"Violent delights have violent ends": a pictorial primer on The Twilight Saga: New Moon

See the Volvo XC60 SUV.

It appears prominently in The Twilight Saga: New Moon,

because Edward Cullen drives it to his high school.

According to the ad, "There's more to life than a Volvo,

that's why you drive one," especially if you are a vampire.

This is Bella Swan.

Bella has a hard time in New Moon,

because her two boyfriends dump her repeatedly

due to their various monster agendas.

This makes Bella sad.

Sad, sad, sad,

and so she mopes,

mopes, mopes, mopes

through much of the movie.

See Jacob Black.

Jacob likes Bella, but he finds it hard

to compete with Edward,

so he works out

and fixes motorcycles to pass the time

as Bella mopes.

It's not that Kristen Stewart can't act.

It's that she's

constantly emoting,

constantly obsessing

over Edward,

Edward, Edward, Edward,

as the opportunistic bands

play mope rock on the soundtrack.

She has no life

beyond her fixation on him,

another pitiful human

always harping on her desire

to transform herself into a vampire.

Jacob doesn't have much of a character

that I could see (I guess I'm not on team Jacob),

so he makes up for it by looking buff

and turning into a wolf when needed.

Not this kind of wolf.

An ordinary wolf would not be exceptional enough,

but that becomes the problem with New Moon.

Bella increasingly gets surrounded

with the exceptional and the special.

After awhile, the exceptional becomes banal.

See Jacob transformed into big, mean

computer-generated werewolf.

See the werewolf snarl.

Snarl, snarl, snarl.

Instead of carrying maidens off

or rampaging around on their own time,

as werewolves used to do,

these werewolves have a mission

to protect the little people

of Forks, Washington.

That makes Jacob noble, but also dull,

even with his shirt off.

After much teenage angst,

Angst, angst, angst,

(spoiler alert)

Edward attempts suicide

by walking all sparkle motion

into the sunlight in Italy

where humans can see him.

Why does he attempt suicide?

Because he thinks Bella is dead?

Why would he think so?

Because he wants to make an allusion

to Romeo and Juliet?

Or because he too wants to look like

an Abercrombie and Fitch model?

I would probably know

if I had read the novel by Stephanie Meyer.

Anyway, we get to meet

the Volturi gang of head honcho vampires

which mostly consists of Michael Sheen

bulging his eyes

and Dakota Fanning

appealing to the tween market

in a neoclassical room

with some classy Latin phrases

carved in the stone walls.

Ultimately, Edward had no

real good reason to leave Bella after all,

saying "I couldn't live in a world

in which you didn't exist."

Fortunately, Bella does exist!

I kept expecting him to say,

"I'm a fat-headed guy full of pain.

It tore me up not having you."

But that was Cary Grant's character

who said that in Hitchcock's Notorious.

With Bella and Edward reunited on the screen,

all of the millions of Twilight fans are happy.

And Bella and Edward can run through the woods.

Run, run, run,

without the grunge flannel,

without the Abercrombie and Fitch shirtless torso look,

and without the dull mope rock of opportunistic bands.

Now they can run and smile

in their Banana Republic clothes.