Jun 29 2010

PCN Review: Total ‘Eclipse’ of the Heart

Twilight: Eclipse’ is the best of the series so far. The bad news?  It’s a part of this series.

Bringing in a new director in David Slade (Hard Candy, 30 Days of Night) and replacing the villainous red-head Victoria with Bryce Dallas Howard, Eclipse brings back, more or less, the entire cast of the previous entries. Even Dakota Fanning and her ridiculous make-up (frosted eye-shadow above blazing red eyes, really?) have returned. 

Written by: Nathan Bartlebaugh

When Eclipse opens, Bella Swan is in ‘negotiations’ with vampire Ed regarding her transition from the human world to the vampire world. You remember Bella; the mopey, adolescent blank slate upon which creatures of the night project their dreams and desires. She wants Eddie to bite her, but not before he gives her one night of love in mortal form, an experience she can take with her into the vampire life.

As for Ed, despite 100 plus years of likely sexual frustration, he insists that they be married first. Bella, who’s totally fine with giving up her pulse, family, and V8 consumption for the red stuff, balks at this. ‘Don’t 2 out of 3 marriages end in divorce?’ she asks. Hey, if you follow the lore, 3 out of 3 vampire/human relationships end in bloodshed. Unless you are Angel and Buffy, and then it’s just a lot of fuming and sulking afterwards.

To give distraction to this decision is Jacob Black, the Native American wolf bud of Bella’s whose Indian name seems to be ‘Runs with Six-packs’. If Ed is the moody, lackadaisical stoner poet who will talk you into a lather, but then saunter off to doze in the corner, Jake is the red-blooded real deal, ready to jump your bones at the very utterance of the word ‘go’. Maybe, even before.

In Jake’s werewolf clan, who meet in the woods and have helpful campfires where they show well-produced movie flashbacks, you don’t just get the ‘hots’ for someone, you ‘imprint’ upon them, and they become your soul mate. This was honestly sort of vaguely explained, but it sounds to me a lot like what happens to stalkers right before they decide hanging outside your house in a rain slicker sans pants is a good idea.

Either way, Bella is seemingly committed to Edward, aware of Jacob’s ardor for her, and yet still allows him to drive her around and cuddle her in front of her beau. She spends inordinate amounts of time with him, sitting in close proximity, letting him wax on about her wonderfulness, and then says ‘I thought I was perfectly clear’ when he expresses that he is in love with her. Bella, we’ve seen fog banks that were more perfectly clear than you.

At this point, most of Eclipse has devolved into the kind of clunky, uninteresting romantic waffle that grounded the first two films. While Lautner, Pattinson, and Stewart have all grown as actors, they still can’t imbue any of these people with a real soul or better yet, a backbone. Even Jake, who seems like a go-getter, just comes off as creepy and pushy. Since this entire franchise is essentially a bookish girl’s wet dream, the guys have to be forward and pining because it cements the attraction of having two different kinds of stud locking horns over you. Thankfully, director Slade hasn’t completely forgotten about the other vampires; you know the ones who bite people and actually suck blood?

When a newborn group of vamps start popping up in the Seattle area, the Cullenses rightly deduce that someone is building an army of bloodsuckers. Alice, the member of the family with the clairvoyance, sees visions of a prep vampire named Riley Biers rallying the troops to track and hunt Bella. In an effort to keep their pigment-challenged doll safe, Ed and Jake execute a truce between the vampire and wolf clans to stand together against the oncoming invasion.  There it is then, at the center of this supposed fantasy epic is the simple truth; all worlds–human, vampire, werewolf–apparently revolve around Bella Swan, who just might be the dullest girl in a school full of dull girls. Honestly, making Bella the thematic lynchpin of the series is one of its greatest flaws, not least because she’s wholly uninteresting and not engaging as a character.

As a director, David Slade commits himself to delivering the best possible Twilight film he can make. With the exception of some murky special effects involving the wolves and the frozen setting at film’s end, he succeeds admirably. This is a better looking, more fearsome movie than the ones that came before, and there are even odd moments of beauty like an army of vampires rising up out of a lake, the wolves slowly picking their way out of the forest to meet the Cullens clan, and a shadowy, frightening scene outside of a bar in Seattle where a young man is stalked by..something. Despite populating Eclipse with one too many flashbacks (this was no doubt an attempt to cram most of the book into the film), Slade keeps an even hand on the pacing. It’s impossible to liven up the scenes between Edward and Bella, but he does manage to strike up a certain verve for the scenes with Jacob, and even if it’s only on a small level, he brings to the franchise what it is sorely, sorely lacking; a sense of humor.

Slade’s previous credits include a film about a pedophilic predator and one about vampires, and he’s able to draw from both when sketching out the sordid love triangle at the heart of this movie. The film’s humor mostly comes at the expense of these oh-so-serious lovers. What nearly amounts to a case of Jacob forcing himself upon Bella in the book is established in the film as a heated, dim-bulb move on Jake’s part and results in the line ‘I kissed Bella, and she broke her hand punching me in the face.’ Later, in a tent on a mountain in the middle of a snowstorm, Bella is freezing, Ed can’t warm her up, and so he’s forced to sit there and make small talk with Jake while this bare-chested dude snuggles intimately with his woman. The fact that Slade allows the two guys to make and hold eye contact for many minutes while Bella sleeps is actually pretty funny. Ed seems pretty much ready to go, but Jake balks at the idea of ever being ‘friends’. Yes, Ed, if he never starts, he never has to quit you.

About that scene in the tent. It makes little sense. For one, Ed and Bella have taken certain steps to sealing their bond, and yet Jake is still allowed shenanigans like this one. I get that Ed is just trying to be chivalric, but at some point you got to take some kind of a stand. Furthermore, Jake is a shape-shifting werewolf the size of a Clydesdale—wouldn’t it make more sense for him to take on his wolf persona, which is no doubt a more efficient conductor of heat and less awkward for everyone concerned?  No of course not, because ultimately this scene only exists as an over-heated fantasy for Bella and all of those young women for whom she plays avatar.

Oh, how exquisitely sexy to be fawned over by a chaste, enigmatic gentleman (who still hasn’t given up leering as an art form) and also snorgled up by a beefy, salt-of-the earth man’s man. And to think that I’ve heard these stories referred to as ‘Jane Austen with vampires’.Let me tell you, if Jane Austen saw this, she’d be kicking your ass with her perfectly coiffed Regency boots.

 At any rate, Twilight Eclipse is ultimately more of the same old dreck the franchise has been shoveling our way. If you are a fan of the series, then you are likely to enjoy this one best out of the three. It is well made and everyone is doing what they can to give it a certain sheen of reality. There are plot developments here that will achieve a payoff if you are invested in where this story is going. All others needn’t bother with this one, because nothing in it is going to convert you.

For me it goes back to my original complaint with the series, which is that the central relationship lacks interesting characters or real dramatic feeling. Since Twilight ultimately has very little to do with vampires, werewolves and things that go bump in the night, and much more to do with a couple of teens skirting around the issue of wanting to bump in the night, we need  characters with whom we can connect. You can scoff at old John Hughes movies all you want, but if he were to have given us teen vampires, they wouldn’t have sucked. At least, not like this.

By Nathan • Film • 13 • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,