TWILIGHT SAGA: ECLIPSE review: by the numbers

TWILIGHT SAGA: ECLIPSE review: by the numbers

Jul 01

The Twilight Saga is about a young white girl whose affections are torn between an extremely old white man and a relatively youthful tanned fellow. The old dude glistens in the sun and wears make-up that makes him look like Data from Star Trek, while the young guy spends most of his time shirtless (even in the snow!), glowering, flexing his pecs, or being a wolf (for reasons unknown).

Data hates the Wolf-Boy, but, being the comfortably sub-standard person she is, the young white girl leads both of them on in an eternal struggle to keep tween girls reading the books no matter how long or stupid they get. Julia Gillard makes an appearance in the film as well [non-Australians: our new PM has red hair], as the series’ primary antagonist, whose sole purpose in existence is to something something (I didn’t watch the first film) kill the young white girl.

The Twilight Saga: Eclipse is a vast improvement over the last installment in the series, but that isn’t saying much; as I scientifically proved in my numerals-based review of New Moon, the second Twi-flick is one of those rare abominations of cinema that isn’t even so-bad-it’s-funny. To keep some semblence of continuity, I’ve employed the same technique of criticism here.

Some of these categories are new, and some of them are holdovers from last time, but the idea is the same: every time the movie broke my suspension of disbelief, I ticked a box. At the end of the movie I tallied the ticks in an effort to quantify the film’s worth (or lack thereof). As I said, the results are surprisingly positive, but don’t be fooled — it’s easily the best Twilight movie, but it’s a long way from being “hands the whole time.”

6 – Number of times the soundtrack doesn’t match the emotion of the scene

New director David Slade wisely eschewed the pop-heavy soundtrack style of New Moon and opted for a more symphonic, if hopelessly derivative, film score. This helps the film enormously. What few pop songs he does include, though, sound like mid-album filler from a record that wouldn’t even have been popular in the 80s. Oh, and there’s a Muse song, too; I may have counted that twice.

9 – Number of times Edward says or does something stupid

Last time, Edward crushed a phone with his bare hands, spouted second-hand one-liners and generally acted like a git, scoring himself 16 marks; this time around, Edward significantly improved himself and receives a mere 9 — some of the things he says even make sense this time. But not that hideously creepy proposal scene — I just wanted that to end.

10 – Number of times I laughed out loud during serious scenes

Eclipse, as with the previous Twilight flicks, exhibits the level of subtlety and logic a videogame script would be proud to call its own, and as such, is completely nonsensical and difficult to watch. Some of the scenes, though, are too much to bear. I tried to respect the people in the cinema around me, but sometimes the sheer inanity of it all got the better of me.

11 – Number of times Jacob says or does something stupid

Again, Jacob significantly improved himself from New Moon and scored a paltry half of what he earned last time, but there are still some head-scratchingly awful moments featuring the Wolf-Boy. It doesn’t help that Taylor Lautner’s delivery is about on par with what you’d expect from a 21st century George Lucas film.

12 – Number of times Bella says or does something stupid

Bella earns the big gold star this time around. She doesn’t try to kill herself once, she doesn’t launch into conversations with questions like “HAVE YOU TRIED NOT BEING A FREAK, YOU MONSTER?”, and she stays well away from her Apple Macintosh; dropping all the way down to 12 from 63 — 63 — is a feat worth celebrating. There’s still the small matter of her silly and unnecessary voiceover, and the fact that she tries to force Edward to have sex with her, and the fact that she is completely devoid of life and character, to prove that she, too, still has room for improvement.

15 – Number of times the laws of physics are wantonly ignored

This is a new category this time, and one that pops up early, and frequently thereafter. You know the kind of cartoon physics where someone back-hands another person across the room, or when people are shown to be running at regular speed but the landscape zooms around them like they’re some kind of pouty Superman, or when someone sustains horrific injuries to one side of their body but doesn’t even exhibit a bruise on-screen — Eclipse is full of that crap. I sort of get that Vampires are supposed to be, like, super strong, or something, but even if you could throw a guy across the room, at least make it look like you’re putting some effort into it — otherwise it looks like you just did it with kung-fu wires.

18 – Number of times the dialogue made me cringe

“I could care less” is one of those classic Americanisms that never fails to incite infernal rage in grammar-pedants such as myself. (The correct phrase, of course, is “I could not care less,” indicating that your apathy is total and all-consuming.) I began to wonder, especially in the early scenes of Eclipse, whether the filmmakers didn’t just decide to shoot the first draft and call it a day; a lot of the dialogue could easily have been fixed up with a second pass. Then again, maybe the script is just being faithful to the books. In that case, the books must be awful.

21 – Number of scenes that don’t make sense, lose their way, or are otherwise intolerable

This is the big one, the thing that drags Eclipse down from reasonable okay-ness to mediocre dross. The whole first half of the film is rambling and wishy-washy, and, just like last time, individual scenes often find themselves derailed for the sake of exposition. Some examples of bad scenes:

• The Cullen clan keep tabs on a local upstart Vampire group by watching the evening news. Because the evening news is infallible and extremely thorough, isn’t it?
• We are treated to a few extraneous but not unwelcome flashback scenes during the course of the movie, and one of them ends in implied rape. The atrocious crime is treated so flippantly the character in question might as well have been mugged and robbed — there’s no need to bring such a serious issue into such an incompetent entertainment.
• The movie cuts frequently to a secondary antagonist whose purpose and identity remain frustratingly unclear. Also, I still don’t understand why Julia Gillard wants that silly young white girl dead.
• The film spends an inordinate amount of time rehashing what happened in New Moon. The first few scenes are made up of “Remember we can’t do this because of this,” and “So how do you feel about what happened in the last movie?” character moments, and they drag on well into the second act.
• As in New Moon, there are a few editing non-sequitors on display here, as well. The most notable of these takes place early in the film, where some creepy vampire fellow breaks into Bella’s house and sniffs her sleeping dad. Bella walks into the middle of the scene and — surprise! — dad’s suddenly awake. I know the scene was designed to put me on edge, but it didn’t work. Not even a little bit.
• The worst of these scenes was near the end, and as such qualifies as a spoiler (not that I care, or anything): a little girl vampire is thrown over to the Volturi (the buzzkill jerks from New Moon) and faces an unknown fate. Will they rip her head off, turn her into some kind of Vamp-slave, or what? The scene cuts dramatically to black before the fate is revealed, and that cheapness is both annoying and disorienting.

There are plenty of other examples of scenes just like this — but I’ll let you to discover them for yourself.

86 – Total number of offences

For a film that runs 120 minutes, 86 illusion-shattering moments of ineptitude are enough to break the experience for me. This is far less than last time, but it’s still one big goof every 80 seconds, and that’s a little too frequent for Eclipse to carry itself over that fuzzy line between “absolute trash” and “good enough.” To be fair, though, it does have its moments, which is why I have devised a totally new category especially for this review:

5 – Number of scenes that are actually good

I was as surprised as anyone that Eclipse had any good scenes at all, let alone 5. That’s one every 24 minutes! Faint praise at best, but praise nonetheless. The main thing that elevates Eclipse over the dreary, never-ending New Moon is the biffo. The action scenes at the end almost make sitting through 100 minutes of mopey angst bearable – almost. Watching people’s heads and arms get ripped off is surprisingly cathartic after spending so long treading water, and for that, I congratulate Eclipse.

Other good scenes include a fuzzy but accurate Valedictorian speech given by that annoying girl from Up In The Air, an almost genuinely touching moment between Bella and her mother, and a sincere and — dare I say it — amusing interchange between Edward and Jacob in a tent on some mountain somewhere (or something); best of all, Eclipse (unlike New Moon) actually finishes, coming to a logical and satisfying conclusion.Much as I didn’t mind watching these scenes, though, they still couldn’t erase the dullness of all the others crowded around them.

It remains for me to quickly touch on the technical side of the film. As with New Moon, Eclipse features some half-decent photography absolutely ruined by a shallow grade; the film benefits greatly from its leaner running-time; Slade’s command of narrative logic is less tenuous than Chris Weitz’; and, as always, the performances are perfunctory but utterly un-convincing.

Just like the character named Bella, Eclipse knows it isn’t good enough, knows it isn’t everything it could be. Unfortunately, just like Bella, Eclipse doesn’t care that it isn’t good enough, and wallows comfortably in its own inadequacy.

So, in the end, Eclipse is just more of the same — another Twilight movie. But to be fair, it is the best so far (that is to say, it’s the least bad). If they’re going to keep making these movies — and believe me, they will — then it pleases me to know they’re actually trying to make them better. Maybe by the end of the series they will have learned to put together a genuinely good movie — maybe.

The Twilight Saga: Eclipse