The Twilight Saga: Eclipse

Day 19/192-The Twilight Saga: Eclipse. Starring Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart

I sit here at 7:14am in the staff room at work trying to squeeze in reviewing time because I must start breaking down the backlog if this project is to be a success. So here we go with Eclipse, the third movie in the money-spinning literary adaptation of the Twilight Saga.

Following on from the events of its predecessors, Eclipse sees sulky teen Bella (Stewart) happily going steady with the love of her life Edward Cullen (Pattinson) who happens to be a 107 year old vampire. But this is Twilight and, of course, it can never be plain sailing for these two. Unexplained murders in Seattle and one missing boy in particular, Riley Beers, have got the authorities, and the Cullens concerned.

Eclipse is where the Twilight Saga begins to find its feet, and is helped along by a much more defined book in terms of plot direction and character development. Whereas in the first book the villains just seemed to be thrown in for some drama at the end, here none of that matters as the main focus is on Bella's struggle to accept that she must choose between Edward and Jacob.

The action scenes are well-implemented and a particular highlight shows Jasper, who is much more of a presence (thankfully) in this film, training the vampires and the wolves how to fight the incoming threat from Seattle. The vampires do strike a little bit of fear now that the CGI has been improved, but the wolves are still as boring as ever.



This is where I stumble into negative territory on this film. Taylor Lautner is not a great actor, or maybe he is but it does not show here. He is fine in the scenes where he is laughing it up, but he lacks the dramatic chops to elevate the emotional reaction required from the audience, and will certainly not be recruiting any new Team Jacob members on this performance.

The problem that I have with the Twilight Saga is that every new threat that is posed upon the Cullens is met with the same reaction of fear and worry, then inevitably is overcome within seconds. The same happened in the first film with James, who Bella could have probably beaten herself, and in New Moon, the Volturi are just pathetic.


As someone who has read the first three books and is working his way through Breaking Dawn, I feel well placed to say that yes it is a fairly accurate depiction of Eclipse, maybe too much so with certain elements that remained intact (Switzerland, anyone?) But the characters in this film just mope and mope, at one point Rosalie takes a hissy fit and goes to her bedroom, simply so that she can look out of the window with an annoyed expression. Everyone in the Twilight Saga seriously needs to lighten up.

There are moments of camera-winking humour, which are well-appreciated from a male perspective and David Slade manages to inject a little bit of danger with the Riley Beers scenario, but not enough that we ever feel the Cullens are in any trouble. I feel the film could have been a lot better if it had focused just a little more on Bella's realisation of what becoming vampire will mean, one of the best scenes in the film shows her crying with Mom.

But that would not be to serve the fans' best interests and the film, if not a lot else, certainly does that. If i were a TwiHard I couldn't see myself giving less than 11/10 but as that is not the case from a purely critical standpoint I must award the following marks, and begin to wonder how they can possibly milk Breaking Dawn into two parts.

5/10