Review 38: The Twilight Saga: Eclipse

The Twilight Saga: Eclipse is the latest instalment in the teenage girls inexhaustible supernatural fantasy and is a definite improvement over New Moon thanks to a winning blend of romance and supernatural trappings. 

Based on the third book in the Twilight Saga, Eclipse by Stephanie Meyer, A series of disappearances and killings attracts the Cullen's attention, its later revealed that Victoria (Bryce Dallas Howard) the vampire from the first film is the cause. This because she's out for revenge on Bella (Kristen Stewart) and Cullen's for the death of her mate, James. To protect Bella, the Cullen's form a temporary alliance with the Quileute tribe to destroy Victoria and keep Bella safe. Meanwhile, Bella must choose between her love for Edward and her friendship with werewolf Jacob (Taylor Lautner).

The plot is brilliant, it's so much more tense and dark than the first two films and brings back some of the chills and the romance of the first film. At the beginning of the film, Edward and Bella are happy and coming down off of the "traumatic" experince they had in Italy.

 

Eclipse is a very dialogue heavy film; Bella, Edward and Jacob debate about their feelings for each other a lot during the 124 min runtime and, lets be honest here, they aren't the most articulate of conversationalists. Everything is so straight forward and simplistic; It's very expository. If any three of these characters are talking about their feelings towards each other, you''ll know exactlty what they're feeling and believe me, it won't be complicated. These conversations would either end positively and affect these characters in no way or they would end negatively and they'd be resolved in a later scene. Since so many of these conversations began to feel so formulaic,  

Ultimately, you're either going to be invested in the love triangle or your not. Personally, I was invested in it because, the three lead actors keep things afloat and are able to sell each others convictions even when they don't make sense.

More so than its predecessors, Eclipse is about choice and free will: According to Stephenie Meyer the books are centred around Bella's choice to choose her life on her own and the Cullens' choices to abstain from killing rather than follow their temptations.
In this case, Bella has to choose between Edward and Jacob. On the one hand, if she chooses Jacob, what he offers is protection and a chance to keep the life that she has. On the other hand, if she chooses Edward, she'll have to become a vampire and renounce who she is.

Ultimately, Eclipse is about the choices that Bella makes and who she chooses to be and which world she feels secure in and which world she feels hostile in. As Meyer put it: "I really think that's the underlying metaphor of my vampires. It doesn't matter where you're stuck in life or what you think you have to do; you can always choose something else. There's always a different path." Scenes like Bella visiting her mother, Renee (Sarah Clarke) in Florida and Charlie (Billy Burke) discussing about how he'd feel is she went missing in light of Riley's disappearance with her provide some context on what she'd leaving behind by choosing a life of vampirism with Ed.

This combination of the love triangle coupled with this looming threat of Victoria’s army of newborn vampires makes Eclipse feel like there’s real stakes and that there’s actual danger.

What makes the love triangle work is that being in love, making a commitment, and choosing a future is literally a life-or-death situation and Bella, Edward and Jacob are forced to confront how they feel for each other. Upping the emotional ante is an injection of heightened sexual tension and sensuality that hasn't been present in the previous two films. They make us as an audience genuinely believe her affections are torn between Edward and Jacob, though there is never any doubt to you & me that the former is the person to whom she's devoted.

There's much more of the sense that Bella is devoted to Edward because he represents what she is rather than because of him simply being her boyfriend.

How dangerous are the Newborns really? Outwardly, they're portrayed as vicious, mindless monsters yet we never see them go on a rampage. For the most part, they keep a low profile inside Seattle (a highly populated area). I never felt the threat of the newborns because I never got the sense that they're in danger of loosing control of their bloodlust. 

Director David Slade's direction is stylish, infusing the romance of the story with a bit horror movie inspired thrills to go along with the series supernatural operatic passions. The cinematography is beautiful and captures the beauty and vastness of Forks Washington, the score by Howard Shore is catchy, the production design is brilliant, the costume design is fantastic, the locations are stunning, the make up magnificent, and the ending was superb.

 

The action scenes are a mixed bag of particular note is a climactic battle between, the Cullens, the werewolves and the Newborns and for a vampire/werewolf vs vampire battle it isn't really anything special thanks to a lack of distinct fight choreography and team work and coordination between the Cullens and wolves. I realise that the Cullens are not action heroes but wouldn't it be reasonable to expect them to train just in case trouble came to their doorstep. Every vampire uses the same basic, minimalistic fighting style.

However, the battle is elevated by Slade's direction and hand held camera movie which makes the scene work as good, mindless action. Either you want to see mindless executed with breakneck speed and bloodless carnage or you don't.

Earlier in the film, Carlisle says that they'll all need some training in how to fight the newborn army. Training would be a great idea but how are they supposed to learn anything if they only spar for a single scene? True a little bit of training is better than nothing but whatever lessons the Cullen's learn, they never use or payoff in the climax. Concurrently, a fight scene between, Ed, Vicky and Riley should have been longer and more creative than is it to make an impact.
 
The acting was probably the best of the series, the performances of Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner are terrific, their chemistry and interplay help to sell their rivalry.

Stewart brings a lot of nuance to Bella in this film, she's forced to wrestle with this inner struggle between which one she loves more. It takes a toll on her throughout the film and it’s clear that it’s eating away at her and it’s forcing her to confront what that choice will bring and it’s apparent that she's not sure if she's comfortable with making this decision.

Both Edward and Jacob represent to sides of the same coin. Edward represents Bella’s desires whereas Jacob represents the closest thing to a genuine friendship due to their history together. Both of them vow to protect the girl they love and their fellow vampires and werewolves are willing to put their differences aside so they can fight to the death in this cause. That’s both true buddy love and indicatve of Bella's status as a passive protagonist.

Robert Pattinson is also strong playing Edward. Because Bella has gotten "closer" to Jacob throughout  New Moon, they ostensibly have a very strong Bond and Edward is resentful of that and becomes increasingly and openly resentful throughout the film, but because Bella and Jake's friendship felt so surface level in New Moon, Ed's resentment towards him didn't ring true. Still, he's eventually called upon to accept Jake and the rest of the Wolfpack's help to defeat Victoria's Newborn Vampire army.

Because Edward has solidified the relationship with Bella, he's still reluctant to turn her into a vampire. Ed's fundamental flaw is that he constantly overthinks everything; his personality swings back and forth where he goes to far one way and then goes to far the other. He has 17 year old guy emotions, being jealous of other guys who fancy his girlfriend. Being permanently 17, he clearly hasn't matured for more than a century. He's forced to come to terms with Bella and Jacob's relationship throughout Eclipse; It's a very hurtful thing for him but at the same time he knows that it's probably the right thing for her. So he's caught between a rock and hard place of wanting to be with Bella and wanting her to have the best life possible.

Taylor Lautner is given some dense, chewy material where he's forced to fight for Bella's life as it were and ultimately come to terms with her choice. As the film goes on, Jacob and Bella start to reconect. Utterly convinced that he is the one for Bella, it’s clear that this alliance between the Cullen’s (people that he despises) and his tribe is eating him apart inside and we can tell that he’s not comfortable with Bella, his close friend, becoming one of them. From Jacob's perspective, he's saving her from the monster and he's determined to make Bella see that she loves him because he knows that she does; he can tell. Jacob's sure he's right and he's convinced that Bella is choosing wrong. 

Xavier Samuel is intimidating as Victoria's pawn Riley Biers, originally an average teen from Folks, he ends up in the wrong place at the wrong time when ends up getting bitten and changed by Victoria when she chooses him to lead an army of Newborn vampires to attack the Cullens and she molds him into something very dangerous. She has taken him on almost like a pet. He doesn't know or understand the world that he's in, he doesn't know what he's gotten himself into which makes him quite a tragic villain.

Samuel proved to be a charismatic and terrifying presence throughout the film.

Bryce Dallas Howard was a scary villain playing Victoria, a worthy replacement for Rachelle Lefevre and definitely elevated a somewhat underwritten character, She is seductively charming and manipulative in the vain of a famme fatal which gives her a strong sense of alure and mystery when the script can't. 

Seeking revenge for the death of her "mate" James (as seen in the first film), she creates an army of newborn vampires with Riley as their ringleader to wipe out Bella and the Cullens. With James, it was a game hunting humans and with him gone, she's become absolutely fixated on ending Bella's life to make Edward suffer; she's dead set on what she wants. She operates from the shadows, always making sure to cover her tracks and keep her foes confused. So she has minions like Riley do her dirty work, while she doesn't have to do anything.

 

She plays Riley like a fiddle pretending to return her affections when really he's nothing more than a means to an end for her vendetta; he and the newborns are mearly pawns in her plan. She seduces him in a really clever and manipulative way by making him feel that she needs him.

Victoria had the right foundation, having a personal vendetta against Bella and the Cullens, thereby giving them a genuine stake. But the script never worked to develop Victoria beyond that initial setup. She only appeared in a handful of scenes and has few lines and generally came across as something of a one-note character. We've bearly seen Victoria onscreen in the last two films and what we've seen (running away from vampires and wearworlves) isn't eaxactly compelling villain material. For all the build-up, Vicky got and the resources that she had, she was always thwarted fairly easily by the Cullens. Which begs the question as to why it's taken three movies for this revenge plan to come to fruition? Couldn't she have swept into Forks whilst Bella was in her depressive state and the Cullens were away and killed her then?

As entertaining as this film was, at times it plays like a story we should've gotten one film ago.

Ultimately, she amounts to little more than the Boba Fett of the Saga.

  
Rosalie and Jasper are given the spotlight in this film giving Nikki Reed and Jackson Rathbone a chance to shine and convey the tragedy that they had to endure when they were first turned. Rosalie's backstory is juxtaposed to Bella’s predicament as she wrestles with what she wants and what she's leaving behind whilst Jasper's backstory parallels what Victoria is doing to Riley. Rathbone also had a chance to shine when Jasper was coordinating the Cullens training to fight Victoria’s newborn army.

Additionally, Billy Burke, Peter Facinelli, Elizabeth Reaser, Kellan Lutz, Ashley Greene, Chaske Spencer, Kiowa Gordon, Tyson Houseman, Alex Meraz and Gil Birmingham reprise their roles from the previous films with Julia Jones and Booboo Stewart joining the cast playing Leah and Seth Clearwater, two new members of the Quileute tribe.

 

Michael Welch, Anna Kendrick, Christian Serratos and Justin Chon also reprise their roles as Bella's posse of friends who by this film have become completely interchangeable save for the fact that I just named them.

 

Dakota Fanning, Cameron Bright, Daniel Cudmore & Charlie Bewley also reprise their roles as Volturi enforces Jane, Alec, Felix and Demitri who, for the most part, just sit on the sidelines and watch, their motives frustratingly opaque and their involvement unclear which, unfortunately, paints the Volturi as ineffective leaders if they just let a newborn army that could slaughter more of their kind be made as opposed to the tyrannical dictators the series is trying to paint them as. They only appeared in a couple scenes which led me to wonder why they were even there. When they do face off withe the Cullen Clan, they come off like two random gangs having a somewhat irrelevant fight. They're like the Sharks and the Jets with the nuance.

 

Eclipse eclipses its predecessors, 3.5/5

The Anonymous Critic