While awaiting the excesses of barbeque gluttony and the throes of pyromania, I thought I would set down to the ol' Microsoft Word and write out a short list of reasons I despised The Twilight Saga: Eclipse. Enjoy fellow readers...
P.S.... Spoiler alert.
1. I'm not going to say that when it comes to the Twilight franchise that I'm a stickler for continuity. Case in point, when I heard the Bryce Dallas Howard, the oddly alluring daughter of Ron Howard, was replacing Rachelle Lefevre, I instantly thought improvement, instead of the diatribe of curses I usually issue forth when I hear of a casting amendment. However, there was one major continuity problem I noticed in the film during the fight scenes. Is it me, or did the MTV Movie Award winning fight scene (God strike me dead for knowing that without research) between Edward and James contain flesh tearing, blood and generally things we have become accustomed to in vampire driven fight scenes? How come all of a sudden in this film, the vampires have the same weakness as the titular antagonists' in SyFy's atrocious telefilm Ice Spiders? Whenever David Slade was named as the director, a man that openly disliked Catherine Hardwicke's first volume of the film adaptations, and the guy that helmed the bloody 30 Days of Night, I wasn't really expecting a masterpiece, but at least a bit of violent escape during the fight scenes, rather than hearing a seemingly misplaced sound effect of a dull metal clunk, followed by the revelation that the vampires are made of fucking glass. Really?
2. Too many close ups. One of the few things I actually appreciated about The Twilight Saga: New Moon was the cinematography. Javier Aguirresarobe, the cinematographer behind Pedro Almodovar's Talk to Her and last year's bleak sci-fi flick The Road among others, highly impressed me during the Volturi scenes with the panning down the parade of red robes, long shots, the contrast in colors between Forks and Volterra. Yet, the same guy maintains extreme close ups to the point that we disregard the feeble dialogue and start noticing that Kristen Stewart has protrusion of her two front teeth, that there are freckles noticeable behind her make-up, that someone should have combed Robert Pattinson's sideburns in a few scenes and things that are generally left to the potentially murderous/crazy teenage fangirl.
3. That I felt like I was in a Mormon abstinence camp, created by a mother whom had been to a few vampire cosplay orgies before she saw the straight and narrow of Joseph Smith and swore off sex altogether. In fact, the entire moral compass of the film seems blurred. The story arc over the four books has nothing to do with Victoria or the Volturi, it boils down to simply, a love(less?) triangle. The film gives off the impression that in Meyer's world, it is okay to lead on two guys, not just on a courting level, but a level of forever (Edward proposal of marriage, Jacob's imprinting, which due to Kristen Stewart's Tommy Wiseau school of acting approach, we as an audience that hasn't delved into Meyer's wet dream in paper form, could not tale if she was upset that she was not imprinted on by Jacob, or was a little freaked out at the prospect that she may be), throughout a process of a few years. Yet, whenever it seems that Bella and Edward are going to be together forever, two committed lovers that are about to engage in sexual activity, Edward stops the tease of the prepubescent audience after fearing for Bella's mortal soul if she commits the sin of premarital relations. In what religion/moral system is premarital sex worse than deception? Speaking of convoluted morals, our heroes, the Cullen coven, including Edward, whom holds his religious values and fear of soul condemnations out in the open, let the Volturi take the innocent Bree Tanner (her name being another thing I am ashamed that I know without research). Does this mean that the heroes of our story find solemnly watching a few cold blooded killers punish a young, innocent, brainwashed girl for a crime she didn't know any better of, with death, is of high moral character, but a blowie would cause the Cullens to see Bella in Hell? This is also unfair to Mormons, who are way more screwed up than Twilight would lead us to believe.
4. The rest of the movie. I'm running a little long here, so let's some this up with a few rhetorical questions. Was Victoria made of gasoline? Seeing that Alice saw the battle four days prior, could nobody have planned for Bella to wear a jacket on the SNOW COVERED PEAKS OF A WASHINGTON MOUNTAIN!, to avoid the such-a-porn plot device of cuddling to keep alive? Based on this and westerns, is it true that Native American men are anti-shirt? Why is the female werewolf clothed heavier than her male counterparts? Did the mother not question why Edward opted to set and watch his fiancé and future mother-in-law through the patio window instead of actually conversing?
Finally, I'll end with the terrible revelation that this film currently has a 63% fresh rating from the top critics at Rotten Tomatoes, including Richard "one of the more astonishing upgrades in movie franchise history" Roeper and A.O. "robustly entertaining" Scott. Before anybody gets an idea that they should listen to these "prestigious" reviewers, let me remind you kids that Roeper disliked The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, because "it goes on forever" and Scott has previously shown his expertise on book adaptations by saying Joe Wright's Atonement is a "classical example of how pointless, how diminishing, the transmutation of literature into film can be".
