Where were you at 12:01 am on Friday November 20th, 2009? If you were like me and three of my friends, you were sitting in a movie theater waiting to be one of the first people to see the Twilight Saga: New Moon debut. I had a lot of high hopes and expectations for this movie; New Moon was my favorite book out of the Twilight Series. I was going through some things when I first read that book, mainly the end of a relationship, so I found it very easy to relate to.

I try not to put high expectations on movies based on books I love. The Harry Potter movies are always kind of hit or miss, but I enjoy the books so much that I go and wait in theaters overcrowded with bright-eyed children and zealous teens and adults so I can be one of the first people to see it. Need I even mention Queen of the Damned? I try not to be that person about movies. You know the one I’m talking about–the person who complains because the movie wasn’t EXACTLY like the book, but Queen of the Damned was more different than I could feel good about.

I understand that when you’ve got many hundreds of pages of text and development, you can’t exactly condense that down into a two hour movie and still hit all the relevant points. Some things have to be changed or taken out completely, and if you don’t believe me, just go watch the first Twilight movie again. So, it was with a heavy heart that I tried to prepare myself for disappoint.

The experience began with what felt like eighteen hours of previews! I was completely floored. I have been to dozens of midnight shows and movie premiers, but I have never sat through that many previews. Most of the time due to the late showings, there were no previews at all, jumping straight into the movie in an effort to get everyone out of the theater even twenty minutes earlier so the staff could clean the place up and head home as well.

But finally the many previews (most of which were for upcoming Summit releases) came to an end and the show started…

… and I loved every minute of it.

This movie was as true to the book as I could have hoped for. Did they add a scene or two, yeah. They did. Did they cut some stuff? Definitely. But all of the important elements were there. They added touches here and there of slightly comedic elements like they had in Twilight, but without really overdoing it. I don’t want to spoil anything, or ruin the experience for the people who have yet to go see this film, but I will say I thoroughly enjoyed.

It elicited the same emotional responses and feelings that I’d felt during my first and subsequent readings of New Moon. I am a pretty good distance from where I was when I first read New Moon (I mean emotionally, not so much physically). I found myself very hung up on someone at the time; I was suffering a broken heart along with some serious depression, anxiety issues, and symptoms related to a chemical imbalance. It was a very rough time for me.

Now, however, not so much. I’m single, but my life is more centered around my family now. I’m not broken hearted, not hung up on anyone, and my depression and anxiety are not nearly the issues they once were in my life. The chemical imbalance is something I still deal with on a daily basis, which is why the depression and anxiety still exist. Damn package deals.

As I mentioned last time, I’m expecting to go see this movie probably four more times before the end of December. Everyone who knows me and knows I went (even with as disinterested as they are in Twilight) has asked me what I thought of the movie, what I really liked about it, etc. I can’t staunch the flow of sarcastic friends teasing me about the Edward and Jacob debate, even though I have been pretty vocal about my refusal to choose sides.  I’ve only had the opportunity to really discuss it at length with two people so far, one of which was a friend who went with me because I had asked her to and offered to buy her ticket, not because she likes the series. The other was one of the amazingly awesome people I met on my trip to Texas almost a year ago.

I need to talk about this movie more, but I won’t do a full movie review here because I honestly don’t want to spoil it for anyone. I did not want anyone to spoil the movie for me, and likewise want people to go the theaters and experience it without anyone ruining it, so I refuse to be one of the people who does the ruining. However, if anyone wants to chat about it, drop me a line at bears@myvampfiction.com or we can discuss it in either my thread or the New Moon thread on the forums!