Review: TWILIGHT SAGA ECLIPSE

Its so easy and fun for movie bloggers to hate on Twilight apparently. It seems as though its cool to hate anything that tween girls are obsessed with. Rewind a few years to the resurgence of the boy band revolution and I am certain that if you were a journalist you took pleasure in tearing up their albums, concerts, and general existence. Fast forward to 2008 and the same thing is happening now but with the TWILIGHT series of films. There are endless amounts of journalists that seem to be bashing just to bash. Twilight is the pop-punk band that the hardcore dudes give shit to because its far more popular.

All those comparisons aside, lets, for one second, just take all of the fangirls out of it equation. Lets also remove the ridiculous popularity from the films/series. Lets just think of TWILIGHT as an indie film that we got a chance to see at a film festival. Whats that? The ratings just increased by about 40%? Yeah, I thought so.

TWILIGHT was, no doubt, written by women for women. That’s not to say that men don’t also enjoy the series. Lets be honest. The entire series revolves around two men fighting over the love of one woman. A romantic, old school gentlemen (Edward) that would rather court Bella than to sleep with her, and a young ripped werewolf (Jacob) that is shirtless 80% of time both fighting over one girl who is at best a little more attractive than your typical plain jane. That is every girls fantasy…right? Two men fighting over her for her mind, a love on a deeper level than just looks…seems to ring true.

So now that we have established that the majority of journalists reviewing the film are pretty much bullies of the movie world, lets dive into ECLIPSE and see if its worth seeing.

I was a hater of TWILIGHT when it came out in 2008. I refused to go see the screening and took to my old site to make sure people didnt go see it. I posted a Top 5 Vampire Movies you should see instead of Twilight, and a bunch of fan reviews that were really negative. I was pretty happy that not everyone loved it. One lonely night at the redbox I was trying to find something to watch and everything I wanted to see was checked out…except TWILIGHT. I went ahead and rented it, popped it in and readied myself for a laugh riot. What I found was actually a pretty watchable movie. True there were many moments that were pretty cheesy, but it wasnt as bad as I thought.

NEW MOON was definitely more weak than the first film, but I did go out and see it during our screening. When I first heard that David Slade was coming on board to direct ECLIPSE I knew that it was going to be the best of the series thus far. And I was right.

The movie picks up where NEW MOON left off, Edward and Bella are still in love (no surprises here), and he is still trying to talk her out of wanting to become a vampire. She is obviously not having any of it, but you can tell there is a bit of doubt in her mind now. Realizing that she will have to give up everyone she knows and loves in order to spend a lifetime with Edward.

Meanwhile in Seattle an army of new blood vampires is being built and you have two guess as to who is behind it all…but you will only need one. Victoria is still trying to get revenge on Edward for killing James in the first movie/book. The army’s only goal is to kill Bella by any means necessary. When the Cullens find out about this they start to go on the defensive and train to fight the newbloods along with recent allies in the wolf pack.

David Slade was able to work in some funny, snarky jokes that makes the movie make fun of itself at times and you realize that Slade knows exactly what he has gotten himself into. My personal favorite is Edward asking Bella if Jacob owns a shirt after having seen him shirtless for no apparent reason.

ECLIPSE isn’t a perfect movie by any stretch of the imagination, but that doesnt mean its not entertaining. It seems like the love triangle between Bella, Jacob, and Edward just goes around in circles through the entire film. Their conversations are all pretty much the same throughout and that gets a little mundane.

I am also not a huge fan of the fact that they replaced Rachelle Lefevre with Bryce Dallas Howard as Victoria. Lefevre was ridiculously more creepy and really pulled in the role of Victoria in. BDH doesnt really command the screen as Victoria and it was pretty noticeable through the entire film.

All in all Slade did a great job taking on a series tailor made for tweens/women/moms, and made it watchable for their male counterparts. I said it before and I will say it again…I enjoyed ECLIPSE and its definitely my favorite of the series.

Overall Rating: 3 1/2 out of 5