The Twilight Saga: Eclipse opened in the United States on June 30, 2010, the third installment in a series that had already made Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner into a phenomenon. David Slade directed from a screenplay by Melissa Rosenberg, based on Stephenie Meyer’s 2007 novel. Summit Entertainment greenlit the project on February 20, 2009. Principal photography ran from August 17 to October 31 in Vancouver, British Columbia. The film premiered at the Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles on June 24, 2010, and was the first The Twilight Saga film to be released in IMAX.
It grossed $699 million worldwide, the sixth-highest-grossing film of 2010.
Trailer, via The Twilight Saga.
Victoria Builds an Army in Seattle
The plot runs two tracks, and only one of them holds. In Seattle, the vampire Victoria Sutherland attacks a human named Riley Biers and turns him, then builds an army of newborn vampires to get revenge on Edward Cullen for killing her mate, James Witherdale. In Forks, Bella Swan wants to be turned into a vampire. Edward wants her to stay human. He proposes. She is reluctant, then says yes.
The army is the stronger half. Alice Cullen, Edward’s clairvoyant sister, sees the attack coming. The Cullens chase Victoria through the forest; she escapes into werewolf territory, and the near-miss between the two groups makes an already bad peace worse. Edward hides all of it from Bella. Jacob Black tells her anyway. She leaves with him, upset, and the film settles into its real subject.
Jacob Kisses Bella and She Breaks Her Hand
Jacob confesses he loves her. She tells him she is in love with Edward. He refuses to believe it and kisses her. She punches him and hurts her hand on his werewolf body. He apologizes later. She forgives him.
That sequence is the film’s problem in miniature. The Cullens and the werewolf tribe forge an alliance to defend against Victoria, and train together for the fight. Jasper Hale, Alice’s partner, tells Bella he was once part of a newborn army. Bella cuts herself on purpose during the confrontation to distract Victoria, and Edward kills her.
The mechanics are all here. The conviction is not.
Bryce Dallas Howard Takes Over as Victoria
Summit replaced Rachelle Lefevre with Bryce Dallas Howard as Victoria in late July 2009, citing scheduling conflicts. Lefevre said she was “stunned” and “greatly saddened.” Howard had turned the role down once before, when she was approached for the first Twilight, calling it “too small of a part.”
She is not the problem. Howard plays Victoria as a woman with a grudge and a plan, which is more than the script gives her. The problem is that Victoria’s revenge — the engine of the whole film — keeps getting interrupted by a marriage proposal.
New cast members include Xavier Samuel as Riley, Jodelle Ferland as the newly turned vampire Bree Tanner, Jack Huston as Royce King II, Catalina Sandino Moreno as Maria, Julia Jones as Leah Clearwater and Booboo Stewart as Seth Clearwater. Billy Burke returns as Charlie Swan, Bella’s father and Forks’s police chief. Burke has said he never read the books. “We can’t make the book, we’re making the movie,” he said, adding that he works from the scripts.
The Fights Improved and the Story Did Not
Slade can stage a fight. The training sequences and the forest chase move with a weight the first two films never had, and the newborn army gives the series something it badly needed: an enemy that is not just a mood. The visual effects hold up better than the material around them.
What does not hold up is the triangle. Eclipse asks the audience to treat Bella’s choice between Edward and Jacob as the most important decision of her life, then stacks the deck so thoroughly that there is no decision at all. She says yes to Edward. She was always going to. The film knows this and spends 124 minutes pretending otherwise.
The result is a movie with a real climax and a hollow center. The alliance between vampires and werewolves is the most interesting thing the series has done — two groups that hate each other, forced to train side by side. Eclipse treats it as a plot device and moves on.
It is the best-made of the three films and still not a good one. The action improved. The story did not.
The Numbers
- Score: 5.8 of 10
- Release date: June 30, 2010, in the United States
- Premiere: June 24, 2010, Nokia Theatre, Los Angeles
- Director: David Slade
- Screenwriter: Melissa Rosenberg
- Runtime: 124 minutes
- Worldwide gross: $699 million
- 2010 rank: sixth-highest-grossing film of the year
- Greenlit: February 20, 2009
- Production: August 17 to October 31, Vancouver, British Columbia
- Format: first The Twilight Saga film to be released in IMAX
Eclipse is the moment the Twilight Saga learned how to make a blockbuster and forgot why anyone cared. The $699 million and the IMAX screen say the audience showed up. The film itself says the series was never sure what to do with them once they did.
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