Review: The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (2010)

Oh Twilight Saga, you were doing so well. You started strong with Twilight, the glorious so-bad-it's-good film missing from my life until now, and New Moon almost had me believing I was seeing a somewhat decent movie. But then Eclipse happened, and it was awful. Not in a fun way either. I was bored. But in case you haven't seen it, let me set this up:

I can't explain the premise of Eclipse by giving away the surprise ending of the previous film, so if you still wanted to catch New Moon, don't read on.

The film begins with Bella and Edward (once again, Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson reprise their roles here) lightly bickering about their future. Edward wants Bella to marry him, but Bella isn't ready for that. What she is ready for, however, is the eternal commitment of being a vampire like Edward, who refuses to transform her out of fear that she will lose her soul, like he believes he has. Jacob Black (Taylor Launter) is back, and still after Bella's heart, much to Edward's chagrin. However, something worse than this love triangle is threatening the world Bella knows, as "newborns" (newly transformed vampires, who have a stronger taste for blood) have been unleashed into her town. As the vampires and the werewolves team up for the first time to try and defeat the newborns, Bella has to decide where her heart truly lies - is it with Edward, or Jacob?

The following review was originally drafted as something much more hateful and senselessly ranty, so I've tried to edit it down into something a bit more sensible.

I was furious while watching this film. I couldn't even watch it in one sitting because I kept getting so annoyed that I would have to switch it off and walk away to take breaks. Everything about it was either plain bad, or undid the little bits of good the previous two films offered us, which is worse than the previous offence. So much doesn't make any sense. If you don't want any spoilers, then don't read ahead. I've already said all that you needed to know from me. If you want a more in-depth rant however, please read on:

If you read my New Moon review, you will know that the sweet, innocent me of last week who wrote it was fully in praise of the Bella-Edward-Jacob love triangle. I don't like the Edward-Bella romance and never have, but in New Moon I respected that Bella's feelings lay entirely with Edward, although she was a little conflicted about dating Jacob. In New Moon, Jacob was the "nice guy" who everyone thought she should be with, and he openly had feelings for her. Additionally, Edward had left Bella at this point, so if she had chosen to pursue Jacob, that would have been okay. Yet Bella's feelings couldn't be swayed, even though Jacob seemed tempting to her at times. She was following her heart, while trying to work out her feelings for Edward still, despite not being a couple with him anymore. She didn't leap into something new when she wasn't ready, and again, even if she had, at least she was single. I actually had respect for Bella for standing by her feelings in that film.

Not here though. Nope, now that she's with Edward, Jacob and his constant shirtlessness is somehow suddenly tempting to her. I found this very grating. We've done this story-line. She chose the creepy vampire and that was supposed to be the end of that.

Apparently, that's not the case.

I found myself liking Jacob a lot less in this film than I did in New Moon. Heck, at this point I liked him best in Twilight when he only had about three lines. In Eclipse, he kept trying to pursue Bella, even though she had a boyfriend the entire time. He was so pretentiously smug every time Bella did something vaguely nice in relation to him, like it was somehow a personal attack on Edward for Bella to be nice to him. To make it worse, Edward was so petty with it, which made Bella feel bad every time Jacob was nice to her, and made me question how sincere Jacob's "niceness" was intended to be.

Edward, if you believe Bella's your true love, so much that you keep trying to pressure her into marriage, then maybe, just maybe, you would trust her by now not to stray?

Except Bella shouldn't be trusted, because this isn't a healthy relationship. Near the end of the film, when Jacob's had enough of her choosing Edward -you know, her BOYFRIEND- over him, she kisses him. And out of all the things Jacob and Bella do together in the film, this is the one Edward is completely fine with? Why?! He and Bella chat about it afterwards in the most monotone way imaginable, like they're discussing whose turn it is to put the bins out or something. Aside from it making little sense in practical terms (because I think most of us would be upset if we could see that our partner had demanded for someone to make out with them), this makes no sense for Edward's character. It completely goes against him as the possessive, obsessed boyfriend he has always otherwise been.

Again, Edward and Bella aren't a good couple. The film opens with her nagging him to make her a vampire, while he keeps trying to pressure her into marriage. Neither of them wants to, or is ready to do, the thing that the other one is asking of them, and both of those actions are heavy commitments to make. We've never seen them share a common interest, or even a proper joke together. But hey, why would personality matter when it's True Love? Throwing Jacob into the mix just serves to show that they aren't properly suited, because they allow him to bring them drama and don't communicate well enough with each other to try and resolve it.

This love triangle (which by the way, is more like a love V - Edward and Jacob aren't romantically connected, so it's not a triangle) went from a refreshing one to the most cliche love triangle you can get. In New Moon, we saw a girl trying to get over her lost love in order to move on (granted, after months of moping later), maybe to be with the person everyone around her would prefer her to be with, even though she only loved that person as a friend. In Eclipse, this really is a case of "They both have abs and good hair and I don't know who to choose because all this lusting after me is haaaaaaaard, so I will respond by being unclear about my feelings and confuse them both, somehow making them even more desperate to be the one who wins my heart."

That's my Bella impression over with, thank you. *bows*

This love triangle made up a good deal of this film, and I didn't care for it. Ironically, I think the best chemistry here was between Pattinson and Lautner as Bella's rivalling love interests. It feels like these two knew how ridiculous a lot of their lines were, and just had fun fake bickering with each other. Unfortunately, that doesn't mean it was always well done.

The acting in this film wasn't very good. Not in a fun way. At this point, the novelty of awkwardness from this franchise has well begun to wear off. Once you've stopped laughing about how bad something is (as I did with the previous two films, notably Twilight) you find yourself really questioning the logic of it all.

There's a subplot here with an evil vampire called Victoria. I haven't mentioned Victoria in the two previous reviews I did in this series, because frankly, she bores me and I forget her pretty much the second her scenes end in every film. In fact, this character is so forgettable to me, that I didn't even notice she was played by two different actresses, until I stumbled across the information by chance (Bryce Dallas Howard plays her here, and Rachelle Lefevre plays her in the previous two films). Victoria is the one creating newborns, to punish Edward for killing her boyfriend back in Twilight. Throughout the film, we're constantly being told what a great threat these newborns are, and Jasper has to train the vampires and werewolves how to kill them.

Well, all of that seems pretty pointless, because the newborns -and Victoria- die pretty much as soon as battle begins. It's pathetic. These newborns are the weakest fighters I think I've ever seen. We don't even get one cheesy cop-out of suspense where it looks like a character we like is going to die, only to be saved at the very last moment by someone on their team. Carlisle and Esme would have been particularly perfect for this, with Esme being the one to save Carlisle. I think Esme's only had about two lines in all three of these films so far, and it would have been really good for her character to be the hero, if just for a moment. But no, instead the newborns just die; apparently vampires have to be broken like plates to be killed, and their corpses are ceramic.

However, with Victoria gone, I can't help but worry what the tension in these films will be centred around now. Victoria was boring, but she did distract from the romance a little bit at least. Are we really just stuck with this terrible love V now?

In terms of logic in this world, I have a few more questions. There's a purple flower field that Bella and Edward go to in these films, that seems to be their special place. They lay in the purple flower field during Twilight, but in New Moon, all the flowers died when Edward left, which I thought was a nice if not a very cheesy metaphor. But here, the flowers are alive again. So, does this random flower field literally thrive on Bella and Edward's *epic* love? Why?

Bella makes a big fuss to the Cullens in this film about how they can't worry about her all the time, and need to go hunting for animals to feed off of so that they can survive. This is why the werewolves are brought in, so they can take it in turns to care for Bella. But... why don't the Cullens keep a supply of livestock? They live in a completely isolated area, so no one would have to know if they were raising cows, pigs and chickens. Even if people did know, they could make it into a business and earn an additional income, selling eggs and meat to people, but keeping most of the animals aside for themselves. They've also been alive long enough to work out how to run a farm like this, so why not?

Also, wouldn't these hyper aware vampires react strongly to Bella when she's on her period? I know no one likes talking about periods, but the fact is, they happen, and so this should be at least lightly referenced too. What if that's why Edward reacted so grossly to her when they met in the first film? He did admit it was the smell of her after all, that made that impact on him.

All I know is that if they were tempted by her torn arm in New Moon, maybe a tampon or sanitary towel wouldn't be strong enough to stop the blood-thirst? That's just got to be uncomfortable for everyone. Maybe Bella has to stay away from that family during the week she's on each month. How does Edward cope?

Additionally, what are they going to do if they decide to have sex while she's still human, and she bleeds if he breaks her hymen?

When you're desperately longing for some sort of order in this fictional world, it seems you find yourself asking the really deep and bizarre questions.

I still have no idea why the vampires eyes change colour, by the way. Sometimes they're orange, sometimes they're black or red or something else. Nobody ever notices this about the Cullens somehow, and it's never explained. I'm guessing it relates to their blood-thirst?

Also, why is it at the start of the film, that Edward, Jasper and Alice now sit with Bella's friends during school lunchtime now? I swear those characters have never spoken to each other before, yet we're supposed to be on board with them all just chatting away now, like it's completely normal? One of Bella's male friends very clearly had a crush on her for two years, which he tried to act on a couple of times, yet he's fine with Edward joining them for lunch now? And what about Emmett and Rosalie? Do they just sit by themselves now? Granted, that would probably be Rosalie's choice, but twenty seconds explaining this arrangement would be appreciated.

I've found myself wondering what Native Americans thought of Jacob's tribe in these films, and if the books and films altered how they were perceived by the largely white audience at the time they were being released. I don't have an argument for this, I'm just genuinely interested. If anyone knows anything about this, please let me know, I'm intrigued to see what -if any- impact this had on this particular minority group.

I'll be kind now, and list the couple of things I liked about this film, because there were some good things to happen. For a start, this was the first film in the series without narration from Bella, which was good. I'm not a fan of narration in films in general anyway, but with these films, Bella always seemed so melodramatic, yet she always mumbled. I've had to watch these films with subtitles previously because she's so quiet.

I really liked the valedictorian speech from Jessica (Anna Kendrick). As a recent university graduate, I actually found it quite comforting to hear about it being okay to go out into the world with no clue of what you're actually doing.

My favourite scene overall was when Charlie tried to talk to Bella about sex, only for her to exclaim that she's still a virgin. Kristen Stewart looked the happiest I've ever seen her in these films during this scene, and it's clear she had a great time shooting it with Billy Burke, returning as Charlie.

It was good to see some more backstory for a couple of the Cullens, Jasper and Rosalie - Rosalie's in particular felt very needed and appropriate to share now. In fact, her story could have made for an interesting standalone film itself.

However, once their backstories had been shared, these two characters became pretty much irrelevant for the rest of the film, when really, it should have been the time for Bella to be encouraged to know them a bit more. Additionally, we still know basically nothing about Esme and Emmett, apart from the fact that they're nice. As I'm having to continue with this series, (because at this point, I don't know if I would choose to alone) I would like to know more about their histories, and it would be interesting to learn how Carlisle and Alice became vampires.

For the first time, I'm worried about watching a sequel to one of these films, because I don't think I have anything to look forward to anymore. It's a shame, but Eclipse ruined everything I was enjoying about this series.

Except for Carlisle. I will always love Carlisle. And Charlie. Why are the two dads more interesting than their kids, our supposed protagonists in this series?

THE SCOREBOARD

Chick Flick Check List Elements: 1, 5, 7, 21, 32, 42, 52, 57, 58

Total: 9

Is this really a chick flick or will men like it too? Chick Flick.

Would I recommend this film? No.

Quote of the film: "From now on, I'm Switzerland!"* - Bella

Film rating: 3/10

*If anyone could explain to me what this even means, I'd appreciate it.