Vampires, and werewolves, and Bella! Oh my!

The H-Bomb: In this the third installment of the ongoing (i.e. never ending) love triangle between human, wolf, and sparkly vampire, the soon-to-be high school grad Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) seems to have finally settled on romantic blood sucker Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson), while still harboring strong feelings for hunky lycanthrope Jacob (Taylor Lautner). So… yeah, nothing much new there. The girl is as conflicted and confused as ever.

However, that pesky redheaded vamp Victoria (Bryce Dallas Howard, replacing Rachelle Lefevre from the first two movies) still has a bone to pick with Bella and has been spotted in the forest outside of town . . . looking to stir up trouble. Meanwhile, in nearby Seattle, the local vampire population has been growing at an alarming rate. Dubbed “new borns,” they are only very recently undead, which makes them stronger than the average vamp, and far less capable of controlling their violent, blood craving impulses. As these “new borns” wreak havoc all over the “Emerald City”, the Cullens discover that it all might have something to do with Bella. But what, pray tell? (Damn, doesn’t that all sound a helluva lot more interesting than the tired three-way romance?)

As I said in my review for “New Moon”, I don’t get this “Twilight” craze at all. At the same time, though, I find them perfectly watchable and I don’t think they suck nearly as much as the hardcore haters would have you think. None of these films will make any top ten list of mine, but they’re decent for what they are, and there are certainly worse movies out there. As with the first two movies, the “Twi-hards” are gonna go nuts for this one. And as for the haters; c’mon guys, we’re now three movies in, you should really know by now that this “Saga” isn’t your bag. So if you voluntarily go to see this one and have a miserable time, then you only have yourselves to blame.

I did like this one better than the first two, but only by an ever so slight margin. It has a swifter pace than the first film, and it’s not quite as stupefyingly repetitive as I remember the second one being, though there is plenty repetition, mainly in the interactions between the three participants in said love triangle. There are seemingly countless scenes of Edward pestering Bella to marry him and even more scenes of Jacob trying, oh-so-earnestly, to convince her that he’s a better match for her. Again, the dialogue in these scenes is so saturated with cheese that I would swear it was lifted straight from a daytime soap.

What made this movie better than anticipated was the side plot involving the growing army of vampires in Seattle. This portion of the film actually piqued my interest quite a bit and kept me engaged. The build up to the big confrontation between the “new borns” and the Cullens I thought was especially well handled, and the final battle royale itself I thought was pretty badass. I give much of the credit for that to director David Slade, who previously handled much darker and bloodier vampires in “30 Days of Night”.

I also really dug the flashback sequences in which we find out the backstories of two of the Cullen siblings, as well as the flashback where we see the werewolf tribe’s earliest encounter with the fanged fiends.  In fact, most of the aspects not dealing with the love triangle really kicked some booty, in my humble opinion.

The entire cast did fine, despite the fact that some of them didn’t get a whole lot to do, and despite some very uneven writing. Stewart, in particular, seems livelier in this film than in the previous two. Yes, her character is not supposed to be as depressed this time around, but I found the slight change refreshing. Pattinson’s Edward also seems to have more of a personality this time around, and Lautner (who spends something like 85% of his screen time shirtless) has his moments as the jealous, temperamental Jacob.

My personal favorite character is Bella’s Sheriff dad (Billy Burke). He just has such a dry and subtle wit to him and seems completely at a loss as to how to handle his daughter other than to just shrug his shoulders and let her do what she will. He never gets mentioned much, but I’ve always enjoyed what he brings to these films.

When all is said and done, anyone who has seen the previous films (or read the books, for that matter) knows exactly what to expect from “Eclipse”. These movies are what they are. The “Twilight” lovers will surely love it, the “Twilight” detractors should just stay away. Far, far, far away. As far away as humanly possible . . . don’t say I didn’t warn you.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 29th, 2010 at 10:05 pm and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.