Movie review | The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (2010, PG 13)

Listening to Legends of Magical, Werewolf Transformations (in Response to the Presence of Vampires) and Courageous Sacrifices. Photo Credit: Kimberley French / Summit Entertainment.

The Twilight movies (so far) began with a vampire's dangerous love. Edward's romantic intensity boiled his undead instincts to their max and attached him to Bella beyond his control. In an unguarded moment, Edward might uncontrollably drink Bella's blood. Most of this is absent from “The Twilight Saga: Eclipse,” the third movie in the saga. Hidden behind artful landscapes (waterside sunsets, firelight chats, dark vampire nights, green forest fields, snowy mountains) and flashy, humorous sequences is a hollow and wordy love triangle that had fantastic potential.

Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) has a way of getting into mortal danger. Again she's hunted by vampires. Victoria, from the second movie, “New Moon,” wants revenge for the death of her lover. But it will take Riley's army of vampires (and a little luck avoiding the Volturi, an order to the most powerful vampires) to get past the Cullen family led vampires and Jacob's werewolves.

Riley (Xavier Samuel) uses a new weapon and it's probably the best fantasy idea in the movie. A mysterious, deceitful, and smart vampire is able to breed new vampires and control them for short periods of time like puppets. New vampires are ultra powerful (stronger than regular vampires, or werewolves even), uncontrollably thirsty for blood, and known for mass killing if they are left without guidance after their conversion. Vampires and werewolves unite to defend Bella against the army. Jasper (Jackson Rathbone) has experience with controlling them and helps train the Cullens and the werewolves to deal with the new born vampires.

Much of the plot involves an ongoing romance triangle. Enter Edward (Robert Pattinson): all of our knowledge of Edward, the 100+ year old vampire, comes in glimpses and mostly from the point of view of other characters. His character sort of hovers around waiting, and waiting for the last two movies, without us getting to know much about his inner world (perhaps he's like a stage under construction left with minimal shape or feature). Traditional marriage (abstinence, for example) and Bella's safety are the main things he functions to promote. But maybe if we dig deeper, we could find something more about him in Bella's interesting confession.

Edward is so other worldly and so non-human, for Bella, he stands for an existence other than the normal mortal one. Bella doesn't just love Edward and want to be a vampire; she wants to be a vampire for her own reasons (and happens to love Edward too). Bella feels strange in the human world. She's more comfortable with a vampire's embrace and feels natural in it. But all of this is difficult to put on a poster or to frame in a close up, so none of this spoils anything important because David Slade's film doesn't get to any interesting uses of it.

Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner), a werewolf, further complicates the triangle. He wants Bella to choose him over Edward for the sake of his warm, beating heart and normal life (of the living). Plus he hints that werewolves sometimes imprint on humans and they would do anything for their loved one once imprinted. (Perhaps he would be as much a puppet as Edward is from his love for Bella, or as a new born vampire is for blood.) Some of Jacob's scenes are shirtless, muscle poses while others are humorous or warm exchanges with Bella or Edward. His wordy dialogue says a lot but doesn't mean much of interest; it certainly doesn't give the viewer much sense of aggression, action, comfort, etc., that characterized him in the novel.

Alice & Jasper. Summit Entertainment.

One final complaint is about the spacing of characters: in the mountain scenes, it was a bit difficult to tell where characters were without the help of dialogue. Is Edward watching Bella and Jacob kiss? Is Jacob running fast enough through the forest to adequately spread his scent and successfully hide Bella?

The film is certainly made for fans and audiences familiar with the world. Don't try to count the number of references based on other Twilight movies, but this didn't seem harmful to the story. Some of the best parts were the snowy battle scenes, the dark vampire setups/intros, the werewolf battle attacks, and Riley's mastery of newly bred vampires. But the villainous vampires were not as scary as they could be. The high body count of supposedly immortal vampires makes you wonder whether Bella and Edward should argue so much about whether (or when) to transform her to a vampire. It was a bit more enjoyable to watch than “New Moon,” but it still didn't deliver highly interesting characters (besides Bella) or well developed ideas.

Local Notes

The audience was quite involved and interested in this film even with the lengthy runtime. It received many laughs and positive reactions.

The film screening at a local theater also had promo trailers for the new two part movie, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" (part 1 releases on 19 November 2010, part 2 on 15 July 2011).

"Eclipse" Trailer, Summit Entertainment

Details, Ratings, Local Connections

Average Critic and User Reaction: 63.9/100 or 3.2/5

• Flixster: (User Ratings): 75% Liked It (207,521 votes)
• IMDb (User Ratings): 4.8/10 (27,540 votes)
• Netflix (User Ratings): 4.4/5 (48,566 votes)
• MRI (Critic Ratings): 61.4/100 (52 reviews)
• MRQE (Critic Ratings): 55/100 (123 reviews)
• RT T-Meter (Critic Ratings): 5.6/10 (209 reviews)

Critical Reaction (Rotten Tomatoes, Consensus):

Stuffed with characters and overly reliant on uninspired dialogue, Eclipse won't win The Twilight Saga many new converts, despite an improved blend of romance and action fantasy.