Eclipse

If one ever is inclined to question how important a change in director really can be on a film franchise, compare New Moon and Eclipse. The former film managed to get almost everything wrong and sorely misjudged the original charm of Twilight, while also doggedly and tediously rendering details of the text in such a way as to deprive them of any significance or charm.. The latter showed an impressive return to form and left me firmly in the belief that Twilight was in fact a great teen love story which happened to have a silly background of vampires and that that, most importantly, didn't really detract from a great movie.


For a start, despite continuing to rely on rather outrageous effects (and who wants to thank Stephanie Meyer for diamond-skinned vamps?), Eclipse manages to bumble through a hit-and-miss script that at least gives the protagonists a chance to speak their minds. Werewolf Jacob (Taylor Lautner) gives his most convincing arguments for Bella's heart, or is at least his most insistent, while she explains herself a little better than she's yet managed. Meanwhile Edward (Robert Pattinson), remarkably, pulls off a heretowith unmanaged feat and appears almost entirely sympathetic (and thankfully less sparkly). His reasons for being with Bella (Kristen Stewart), his old-fashioned values and concern for her soul, are offered in far more detail than we have seen before. He's not, for once, moany about it. He's clear and almost admirable. It's nice.


The plot flounders, but when were the Twilight films concerned with plot? There's less of the dire Volturi, and that's grand. The script, as noted, is patchy, but that means there's alternating hilariously bad, and hilariously sincere, dialogue, and why not? Since when were teens all about slick lines and pregnant pauses? The show must go on, at the end of the day, and Eclipse foreshadows a little more pregnancy to come: the bedroom scene between Bella and Edward is perhaps the most amusing scene in the film. Yet behind it lurks menace. Whoever takes up the Twilight mantle for the last book, which will be split into two films, better prepare to get as serious as Eclipse. And serious not with effects or emotional sincerity, but in giving the story a chance to flourish, and not taking itself too seriously. What teen movie does?


~~~
2010
Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner
dir. David Slade