfway through the movie, we were already hearing scattered laughter from other people in the theater. Their numbers grew gradually over the course of the film. The moment when the entire theater broke was when the Voltari leader read Alice’s thoughts and saw her vision of the future. Her vision consists of Edward and Bella frolicking in slow-motion in a bright, sunny, forest. I’m pretty sure I saw butterflies. The laughter only got louder when Bella bared her teeth to reveal her “vampire fangs”.

If you want more details, ask me in person. Right now, I’m tired, and I want to sleep.

And get out of my window, you creepy stalker!