November 24th, 2009
Kicking It With The Werewolf Boyband – “New Moon” and “The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets’ Nest”
So, I saw New Moon this weekend, which I spent in Guildford, housesitting for K and R. I could attempt to offer clever social commentary on it, but for God’s sake, why bother?
New Moon (2009)
“New Moon” is cut from exactly the same emo-rocking, eye-gazing, tree-infested, blue-colour-saturation school as its predecessor Twilight, and in that sense it more than delivers. It has a similar problem to the book in that the strapping young wolfman is clearly in a different league of attractiveness to the non-threatening veggie vampire Edward and his excessively pink lipstick. When Taylor Lautner takes his shirt off in the first third, the entire audience burst into uncomfortable tittering and shifting about. It was actually kind of awesome.
You wonder what the heroine is thinking of. Not much, would seem to be the answer, as Jacob and his werewolf chums run about in little shorts and running shoes like a lycanthrope boy band. You keep expecting the entire pack to burst into synchronised song and dance.
I was, I must confess, a little shocked at how bad some of the effects were. The first werewolf action shot was so poorly rendered it looked like two guys in a wolf suit. The legs didn’t even seem to more in rhythm.
I also finally got around to finishing The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets’ Nest. The titular Girl spends the book largely confined to hospital bed with a Palm Pilot while the Millenium staff, who Larsson is clearly much more interested in, beat a secret runaway section of the Swedish Security Police at their own game. Their actions are all about Lisbeth Salander, apparently, and each section of the book is prefaced with hilariously over-the-top commentary on the role of the female soldier throughout the ages, but this is nothing short of hyperbolic false advertising of the most egregious sort.
The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets' Nest (Millenium Trilogy) by Stieg Larsson
Salander, as if aware that she could never live up to such hysterical billing, instead lurks shiftily in the background of her own novel, while other characters talk about how dreadfully she’s been treated and scheme to rectify things before her trial. She responds by giving them all the silent treatment.
Without her polarizing presence, the ongoing unsubtlety of the villains is quickly wearing – it’s not enough to be in a conspiracy to commit an innocent woman to a mental institute, for instance – you’ve also got to have a hard drive full of child pornography. It’s not enough to falsely believe her guilty of murder (though she actually is by intent, which is all kind of dropped), you also have to believe that she’s a lesbian Satanist motorcycle gang member. And so on.
And while this was actually kind of fun and gripping in the first two books, which had the unpredictable Salander more centre stage so there was more to go wrong as the villains’ high pressure hit her cold front, it’s not working quite as well this time out, which is a shame.
That said, there were a couple of nice touches – there is a shocking early suicide, and a subplot about Berger being harassed in her new job which does not lead to the most obvious and signposted place – it is, in short, a genuine red herring, which Larsson does not normally do. I think, on balance, that the second book is the best of the series – and it really is tragic that his talent was cut off so young.
In other news, Sleepwalker continues apace, and the characters are now about to have their “about last night” chat… so looking forward to writing that tonight! And Faber and Faber very kindly sent me a copy of We Need To Talk About Kelvin by Marcus Chown. I am always desperate to lay hands on truly populist quantum theory books – for both Mephistophela and Sleepwalker, so this was extremely welcome. I’ll be reviewing it here next week.
Currently Reading: We Need To Talk About Kelvin by Marcus Chown
GoodReads
Twitter
GooglePlus