Twilight Saga: Eclipse
It seems like just yesterday I was reviewing the second installment of the Twilight Saga, entitled NEW MOON. I wasn’t terribly impressed with NEW MOON and wasn’t too excited to continue my journey into Forks. So I was shocked to find that I was pleasantly surprised after leaving the theater from watching THE TWILIGHT SAGA: ECLIPSE. The poor quality of the previous installments were gone and in its place was a film with an actual plot and decent action. Of course, there were the obligatory “lust” scenes between Bella and Edward, but them’s the breaks when it comes to the Twilight Universe.
After Bella (Stewart) and Edward’s (Pattinson) reunion from the epic breakup in TWILIGHT SAGA: NEW MOON, we find the couple still madly in love and considering holy matrimony. However, their enemy from the previous movies, Victoria (Bryce Dallas Howard), is skillfully building a newborn vampire army to destroy the Cullen’s and Bella in order to exact her revenge. With the help of Jacob (Lautner) and his wolf pack, the Cullen’s will fight for their lives before the Volturi come and destroy all of them for exposing vampires to the rest of the world.
First off, I’d like to give kudos to David Slade for making TWILIGHT SAGA: ECLIPSE less corny and more entertaining than the previous two films. The first two chapters of Bella and Edward were tough to stomach because of the acting, directing and screenplay, but Slade was able to take the exact same characters with the same storyline and make the film more enjoyable to watch. If only he could have gotten Kristen Stewart to close her mouth more often, this film would be a complete success.
The best part of ECLIPSE would have to be the flashbacks where we get a little more information on a couple of the Cullen’s as well as the legend of the wolf pack. These scenes were done so well that it would have been nice to see a few more added. One of the biggest problems with the Twilightverse (films only) is that the audience doesn’t really get enough background information on the characters, so it’s hard to understand why they act the way they do. This disconnect was not present in this film and that can only be due to the director. Thankfully he decided it was more necessary to tell a story as opposed to giving the audience two hours of Bella and Edward staring longingly into each other’s eyes.
During this third part of the series, it was painfully clear to me that the biggest problem with the film (and story) is the relationship between Bella and Edward. Yes, I know that their love is a love that will last all time, but step back for a second and consider that Edward may be taking his jealously too far when he, for example, breaks Bella’s car and refuses to allow her to see Jacob, or gets overly upset when she comes home too late from the reservation. Could his overprotection for her (read: love) be making him go down a dangerous path of abuse? Maybe or maybe not, but the fact that I’m questioning it at all makes it clear that I’m firmly invested in these character’s plights.
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