Short Take: Definitely the most interesting of the series thus far

Director: David Slade (30 Days of Night)

Screenwriter: Melissa Rosenberg (Twilight Saga, Step Up)

Cast: Kristen Stewart (Twilight Saga, The Runaways, Adventureland), Robert Pattinson (Twilight Saga, Remember Me), Taylor Lautner (Twilight Saga, Valentine’s Day)

Length: 2 hours 4 minutes

Synopsis: When last we left Bella Swan (Stewart) in New Moon, she was deciding between vampire boyfriend Edward Cullen (Pattinson) or werewolf and best friend Jacob Black (Lautner).  Bella spends much of Eclipse weighing her options.  On the one hand, she could spend eternity as a vampire with Edward, though that would mean giving up important human experiences like aging and having a normal family. Choosing Jacob would allow her life to continue unchanged, except that she would have to lose Edward.  On top of this love triangle an army of recently turned or “newborn” vampires is after Bella, and Jacob and Edward must put aside the rivalry between their warring families to protect her.

Analysis: Though the Twilight Saga seemingly focuses on bare-chested men brooding directly into the camera, the heart of the story is actually a young woman’s journey into maturity.  Bella Swan is not just the girl these men fight over, but the vessel through which the audience experiences the story.  In the preceding films, Bella’s character was defined by single emotions. In Twilight we experienced the inescapable passion of her first love, and in New Moon we experienced her desolation when the object of that love suddenly departed.  In both films, blind and constant yearning drove Bella’s every action, and although she continues to yearn in Eclipse—this time to become a vampire and, more pressingly, to bed Edward—she also matures.  Bella can no longer focus solely on her powerful love for Edward, but must weigh her options and understand exactly what her decision means.  She is not just deciding between vampire and werewolf, friend and lover, but between “life” and “death”.

Bella’s potential romantic partners, Jacob and Edward, are the literal embodiments of the consequences of her choice.  Using the dichotomy Stephanie Meyer set up in the original novel, writer Melissa Rosenberg and director David Slade represent Edward and Jacob as complete opposites who offer Bella two very different lives.  Choosing Edward means deciding to forego normalcy and become frozen in death as a vampire.  She would have to sever ties with her friends and family for fear of revealing the Cullen family’s secret and most importantly, she would never be able to have children and start a family of her own.  Choosing Jacob would have none of these consequences.  She would be able to have a family and continue her relationships just as they are, but that would also mean separation form Edward, who she learned she could not live without in the previous film.

Bella’s struggle to decide comes to a head during the film’s emotional climax when, waiting for the battle against the newborn vampires to begin, she, Jacob, and Edward spend a night in a tent together during a blizzard.  Bella is literally freezing to death and since Edward’s vampire skin is cold to the touch, Jacob, who because of his werewolf abilities has a higher than normal body temperature, climbs into Bella’s sleeping bag to warm her.  The scene and the comparison between cold and hot are the film’s most important exploitations of the differences between the two men.  For the first time, Edward and Jacob share a frank conversation about their affections for Bella, and since she only vaguely hears the conversation as she drops in and out of sleep it’s an important scene for her and the audience to understand exactly what her decision means to all of the parties involved.  It is the moment she realizes that love is not the only thing she’s choosing.

While the novel seemed to place more emphasis on Jacob and Edward’s actions, the film attempts to give Bella more narrative agency and independence.  Two modifications contribute to Bella’s increased confidence.  The first of such is Rosenberg’s script, which cuts out some of Bella’s more pathetic moments.  Some of Edward’s actions in both the novel and the film are extremely controlling.  At one point he disables Bella’s truck to keep her from visiting Jacob.  In the book she responds with anger but still wants Edward to spend the night in her bed.  In the film, however, no such scene of reconciliation occurs.  Instead, Bella seems far more able to separate herself from Edward’s domineering attitude and the character becomes more respectable.

The second factor is Kristen Stewart’s performance.  She plays Bella with far more rebellion and social awareness than the character seems to have in the book. Though Bella frequently tried to defy Edward’s self-righteousness in the novel, Stewart’s more confident and decisive delivery makes the moments more believable than they were in the source material.  When Bella continually insists on sex with Edward and refuses to marry him because doing so at such a young age suggests she’s “knocked up,” the moments work because Stewart’s confident portrayal brings more self-assurance to Bella’s mousy, ingratiating persona than she originally had.  By making Bella more decisive and opinionated, Stewart moves the character from simple being a vessel for the audience’s emotions to a more fully formed being.

While the novel of Eclipse mostly focused on two seemingly perfect men fighting for the affections of one seemingly unworthy and insecure girl, the film attempts to make the girl at the center of that conflict more interesting.  Thanks to Rosenberg’s smart adaptation and Stewart’s performance the film mostly succeeds, and it’s because of that decision to improve the character at the center of it all that Eclipse is arguably the most complex and intriguing of the films in the series thus far.

Rating: 8.0