Twilight 3: Total Eclipse of the Plotline
“As the Wolf Turns.” “The Days of Our Deaths.” “The Young and the Thirsty.”
The third movie in the wildly popular vampire/werewolf series, “The Twilight Saga: Eclipse” embraces its soap opera essence. This is a movie full of pregnant pauses, of mini-confrontations in every scene, of pointedly emotive dialogue, even of inexplicably numerous close ups. You almost expect to hear ominous chords on an organ.
This heightened, self-aware sense of melodrama is precisely what drives the dewy-eyed audiences to the theaters in throngs. It is also what keeps the series’ many detractors far, far away.
In one sense, the “Twilight” movies are perfect for teen audiences — and a guilty pleasure for romantically inclined adults. Emotions are raw and on the surface, the heroine feels like an outsider who has never fit in, the love she feels is deep and endless, and she is desired by two guys who aren’t just hot, they’re supernatural.
On the other hand, the movies, thus far, have not been noticeably well made. The stories ramble and tend to focus on the obvious. The scripts can be laughable at times. And the special effects have looked pretty chintzy.
Kristen Stewart, whom I find better suited for the role than most critics do, returns as the perpetually moody and eternally unsmiling Bella, a high school senior who is torn between the love of two men vying for her everlasting affection. We are supposed to feel her emotional turmoil, but really, there is no competition. One guy is tall and sexy and has sparkly skin, and the other has the dramatic range of a slab of drywall and appears to be constitutionally incapable of wearing a shirt.
Played by Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner, respectively, the two engage in an endless string of showdowns and standoffs (one of the film’s problems is its tendency to be repetitive). But Bella shows no discernible interest in the shirtless, drywall, werewolf guy, a major fault to be laid at the mutual feet of director David Slade and writer Melissa Rosenberg.
Upping the emotional ante this time out is a bittersweet conflict between Bella and Edward, the vampire she loves. Bella wants him to turn her into a vampire, so they can be together for all eternity, but Edward doesn’t want her to lose her innocence and her soul. In the meantime, he wants her to marry him, a proposal she can use as a bargaining chip to be turned vampire. In this film, the use of vampirism as a metaphor for premarital sex is more explicit than it had been in the previous, subtler efforts.
A seemingly important subplot about a gang of newly turned vampires being used as an army to kill the good vampires winds up going almost nowhere. The climactic battle scenes are disappointing and quite literally bloodless — it’s an effort to keep the PG-13 rating, even with decapitations — and the whole subplot makes virtually no difference to the main theme of the supernatural love triangle.
Although just one book in the series remains to be filmed, it will be stretched out into two movies. This has the advantage of making the filmmakers and investors even wealthier, but the disadvantage of aging even further the actors playing kids who are fresh out of high school. Already, some of the supporting actors are becoming recognizable from work in decidedly adult roles in other movies and TV shows.
But that won’t matter to the series’ many fans, who will go see it even as the supporting actors who are supposed to be 17 approach 30. And the detractors? They will stay far, far away.
-- Dan Neman, former movie critic for the Richmond Times-Dispatch, reviews movies every week here at www.TheBoomerMagazine.com. He also writes the “Silver Screen with Dan Neman” column in each issue of Boomer magazine.
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