This weekend, fans of the Twilight series are getting their first taste of New Moon, the second film based on the popular book series.
The stories revolve around a romance between a human teenager, Bella, and a brooding vampire, Edward, with the added complication that she is also drawn to another boy, Jacob, who is a werewolf. And even beyond romantic rivalries, the vampires and the werewolves don't exactly get along.
"It combines this innocence and sexuality," said Rev. Amy Rio-Anderson, a chaplain who teaches religion courses at Salem Academy and College. She said her students have been talking about the new movie all week. "One thing I've appreciated since these books first came out is that she (Stephenie Meyer, the writer) has written this out of her faith perspective. She's a strong Mormon, and the primary couple waits until they are married to have sex, which is unusual in a lot of the media out there today."
That consummation will have to wait until a later in the series. This time around, the focus is on the romantic triangle. And fans have split into two camps, called Team Edward and Team Jacob.
About 200 students, faculty and staff from Salem held a New Moon party Thursday night culminating in a midnight screening of the movie. Maggie Bessel, a freshman, was one of those in attendance. Some of the audience, she said, cheered anytime Edward was on screen while others booed. Vice-versa when Jacob appeared.
"I thought it was leaps and bounds over the first movie," Bessell said. "The script was more true to the feeling of the book than the first one."
Bessel described herself as a huge fan of the books and the movies, even checking with her roommate before coming to college to make sure it would be OK to bring along her Twilight posters… and that she preferred Edward the way Bessell did.
"If she was Team Jacob, we would have had some issues," Bessel said with a laugh. "Luckily, she wasn't."
Rio-Anderson said she tries to read a lot of young adult fiction so she can know what her students are interested in, and that she can see the appeal of Twilight.
"One of the reasons I think teenaged girls have latched onto it is, Edward is a bad boy vampire, but as much as he wants Bella's blood or her body, his primary concern is for her safety and that her soul not be eternally damned. That colors all his interactions with her, the idea of caring for someone else beyond this idea of desire."
One frequent complaint about the series has been that Bella is a passive character who lets two boys compete over her rather than being assertive. When she first read the books, Rio-Anderson agreed with that assessment.
"I did not see her as a proactive person, and that's an issue I had with the character," she said. But she feels that Kristen Stewart, the actress who plays Bella in the movies, has transformed Bella. "She's more persistent, she knows what she feels," Rio-Anderson said. "She's no longer passive."
tclodfelter@wsjournal.com.
727-7371
A review of New Moon is inside today's Living section.
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