Twilight Saga: Eclipse - 2010

The Twilight Saga: Eclipse - 2010

Out of all the Twilight movies this one has to be my favorite.  It’s not what I’d call a good movie but at least it’s better constructed than the other ones.  Eclipse begins with a horror atmosphere as some unlucky unnamed character gets attacked by an invisible assailant on an abandoned dock after dark while it’s raining buckets.  Yeah the dark and stormy night backdrop is overplayed and cliché but you’ll never hear me complain that someone has added a little Kool-Aid to Twilight’s sugary water.  In a transition reminiscent of those in the book the scene goes from dark and stormy to bright sunny and flowery as Bella and Edward are lying in a grassy field talking (or arguing?) about getting married and we’re reminded exactly what kind of movie we’re watching.  Unlike the other Twilight movies, and to an extent the books, this movie has something at least vaguely resembling a plot which makes it a lot more watchable despite the fact that it still contains some of the worst actors, characters, and dialogue in cinema history.

Like I said this movie actually has a plot but even that gets interrupted for the romance and conflict between Bella, Edward, and Jacob.  It also makes room for the backstories of characters I’m sure not even the fans cared about.  I always thought it was odd that they included these backstories even though they aren’t relevant to the plot or even the characters narrating them and only slow things down but they were in the book so I guess they thought they needed to be in the movie.  Well at least we get a better idea of who the werewolves are and why and how they change… NO WAIT WE DON’T!  The only explanation the viewer is given is that they’re native americans and native americans are a very magical and spiritual people.  This flimsy excuse bothers me but I suppose it’d bother me even more if I was native American. 

I’m not sure if I’m the first person to pick up on this but “Eclipse” is loaded with sexual tension and undertones.  I may have been the last person on earth to find out Stephenie Meyer is a Mormon and her values made their way into her books.  Jacob forces himself on Bella all throughout the movie and when that fails resorts to emotional psychological tactics.  He even says she doesn’t know what she wants (apparently he does) and she’s in love with him she just doesn’t know it yet (which is something he proves to her in the book… by forcing himself on her).  Bella forces herself upon an unwilling Edward all but saying if you really loved me you’d put out and against the instincts of every straight man alive or undead refuses her.  Meanwhile Edward refuses to change Bella into a vampire or have sex with her until they get married.  My personal favorite scene is where Bella’s father Charlie tries to have “the talk” with her.

The movie climaxes with an all-out war between the vampires and werewolves.  The effects are kinda bad and you’re constantly reminded that the wolves are nothing more than pixelated cartoons and the vampires tend to break apart easier than the cheapest plastic action figure.

The love triangle is overplayed.  The characters are dull at the best of times and deplorable at the worst.   The performances aren’t much better.   Since the movie tends to reveal more about the plot it takes away the mystery of who’s causing the attacks and raising the vampire army.  Even in the face of all its flaws “Eclipse” isn’t as much of a disaster as the other installments in the series.  68/100 almost passable as a movie but not quite.  Good try though.

Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer

Interesting fact: A vampire bat will consume up to 30% of its body weight in blood making it too heavy to fly off the ground.  Because their diet consists entirely of fluids a vampire bat needs to urinate shortly after feeding to reduce its bloat enough to fly.  Kinda makes vampire prose a lot less romantic huh.  Also I wonder if the Twilight werewolves mark on trees like real wolves.

Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer

Vampire mythos are a tricky thing, they differ from author to author, movie to movie, and culture to culture.  Just to get one thing out of the way not all vampires turn into dust when light hits them.  Stephenie Meyer’s unique decision that not only do they not turn to dust but they sparkle is a good example of this.  I think just about everyone knows that by now, what not everyone knows about is apparently vampirism is a beauty enhancer… I am not making that up.  If I didn’t know any better this is what would tip me off that a woman wrote this.  I’d hate to play the gender card here but only a woman would be this hung up on such a trivial superficial quality, a very shallow woman who probably has body or appearance issues.  Stephenie Meyer wastes an entire chapter explaining this through exposition by one of the most self-obsessed characters I’ve ever read in any book.  From a biological standpoint I just can’t understand what advantage a vampire or any predator would have for looking pretty.  After all aren’t peacocks and brightly colored fish easy targets.  I can understand being able to foretell the future or reading minds or being super-fast or strong. 

The superpowers remain inconsistent as well.  Not every vampire has them but some of the ones who do don’t work on the main character Bella.  The book tries to explain this by saying that only psychic powers work on Bella but that doesn’t make much sense either.  Either all vampire powers work on her or none do.  Regardless they don’t explain why the non-psychic powers work on her.  I know I’m putting way too much thought into something that was devoted to a certain group of people whose minds aren’t finished developing but since Stephenie Meyer didn’t think about these considerations someone ought to.

For a 629 page book the plot is really thin, so thin it’s hard to describe.  At the end of the last book Edward, a vampire, and Bella, his human girlfriend, reunite after a brief hiatus leaving her new suitor Jacob, a werewolf, in the lurch.  This is where it gets a little tricky.  I don’t know if I should call the main plot a side plot or the side plot a main plot.  Either way Edward and Bella pick up where they left off as if nothing ever happen.  Meanwhile Bella tries to renew her fractured friendship with Jacob who is trying to resolve the conflict of his feelings for her and his hatred for her boyfriend both as competition and a natural enemy.  In the midst of this corpses are piling up in Seattle which leads the vampires to the conclusion that someone is amassing a vampire army.  The book climaxes with Jacob and the werewolves and Edward and the vampires fighting this army and finding out why it was assembled and who’s behind it.

The reason I have such a hard time differentiating between plot and subplot is a love triangle that only gets more complicated as the story wears on is hardly what you’d call a plot(more like a plot device) but so little time and effort is devoted to the vampire army and how that plot is resolved.  To me the vampire war is more interesting but that’s over in two chapters and most of that happens outside the scope of the main character and narrator.  The main plot is so simple it can be summarized thusly:

Bella: I love you Edward!

Eddie: I love you Bella!

Bella: I love him!

Jacob: I hate him and I hate you for loving him!  I WISH YOU WERE DEAD!

Bella: Sorry…

Jacob: I forgive you.  Please forgive me.  I still love you too. Pick me PICK ME PICK ME!

Bella: I love you too Jake but I love him more.

Jacob: Don’t we have a bunch of vampires to kill?

Bella & Edward: Who cares if innocent people are dying and vampires are running wild we have to finish our selfish teenage soap opera melodrama!

It goes on and on like that chapter after chapter until your eyes bleed.  Aside from the nonexistent plot Eclipse also has some of the most awkward transitions I’ve ever seen.  The book is dull, I mean really boring, so I phase out from time to time.  I’ll be reading and suddenly wonder why the setting and characters have changed.  Unfortunately I didn’t have my highlighter on me during these times but a lot of times it’ll be like this: Bella and Edward are at his house making out.  Oh no I’ve got to get home and make my dad dinner(on top of being a martyr she’s also unbelievably subservient for a teenage girl).  The next sentence she’s at her house cooking dinner with no explanation about how she got there.  It always feels like there was a sentence or two that are missing.  It’s very disorienting and often caused me to read the same page 2 or 3 times to makes sure I didn’t miss anything.

As hard as it is to believe (and harder to say) all things considered I enjoyed reading “New Moon” but this book sucks and it’s boring.  Nothing happens as the backstories for several characters are exposited sometimes for entire chapters.  Eclipse is a terrible book that mostly feels like the author didn’t want to put that much effort into the characters or plot.  You’d think it would take a lot of effort to write such a thick book but mostly it rehashes things from the previous two books.  It’s not the worst book I’ve ever read and Stephenie Meyer certainly isn’t the worst writer either but she sure is the laziest.  At best this book can be considered nothing more than a wedge between the book that preceded it and the final book in the series. Even if you’re a “Twilight” fan this book can easily be skipped.  25/100

Just like the last book “Eclipse” has some of the dumbest most contrary quotes I’ve ever read.  I don’t have time or space to put them all down but here are just a few:

“I’ve never been much of a masochist.”

Bella Swan Page 601

(yeah unless you count the numerous times you blame yourself and apologize for things that are far beyond control or weren’t really your fault to begin with.  This is why the Bella Swan character cannot exist outside fiction.  I have never met a woman so willing to accept blame.  She’s the perfect example of battered woman syndrome.  I’ve also never met a woman willing to realize that she was leading me on and later apologize for it.  In some ways Bella Swan is the perfect woman but in most ways she’s also the perfect doormat and one of the most incredibly flawed characters in all of fiction.  When I read that line once again I could barely believe my eyes.  I also realize the irony and hypocrisy of accusing Bella of being a masochist when I’ve read 2 Twilight book so far.)

“Well, there was the first night.  The night you stayed.”

“Yes, that’s one of mine, too.  Of course, you were unconscious for my favorite part.”

Edward and Bella comparing their favorite times together. Page 511

(Umm… creepy.  I have no doubt a date rapist has said this to/of a victim at some point.  Is this romantic to Stephenie Meyer?)

“I could quite literally kill him for saying that to you.  I want to.”
 Edward to Bella Page 192

(so… hmmm.  I think what you meant to say was I could literally literally kill him.  It doesn’t get more literal than quite literal and you don’t get much deader than literally dead, except for maybe quite literally dead.  Oh fucking hell!)

“The linked deaths include a nearly even 18 women and 21 men.”
 News clipping Page 279-280

(Maybe I’m nit picking here but something about the structure of that sentence pisses me off.  Even more that it’s supposed to be a news article.  This forces me to ask myself a question, is it harder to believe that this article would have gotten past the editor of a daily newspaper or that it got past the editor of a best-selling book series?  Can anything be nearly even?  That’s like saying the number 4 is nearly a prime number.)

Jacob laughed. “She hit me.”

“Why did she hit you?”

“Because I kissed her,” Jacob said, unashamed.

“Good for you kid,” Charlie congratulated him.

Charlie and Jacob Page 316

(Charlie’s bizarre reaction after finding out his best friend’s son sexually assaulted his daughter.  And if you think that’s bad Stephenie Meyer makes it even worse 46 pages later…)

“No matter what side I’m on, if someone kisses you without your permission, you should be able to make your feelings clear without hurting yourself.  You didn’t keep your thumb inside your fist did you?”

“Jacob’s head is really hard”

Charlie laughed.  “Hit him in the gut next time.”

“Next time?”

“Aw, don’t be too hard on the kid.  He’s young.”

“He’s obnoxious”

“He’s still your friend.”

Bella and Charlie Page 362-363

(I’m confused here.  In the same breath Charlie both condemns and excuses Jacob’s actions.  I can’t imagine what he’d say if he raped her rather than kissed her.)

“Charlie”

Bella Pages Numerous

(I just never understood Bella’s need to call her parents by their first names.  I still call my relatives mom, aunt, uncle, and grandma.  Out of respect I would never call these people anything else.  But it’s not just her it’s every character.  Both Edward and Jacob call their dads by their first names like they’re old buds.  I can’t be the only one who thinks this is bizarre.)

Twilight Saga: New Moon - 2009

The Twilight Saga: New Moon - 2009

The books may be bad but at least they don’t have Kristen Steward and Robert Pattinson.  The two Twilight leads have gained a lot of hate (as well as admiration I suppose) and I don’t want to jump on the band wagon but they’re just not very good.  Thankfully we don’t get much Pattinson in this movie.  He’s just in the movie long enough to spout exposition, dump Bella, create a conflict at the end of the movie, and immediately resolve it.  As simplistic as that summary is the movie is a little more complex, but not by much.

Here is a 2x4

Here is Kristen Stewart.  Can you tell the difference?

“New Moon” begins in the middle of an action sequence (that we don’t get to see until the end of the movie) that transitions into a nightmare about aging.  This is a recurring theme throughout this and later entries in the series.  Bella complaining that she is getting too old or is tired of being human and begging, extorting, or manipulating her vampric boyfriend into changing her.  It gets old fast.  Bella is still in high school and is all of 18 years old in this movie.  I don’t remember being that concerned with age at 18, 29 yes but 18 seems a bit young for a mid-life crisis.  Her friends and family are intent on chiding her about this by mocking her, giving her birthday presents, and a birthday party in spite of her many objections.

The Cullens hold a birthday party for her where she gives herself a paper cut on a present that creates a feeding frenzy.  Overacting to this Edward dumps Bella and leaves the country along with his family and this is where the movie starts to get really weird.  In the books Bella narrates in first person.  Who she’s relating these events to is unclear… I always figured they were journal entries but the format is a little too descriptive and impersonal than a diary entry.  They kept the first person narration in the first movie but in this one the narration takes place through emails to Edward’s sister Alice.  The efforts are for naught as the emails are being forwarded back to her from a deleted accounted.  I guess you could argue that the emails are therapeutic but I always wondered why she bothered.  I also wondered why the filmmakers decided to change the narrative format when it didn’t matter what format the narrative took.  Regardless as a result of her boyfriend leaving her she goes insane.  She starts having screaming nightmares and isolating herself from her friends.  Her father becomes concerned and she promises him she’s fine and to prove it she has movie night with her estranged friend.  Here’s something else I don’t understand, for months she’s abandoned her friends but as soon as she decides to reconnect they accept her as if nothing happened.   They don’t seem all that curious or concerned why she secluded herself but are willing to forgive her for it.  I should be so lucky to have friends like these.

Her psychosis continues as she approaches a group of bikers who reminds her of some thugs that were supposedly going to rape or kill her in the first movie.  Assuming that these are the same thugs I can’t imagine what she hoped to accomplish by confronting them.  IN MOVIES CHARACTERS HAVE TO HAVE MOTIVATIONS AND THAT HAVE TO MAKE SENSE!  Whatever the reason she hops on the back of one the bikes and is taken for a joy ride until the motorcycle reaches a certain speed and she hallucinates an image of Edward warning her to stop.  Just like in the book she becomes a junkie for these hallucinations.  So she gets a couple of bikes and reunites with yet another friend who of course accepts her without incident.  He also agrees to help her rebuild these bikes in secret and teach her how to ride them.

As they’re rebuilding the bikes a friendship blossoms through montage and Bella starts to forget about Edward.  All of a sudden halfway through the movie Jacob disappears and Bella becomes miserable again.  After several unsuccessful attempts to reach out to Jacob she visits his house only to be turned away.  Realizing she has nothing left to keep her sane she goes looking for the spot in the forest her and Edward used to… ummm sit and talk to one another?  It’s not clear exactly what they do there.  Normal teen couples would probably make out, have sex, get high, or drink but when they’re there they just chat at stare at each other.

While in the forest she comes across a vampire who threatens to kill her but just as he’s about to do so a pack of giant wolves comes out of nowhere and chases him away.  It is revealed not too much later that Jacob is a part of this pack and can morph into a wolf.  Later on Bella jumps off a cliff to force another hallucination and nearly drowns.  Unfortunately she’s saved and Alice the psychic Cullen sees this and comes rushing from wherever her and the rest of the Cullens have been hiding.  Through a misconception Edward believes Bella to be dead and decides to break vampire law to be killed by their governing body.  Bella finds this out through Alice and they go racing off to Italy to stop him.  Unfortunately they succeed but the vampire police? government? royalty? enforcers?, want to talk to them anyway.  Alice, Bella, and Edward are taken to a group of vampires called The Volturi that is led by one of the most manically flamboyant vampires you will ever see in a movie.  We find out that Bella for no reason at all is immune to vampire superpowers.  Believing Bella to be a threat they attempt to kill her and a fight breaks out between Edward and one of the bad guys.  At the moment Edward is about to be sacrificed Bella pleads to take his place.  This ruse works and the Volturi let them all go with the promise that they turn Bella into a vampire.  The movie ends and everyone lives happily forever or at least until the next movie.

Despite its obvious defects “New Moon” made some improvements from its predecessor and of course the book.  The soundtrack for one still sucks but it’s a little better, the colors aren’t as muted as they were in the first film, and the parallels to “Romeo & Juliet” are reduced to one mention as a book report.  On the flipside characters fashions, hairstyles, mannerisms, and accents change without rhyme or reason.  “New Moon” has only the thinnest plot and plays out like a really bad daytime soap.  If anything both movie and book remind me of a line from “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”, yeah sure “New Moon” is bad but it’s “mostly harmless”. 62/100

New Moon by Stephenie Meyer

New Moon by Stephenie Meyer

“It was bad enough that my best friend was a werewolf, did he have to be a monster too?”

That may very well be the strangest and dumbest sentence I’ve ever read.  With that said this may be hard to believe but this isn’t the worst book I’ve ever read(that designation goes to “Mission Earth: The Invaders Plan” see Mission Earth: The Invaders Plan).  It’s certainly not the best either.  I have mixed feelings about it actually.  The prose is absolutely terrible and the main character and narrator, Bella, is one of the most poorly conceived characters I’ve ever read.  Her internal monologue is ceaseless as she describes her opinions and emotions on everything.  EVERYTHING!  She goes on about how she feels about certain characters, their actions, things she likes or doesn’t like, and of course she never spares the reader how she’s feeling at any given moment.  On top of that it also makes forced allusions to William Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” that are about as obvious as a kick to the face and are completely irrelevant to this story.  The story goes nowhere slowly and for a bulk of the book isn’t very interesting.  If you’ve heard about these books and you love vampires this book will greatly disappoint you.  Never mind that the creatures described as vampires in this book don’t at all resemble the prototypical vampire because most of this book is devoid of any vampires of any kind.  In the beginning Bella’s boyfriend, the vampire Edward, breaks up with her and leaves town.  From here on out the story involves Bella complaining constantly about a broken heart and hanging out with her new best friend… who just so happens to be a guy… who she’s attracted to… but for whatever reason has no romantic interest in.  I hope that doesn’t sound oversimplified but “New Moon” is bloated and cluttered with nonevents.  I can’t remember the last time where I read so much about so little.  Since Bella’s vampire boyfriend leaves town her friend Jacob fills the void but only in a supportive nonromantic way.  Every now and then whenever she makes a poor or dangerous decision she hears hallucinatory warnings from her forlorn love.  The hallucinations become a drug as she continues purposely putting herself in harm’s way.  It’s kind of a weird message.  She has two boyfriends, one real and one imagined, and she can’t seem to choose between the two so she doesn’t.  Her old boyfriend’s left and isn’t coming back but rather than embrace what’s real and right in front of her she embraces the voices in her head.

I can say this about it, it’s better than the movie.  Bella’s character has better dialogue, better motivation, and more depth than her movie counterpart.  But regardless of which medium you choose she’s still incredibly shallow, dull, and self-absorbed.  The book like the movie lacks simple storytelling structure like plot, conflict, and climax.  The worst part was an entire chapter towards the end where Edward returns and spends the rest of the chapter trying to convince Bella she isn’t dreaming.  The book despite its 563 page length is a fast and easy read that you don’t have to invest much thought or imagination in.  It’s a pleasant change from my usual horror and sci fi and for that reason alone I did enjoy reading it but I can’t suggest it to anyone over the age of 15.  55/100 Overall not a terrible book but still pretty bad.  It doesn’t hurt that I went into this with lowered expectations either.