It's time for part two of The Twilight Saga: New Moon; the shirtless wolf extravaganza hits shelves tomorrow with a modest DVD that gives fans just enough, while holding more for a future "special" release.
Hit the jump for more details on the New Moon DVD....
The Twilight Saga: New Moon starts a few months after Twilight. Healed from her James-inflicted wounds, Bella is riding the waves of Edward adoration. Side by side, the world backs away, quite literally - when Robert Pattinson's Edward walks up to Kristen Stewart's Bella at school, her friends quickly walk away - and when they're apart, Bella has a whole other world of Charlie, her high school friends, and of course, her Quileute bud Jacob.
On Bella's birthday, however, she suffers a paper cut of epic proportions, and is seriously hurt as Edward tries to protect her from a blood-hungry Jasper. The sight of a damaged Bella is too much for Edward's conscience to bear; he leaves her abruptly, not realizing that this will send her into a dangerous spiral of depression. For months, Bella is a shell of a human, until a mixture of death-defying stunts and Jacob camaraderie inspires her to start living again. As all the trailers lay out, removing the supernatural threats from Bella's life, unfortunately, is not as simple as Edward assumes; Jacob and his Quileute friends are werewolves.
Where Catherine Hardwicke's Twilight was arty with an indie flair, especially with her blue hue that evoked the rainy Forks weather, Chris Weitz's New Moon takes the straight-forward approach with a warm, bright, and simple style set to an obviously hip soundtrack. (Where Hardwicke's song choices and implementation of the score flowed rather organically, Weitz's seems a bit awkward, yearning to be catchy.) But the change in directors was necessary; super-fast vampire speed was only the beginning of the sequel's FX requirements, which now include shapeshifting wolves able to explode at the slightest provocation. Weitz handles that as well as the material can allow, achieving a rather realistic-looking man-imal. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for some of the simpler effects - the cliff jumping scenes looking quite amateurish in comparison.
Nevertheless, New Moon continues to stay as true to the source material as it possibly can. This time there is no need for added characters to kill, or extra violence, save for a wild motorcycle ride with a stranger and Edward's mind-reading abilities turning off when he's fighting with the Volturi. All of the necessary plot points are there. We see Bella's pain and obsession, the growing friendship and love between herself and Jacob, the pecs of Taylor Lautner, and how no one will ever compare to Mr. Cullen.
This DVD is a welcome gift for eager fans, but it's certainly not sharing all there is to offer. In fact, there are only three special features: a commentary with Chris Weitz and editor Peter Lambert, an hour-long documentary (it digs into the post-premiere Twilight world, Weitz's entrance, the cinematic details, and special effects), and four music videos. The commentary and documentary offer the occasional interesting note, giving a lot of technical background to the film, but fans are sure to miss the giggling embarrassment of Robert and Kristen from the first film's commentary.
The biggest, yet unsurprising, downside: there are no deleted scenes. They're somewhere - for sure - since Weitz mentions them, but Summit has chosen not to include them now. You know what that means - another disc will probably follow shortly, one that will be another sure buy. (Although some stores are said to have extended scenes, while WalMart gets exclusive Eclipse footage.)
This release will fly off the shelves out of eager anticipation, and the next out of deletion curiosity. If you love The Twilight Saga and New Moon, you'll be happy ... for now.