Let's make no bones about it: great CGI does not a great movie make. McG's recent Terminator Salvation featured some of the best special effects I've seen in a science fiction movie since James Cameron's final effort in the series, T2: Judgement Day, but all those spectacular future machines could not make up for Christian Bale's boorish overacting and some rather workmanlike direction.
Last year's hugely successful teen vampire romance, Twilight, was no weaker because its vampires resembled normal human beings who had rather overdone it with the foundation. It was an insipid, TV movie-esque exercise in ennui because the original Stephenie Meyer book is crafted from the same leaden material - unless you happen to be 14, in which case both are absolutely wicked!
Fortunately for its makers, Twilight did not require any dramatic special effects work. Unfortunately for those in charge of its sequel, followup New Moon does - a fair bit, in fact. This is because the new film, which arrives here on November 20, features a pack of benevolent werewolves charged with protecting the people of Forks, Washington, where the series is set, against the vampire threat. Their presence in the movie is the reason Twilight director Catherine Hardwicke opted out of New Moon: studio Summit were determined to get a followup to their $383m blockbuster into cinemas as soon as possible, but Hardwicke, who also directed teen drama Thirteen and skating documentary Lords of Dogtown, wanted more time in order to get the special effects sequences right.
The first warning sign that she might have had her head screwed on came back in June, when the teaser trailer for New Moon arrived. It showed Taylor Lautner, who plays werewolf Jacob in the new film, transforming into his vulpine form. Except that there wasn't so much as a transformation in sight: Lautner leapt into the air, and in a flash of pixels, was a wolf. Not for new director Chris Weitz the agony of a body wrenched and torn into a terrifying new form by unseen forces, as witnessed in classic horror movies of the past. It was as if the director had waved a magic wand and instantly switched two legs for four.
Eyebrows were raised in the blogosphere, but most imagined that a more spectacular transformation would take place in the final movie. This was just a teaser after all, right?
Wrong. Check out this recently released clip from New Moon, showing the werewolf pack transforming. This is a segment of the film which has been specifically chosen to show Jacob and his pals becoming wolves, and it's more of the same. The young men simply vanish, and are replaced by their animal counterparts: as a feat of special effects engineering, it's right up there with some of Dr Who's worst moments, and this from a film with a reported $50m budget.
It's pretty clear to me what's happened here. Weitz is more than capable of working with excellent CGI, as he proved on 2007's The Golden Compass. But in the face of a rapidly approaching release date, the decision has been taken to plump for an enormous fudge rather than take the time to put together some believable special effects. The film-makers are of course safe in the knowledge that most of the audience will be far too busy purring over Jacob's top bod to notice.
So why am I bothered? Well the thing is, werewolves on celluloid have something of a history, and it's a proud one. Rick Baker's spectacular work on An American Werewolf in London won him an Oscar for best make up in 1982, setting a standard that would never be beaten. Admittedly many of its followers, The Howling, the god awful Underworld films and other abominably poor efforts such as 1996's Bad Moon, were rather less successful. But at least they made an effort. New Moon's equivalent is a complete cop-out by way of comparison.
Furthermore, the werewolves look like they're ready to leap up, lick your hand, and let you take them for a nice walk. If I saw one at the local dog pound, I would at this very moment be the proud owner of my very own werewolf, so adorable are they. Now I know these films are intended to be teen movies, rather than horror films, but surely any series which features lyncanthropes and bloodsucking denizens of the undead ought to be capable of instilling at least a modicum of fear into its audience. Otherwise, where's the suspense?
On this evidence, Hardwicke's decision to walk away looks remarkably prescient. Twilight may have been the most successful film ever to have been handled by a female director, but its sequel looks set to make its pretty wimpy predecessor look like a Takashi Miike flick in comparison. New Moon's only saving grace might be that it sends Robert Pattinson, aka hunky vamp Edward Cullen, off to Italy for most of the movie, which means the vapid Brit won't be asked to carry the whole thing himself this time. Now that really would have been scary.
