The Twilight Saga: Eclipse

Review by Jason Donner

What would you say if I told you that Eclipse is not total crap?  Chances are you would be waiting for me to deliver a punch line or something, but what I say is true... it's a superior movie to Twilight and to New Moon.  Granted, that still doesn't put it in high standing as all it takes to be better than New Moon or Twilight is effort, real actors, and a writer who's on a fifth grade level.

I will give credit where credit is due and say that Eclipse is my favorite of the Twilight movies... Sort of like how thumbscrews are my favorite method of torture and gangrene is my favorite type of infection.  It's still not good, but it's better... unfortunately, Twilight plus better still equals pretty damn bad.

After proposing marriage and apparently a lifetime under his thumb, Edward is still reluctant to turn Bella into a vampire.  He says he doesn't want to damn her soul, but to me it just sounds like he's a pansy who's afraid of commitment.  In the immortal words of Paul McCartney, "Will you still love me when I'm 64?"  My guess is no.

The Neputals and neck feasting will have to wait because far away in Seattle, the evil Victoria (I know, I barely remembered her either) is busy turning young people into vampires for her own private war against the Cullens and Bella.  Like your average run of the mill film critic, Victoria wants these kids dead and buried and she's willing to create hundreds... or at least a dozen dangerous and psychotic newborns to do it.

Now the Cullens find themselves joining forces with Jacob and his band of shirtless werewolves.  There's also a girl werewolf now, but she keeps her shirt on.

Eclipse has held on to some of the things in it that makes the Twilight films so infuriatingly awful to sit through -- Robert Pattinson and Kristin Stewart are so amazingly unbelievable as a couple and I don't mean that as in, "Wow, they're so passionate I can't believe it" I mean it as in "I don't believe these two would just hang out, much less be an item."  There's no chemistry there!  No nothing!  Even the characters individually are awful. 

Bella is a flighty manipulator of men and only seems happy when she has them wrapped around her finger.  She's constantly pouting and complaining and is devoid of anything approaching a personality.  It's little wonder why the Twilight series is so popular with young girls -- Bella is basically a blank slate so, any marginally imaginative teenager can imagine herself draped on the arm of a pale sparkling vampire or a dark and lisping werewolf.

Edward is a walking creepy domineering man in name only who is constantly in mope mode.  Even when he's with the woman he supposedly loves, he still looks unhappy.  I doubt even adorable pictures of kittens with amusing captions wouldn't make this proverbial dark cloud smile.  It gets old.

Even worse is the third wheel Jacob.  I actually liked this guy a little bit in the second movie until he too turned into a possessive and repressive douchebag around the end.  Now, anything that I found a little appealing about him is gone, replaced with a cynical sad-sack who is apparently under contract to appear shirtless for at least three quarters of the movie.  I can't fault him for this because once you've seen him act, you know that his abs are his only marketable talent.

The lead talents in this movie are not terrible.  Terrible would be a compliment to them.  They're pathetic... almost sad as if you want to actually go into the movie and bring them out saying, "It's okay... you just got a little over your head.  That's all.  Let's go find a nice safe community theater you can hide in."

Let me put it this way:  The closest thing that this movie comes to having a real dramatic scene between the lead three is in a tent.  Bella is asleep during the whole scene, so you can do the math yourself.  The love triangle is and continues to be the worst part of the Twilight experience.

I would be remiss in not talking about the improvements to this third chapter.  It starts out very promising with a vampire attack in Seattle which kind of gets your hopes up almost enough to forget that you're watching a Twilight movie.

There is more action in this movie for those of you hoping that everyone in Twilight would just shut up and try and kill each other.  Sure, the action is mostly between pale teenagers and cartoon wolves, but it is hilariously brutal at times, almost bordering on R-rated violence.  I'm sure that the raw and uncut version of this movie will be on shelves in a few months.  I'd probably rent it if for nothing more than hearing the director's explanation about where the werewolves get there shorts back so quick.

There's absolutely no reason that this movie should be over two hours long but, then again, there's absolutely no reason this movie should have been made in my eyes.  It continues to be a blight not only to cinema, but to literature and female self worth everywhere.  Harry Potter teaches you to believe in yourself while Twilight teaches you that you HAVE to have a boyfriend.

The best I can say about Eclipse is that it isn't as bad as the first two movies, but when you look at how bad Eclipse actually is, all it serves as a gauge of just how horrifically bad the previous two movies actually are.