You Might Say It "Eclipses" the Other Movies

From the very first scene, Eclipse feels less like a scam than the last two Twilight movies. New Moon, in particular, seemed like a movie-shaped placeholder – a $50 millon "OUT TO LUNCH. BE BACK IN JUNE." sign from the producers. While Twilight, the original, managed to succeed as entertainment, it wasn't because of any brilliance on the filmmakers' part – the movie felt as if someone had dropped their latte on the keyboard in the editing room and, by providence, all of its ill-conceived pieces congealed into something idiosyncratic but enjoyable.

Eclipse is an entirely different experience. David Slade delivers assured work – a movie with purpose and a shred of personality. It doesn't cover much new ground – Stephenie Meyer's Twilight Saga is still a pamphlet fluffed into a phonebook – but this is actually a strength. Newcomers really have no need to look back at the previous films. They can infer anything consequential that happened prior to this story, and will altogether avoid the narrative water treading of the previous films.

I dumped on the screenwriter, Melissa Rosenberg, in my New Moon review. She has been one of the glaring weaknesses in each Twilight film, but she returns once again for Eclipse. It's hard to say that she's learned from her mistakes here. Instead, she's become better at sliding them under the rug. Eclipse has more of a structure than the first two films, but no one's going to be awed by this writing. Plot lines still appear and disappear with an incoherence typical of mediocre book-to-movie adaptations, but this time Rosenberg at least picks a few threads to string consistently through the film.

A group of young vampires is travelling throughout the Northwest, brutally attacking anything in its path. This insatiable hunger for violence is typical of new vampires, but this level of organization is not. Both Edward's family and the local Quileute tribe are concerned by these events and must consider taking action against the gang. This inevitable battle guarantees that the film will have a climax – something I appreciated coming from a movie for which I had such low expectations. This plot line also has some relevance for Bella (Kristen Stewart). She's resolute in her choice of Edward (Robert Pattinson) over Jacob (Taylor Lautner), so she spends most of her time mulling over her impending entrance into the ranks of vampires. These attacks serve as a reminder of what she's bound to experience once she takes the plunge.

Otherwise, Edward and Bella still struggle with the complications of human-vampire romance, Jacob still refuses to accept Bella's decision to marry Edward, her relationship with her father is still strained, and the vampires still have a tense relationship with Jacob's tribe. None of these plot lines are turned on their head in this film, but they are approached from fresh angles and with new levels of filmmaking competence, ensuring that they are moderately engaging. (Hell, the existence of sex is even acknowledged!) Other threads are dead on arrival. Jacob repeatedly mentions a love triangle among three of his friends. We have no idea who these people are; we only know that this is a heavy-handed parallel to Jacob, Bella and Edward's predicament. I'm not sure how we were supposed to gain greater understanding about the protagonists' love triangle by hearing about an identical one. There is also some chatter about a kid from Bella's town who may have been taken by the gang, but this personal connection never gains any significance.

Thankfully, while Rosenberg only improves marginally, the director executing her script has been significantly upgraded. The film opens on Bella and Edward sitting in a field of flowers for the umpteenth time and, instantly, the difference is obvious: The actors are acting. For the first time, the two have chemistry. They are joking in ways that are funny. They are flirting in ways that are romantic. They are fretting in ways that are involving. If one ever needs an example of how vital a director is in ensuring actors do their jobs well, compare Eclipse and New Moon. The difference is night and day.

In fact, there is not a single terrible performance in this movie – something I never thought I'd be able to say in reference to Twilight. Now, there are no Oscars in these actors' immediate futures, but even the cast's weak link (Lautner) seems considerably more comfortable in his role than he has in the past. Perhaps most notable, however, is Stewart's newfound ability to get through a sentence without pausing. In fact, she has shed much of her idiosyncratic behavior, and that goes a long way toward making Bella relatable.

A speech of hers near the end of the movie also helps a great deal. I wish I knew who was responsible for it (whether it be Meyer, Slade, Rosenberg or maybe even Stewart), so I could give praise where it is due. Bella finally stands up and explains that her motivations are not entirely derived from her romance with Edward; part of the reason she wants to become a vampire is that she simply never fit in as a human. She has spent two entire films being a horrendously submissive, impotent female lead who is defined entirely by the men in her life and now (better late than never) she finally asserts a bit of independence. Slade places a fair bit of importance on this moment, shrewdly realizing that it may just be the true climax of the film.

In fact, there are many reasons why David Slade will go down in history as the first director to make Twilight self-conscious. There was more than one scene in this film that made me want to scream "Thank you!" as aspects of the series that were always frustrating get rectified. I said that there are jokes here – not stumbles that are amusing, but real jokes. Jacob dryly sneers to Edward at one point, "I'm hotter than you." Taking a moment to show that these characters are not always serious humanizes them, and acknowledges that this movie is quite silly. He probably didn't write the joke, but Slade could have played that moment many different ways. He chose to let us laugh at the movie as much as we were laughing with it. Ironically, this sort of winking makes it far easier to take the movie seriously.

Slade is also the first director to do Twilight's action scenes justice. Fights are grisly and intense. They have a vital feeling of peril, too. There is no more prancing from tree to tree, growling at a distance. Slade never shies away from showing exactly how a vampire kills and how a vampire dies. In fact, this film pushes the PG-13 rating pretty hard, plainly depicting decapitation, dismemberment, impalement and other assorted forms of gore. An R rating is only avoided because of vampires' tendency shatter into glass-like pieces. It sounds absurd, but it's actually quite brutal. Depicting the battles' violence honestly drives home the point that Bella is about to give up her humanity in more ways than one.

Okay: Twilight's still no high art. Thanks to Slade, however, Eclipse's summer release is not a delusion; this is legitimate entertainment that stands up well against the stuff that the big studios are peddling this year, and it's a pleasantly surprising upgrade over its predecessor.

That is not to say that Twilight is guaranteed the consistent improvement of, say, the Harry Potter series. The next, final book in the series, Breaking Dawn, will be split into two movies and will be directed by Bill Condon, the guy brought us Dreamgirls. The closing moments of Eclipse do represent the first time that I have looked forward to more of this story, but I still do not see enough plot to justify two movies. Ditching Slade is an equally baffling decision, especially when its done in favor of a director who gained notoriety for his work on a musical. Do these producers want to make watchable movies, or are they too busy looking forward to their next lunch break?

The Title Suggests Inherent Dimness

Full disclosure: I kind of liked the first Twilight film. It had a long list of flaws, most of which could be blamed on Melissa Rosenberg's crappy screenplay, but despite them, the film managed to convey something authentic. That now-somewhat-famous shot of Edward and Bella lying in a bed of flowers is an undeniably potent representation of two teens lost in the throes of hormonal love. Thanks, in most part, to some surprisingly beautiful cinematography (courtesy of Elliot Davis) and an eerie score (from Carter Burwell), the film's flaws were smothered in its striking, ethereal atmosphere. Twilight can be written off as cheesy, but it made the thirteen year-old girl in me swoon.

Consider my heart broken. None of the crew from the original film returns for New Moon – neither the music nor the cinematography are anything to write home about – but Summit Entertainment did hold on to Rosenberg. This ensured that New Moon retains all of the flaws of the original, while shedding most of its redeeming value.

Even if one was somehow unaware of Stephenie Meyer's book series going into New Moon, it would not be long before he or she would identify the movie as an adaptation of a novel. All of the pitfalls are present here: A meandering plot, half-baked character progression, a lack of identifiable themes and, of course, a rather unsatisfying ending. (The Writers' Guild of America sorely needs to hold a seminar on how to adapt a novel into a screenplay. Hollywood seems to fail at this task more consistently than almost anything else.) I have no idea how good Meyer's books are, or if the source material can partly be to blame, but it is safe to say that Rosenberg is taking the painfully short-sighted "stay as close to the source material as possible" route with her scripts – and moviegoers are paying the price.

As we rejoin our pasty couple, Bella (Kristen Stewart) and Edward (Robert Pattinson) are in a stable relationship, but are beginning to run up against the inherent weirdness of vampire-human dating – she is worried about aging, and he is worried about eating her. Way too many allusions to Romeo and Juliet suggest where this is heading. After a bit of (extra?) brooding, he decides to cut her loose and move out of town. This sends Bella into a nigh-suicidal phase, complete with misguided thrill seeking and night terrors. She eventually turns to her old friend, who is newly hot, Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner) and their relationship grows quickly. Still, Bella has no intention of getting over Edward. This leaves Jacob with growing frustration, particularly as his involvement with his Native American tribe's fight against vampires deepens and he is forced to protect Bella from her own wild behavior. Eh, the Shakespeare connection left off at some point back there but, rest assured, the parallels return for the ending, albeit not as closely as some viewers might wish.

None of these developments are nearly as engrossing as they could have been, since the film only devotes a few minutes to a given thread before wandering off in a different direction. A fifth-wheel date between Bella, Jacob and a boy from school, for example, is played for all of the awkward laughs it can be until Jacob arbitrarily, and comically, goes into a fit of rage. The boy from school disappears from the rest of the film, taking the cheeky sense of humor that drove the previous few scenes with him. I would also be remiss if I did not mention that the film has a jarring, third act change of scenery to rival that of Transformers 2. It makes a vague sort of sense within the film's plot but, being the umpteenth hard turn the script takes, I had trouble caring enough to pay attention by this point.

Director, Chris Weitz does little to mitigate the shortcomings of the script. This is no surprise, considering that his last film was the debacle known as The Golden Compass. There are one or two moments of flair: Bella sulks away three months of her life in one shot and a dive off of a cliff has a nice, surreal bent. His best known work, however, is American Pie. Like his predecessor, Catherine Hardwicke, he seems to have been chosen for his experience with teen movies. As such, he is only marginally capable of shooting an action sequence.

Yet, the true problems arise elsewhere. Weitz proves unable to finesse the melodrama into something palatable – an achievement Hardwicke managed to eke out in Twilight by putting more dramatic emphasis on Bella's down-to-earth interactions with her father. In New Moon, the man simply shuffles into her room every few scenes in order to do some perfunctory parenting. As evidenced by my description of the movie date midway through the film, Weitz also occasionally fails to subdue the film's comedic aspects sufficiently. In the midst of all of the melodrama, it just leads one to wonder how much of the film is a joke.

The cast bears much of the blame here, as well. Stewart does not have much range. Her dry, basket case schtick gets her through most of the movie, but it wears thin, and the higher the drama gets, the more grating it becomes. When Edward's life is in danger, and the best she can do is stutter loudly, it saps all of the drama out of the scene. Pattinson underplays about as much as she does, but he can at least get through an entire sentence with relative ease. By far the biggest problem is Lautner. He may have been able to step up to the role physically, but he fails miserably in every other respect. As a meek, ancillary character in the first film, he did well enough, but he is simply not capable of portraying his character's growing intensity. Despite his six pack, he still sounds like the kid who gets beaten up in gym class. One of the worst scenes I have witnessed this year is his rain-drenched argument with Bella; Lautner does not sell a single frame of it.

The honeymoon is over, and the reality of the situation is grim. Summit has proven that its priority is to squeeze these films out as quickly as it can before the fad wanes. Accordingly, Eclipse is due out next summer. Most frustrating of all, the new crew is intriguing; David Slade, director of Hard Candy and 30 Days of Night will take the helm. Melissa Rosenberg, though, remains the writer. I continue to see potential in the series, but something tells me that Twilight and I are star-crossed lovers. You know, like Romeo and Juliet.