Wednesday 14 July 2010

The Twilight Saga: Eclipse

Starring: Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner

Back like a rainy day to spoil our summer’s entertainment, the latest in the seemingly never ending Twilight Saga has just hit cinemas. I should preface this review by saying: I have nothing against the Twilight book Saga as a whole (I dislike Breaking Dawn vehemently but on that more later), but the movies have rubbed me up the wrong way from the start with their mixture of bad script and terrible acting.

Making household names of stars Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart, this latest instalment picks up where the last left off – Edward proposing to Bella, her turning him down, Jacob off in a huff, and Victoria trying to kill everyone. It’s like they just took the end of the last movie and turned it into a full 2hours when it came to making this one.

That being said: it is better than the two which come before. Far far better This is chiefly because of the demonic newborn vampire Riley Biers (Xavier Samuel), a vampire with superhuman strength due to his newborn status, and Victoria’s new right hand man. He gives a superb performance as the villain, and his scenes controlling the other newborns are the standouts from the movie as a whole.

Billy Burke’s Charlie also has a great film – the comic relief in what is otherwise a much darker and more brooding affair than has come before in the saga.

At the centre of the story though it really is just same old same old. The fangirls in the screening will giggle and gasp whenever Lautner has his shirt off (and yes, Edward does have a great line regarding this which I don’t think was in the book – its been a while since I last read it, but if not, credit to screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg), and Stewart’s Bella will go back and forth between Jacob and Edward for 90minutes and eventually make the inevitable wrong choice.

The end of the movie is not the same as the end of the book by a long shot – indeed my favourite scene from the whole series of books is missing from the movie, but it’s fine. The ending they engineer works naturally, and it’s the best that can be done.

Now just the 2 films which will destroy the series remain. The Breaking Dawn book remains to this day the worst thing I have ever put my hands on. What little plot there is centres around several scenes which – to do justice – would need to be 18 rated: they are disgusting and frankly vomit worthy - and which will undoubtedly be cut entirely or edited in such a way they literally won’t work anyway.

My advice to Summit: you’ve just made a perfectly good movie, which, but for the fact it doesn’t end PROPERLY (it is clearly leading into BD), has an almost acceptable ending for the series. Please just stop. Please?

Rating: 2.5/5

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