Right now, here in Los Angeles, hordes of fans are watching the latest installment of their obsession: the Twilight Saga. In the Midwest and on the East Coast, they’re probably off in their Twi-covens, OMG-ing to their heart’s content about the film they just watched. Right now, here in my Los Angeles apartment, I’m writing this sentence that will lead into dismissive missive about how The Twilight Saga: Eclipse is actually the best film of the three thus far… and how sad that fact is since it’s still just a pile of adolescent garbage that I will apparently never fully understand or care about.
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My hopes were about as high as they possibly could be for this film, given that I thought Twilight was probably one of the worst movies I’ve seen in years and The Twilight Saga: New Moon was just a bit better than that. My hopes were high because they actually had a director on board that I really liked in David Slade, whose previous vampire flick 30 Days of Night is such a fantastic antithesis to these films, since it’s an incredibly entertaining vampire movie. I was also hopeful since I was told that this is probably the most “guy-friendly” film of the series, featuring some vampire versus werewolf battles that I was sure would look great under Slade’s direction. I knew this would be better than the first two (mainly because it’s hard to get worse than those first two), and while I guess I was right, it’s still sad that something this trite and boring can be considered the best of anything.
Was I surprised though? Not at all. After all, screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg was still present, churning out corny lines and oddball scenarios that would cause the most dramatic tension in the tweenest of hearts and the most rolling eyeballs in the adultest of eyes. I couldn’t help but LOL, literally, during the scene where they re-introduce us to Taylor Lautner’s Jacob Black, where, of course, his back is to the camera and he turns around all pensively, complete with an uber-corny hard rock track that would even make Troy Duffy gag (yes, I love his movies, his music, not so much). Naturally, as corny as this reveal was, my laugh was drowned out by both the tween squeals and the music (surprisingly, the music more than the squeals…), which, both literally and metaphorically, is a sign that this entire series of movies just isn’t for me and likely anyone else in my thirtysomething age group. Don’t worry, it gets worse from here.
The first movie was about Bella (Kristen Stewart) finding and falling for Edward (Robert Pattinson) and the second movie was about Bella finding solace and more in Jacob (Taylor Lautner) when Edward was away trying to protect her, and such. Natually, the third film is basically a pissing contest/tug-of-war between Edward and Jacob for the affections of their fair Bella. Of course, it doesn’t help matters that Edward is a vampire and Jacob is a werewolf and are both natural enemies. It also doesn’t help that the crazy redhead Victoria (now played by Bryce Dallas Howard after Rachel Lefevre’s departure) is back and hunting for Bella with an army of “newborn” vampires lead by Riley (Xavier Samuel). This is where all the awesome fighting comes in, with the adopted Cullen, Jasper (Jackson Rathbone), teaching everyone how to fight off newborns, vampires who have just been turned and are incredibly strong during the first few months. Sadly, Jasper also is teaching the werewolves, who form an unsteady pact with the good vampires to fight off the newborns, which only adds more lame tension to the Bella-Edward-Jacob love triangle, as Edward and Jacob have to kind of work with each other to protect Bella, all the while trying to one-up each other in ways that only tweens and teens would find intriguing.
There’s a scene where Bella and Edward are camping on what appears at first to be a hill and turns out to be friggin Mount Rainier, since there’s a fierce snowstorm atop this hill/mountain and they need the warm-blooded Jacob to get into Bella’s sleeping bag to warm her up, and no snow anywhere down below. They don’t give any indication they’re going up high enough that it will actually snow up there, and using this device solely to advance this pubescent one-upping aspect of the story, is almost reprehensible to someone like me, who really doesn’t care about who does or doesn’t get the girl, especially since it’s made rather bluntly obvious from the beginning. But, as much as I loathe it, I suppose that’s part of the beauty of these films. They’re aimed at an audience young enough not to care about these things, and Summit is smart enough to cater to that audience to a T and the rest of the moviegoers be damned. Their audience doesn’t say, ‘Dude, why the eff is it snowing now and it wasn’t a second ago?’ They go, ‘Like OHMIGOD JACOB IS GOING IN BELLA’S SLEEPING BAG!!!!’ and the squeals I heard last night at that exact moment only prove my point.
In fact, I don’t even know why I should really finish this review. I probably should say some of the good things, like David Slade’s overall direction especially in the fantastic fight sequences that were, for me, some of the best moments of this whole franchise. I should probably say that Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner have a better handle on their characters, and David Slade seems to bring more out of them than the dull, floor-staring, practically lifeless (both human and otherwise) characters than the previous films.
The fact of the matter is, though, these films are arguably the most critic-proof movies in at least the past decade. People aren’t “leaning” a certain way or another, they’re decidedly set on being totally psyched to see this on opening weekend or being totally content to never watch any of these films ever. I watched the first two films and really didn’t like them much at all and I guess that’s what kind of saddens me about this film is it was the one I thought I could actually like, with vampires fighting werewolves and a fantastic director at the helm. It saddens me that I can’t like a movie which has vampires fighting werewolves because they spend most of the movie having those classic monsters fighting over a girl who seems about as interesting as a thumb tack.
