"It's Not Modern, It's Ancient"

Rating: 6/10 (9 August 2010)

And that is probably one of the most thought provoking quotes said in Eclipse, the third movie in the Twilight film series based off of the books by Stephenie Meyer who has denied ever having watched a single episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
I believe her. If Meyer had seen Buffy the Vampire Slayer the series she would have easily avoided the many clichés that sprinkle her book: the forbidden romance between a human girl and a supernatural being; werewolves as the symbol of unveiled masculinity; vampires as the symbol of the outsiders of society.
To her credit, Meyer does do some original things with the werewolf and vampire mythos. Who else would have thought to make vampires sparkly underneath the sun? And doesn't every vampire movie have their own set of rules? Buffy, Underworld and even Nosferatu both had different takes on the mythos and the Twilight Series isn't any different.
After two movies, Bella (Kristen Stewart) and Edward (Robert Pattinson) seem to finally be happy with each other. If only she could still be friends with Jacob (Taylor Lautner), who's heart she broke in the previous movie. If only that darn Victoria would stop trying to kill her. It appears that Victoria (Bryce Howard Dallas) has been making an army of the undead to come and attack Bella and it's up to her vampire friends and an alliance with their enemies the werewolves to save the day. Of course, Edward is a vampire and Jacob, Bella's other beau is a werewolf. Jacob spends most of the time with his shirt off - and for a brief moment naked - in his human form. This is the heart of the story really, this never ending love triangle, not the shirtless teen.
The movie is very well paced and full of self referential humor. Edward asks Bella in one scene if the mostly bare chested Jacob even owns a shirt and Jacob in a later scene replies to Edward "I am hotter than you." The film does suffer from too many scenes of Bella and Edward conversing in what appears to be conversations they've already had a dozen times. Some of the editing seems sloppy. In one scene, it was very obvious that not all of the actors were all there at the time of shooting. The film also suffers from way too many oddly framed close-ups.
Eclipse already has a built in audience, so no matter how I review this film, it's going to make the money it has been destined to make and more. It's worth a watch, and it's very well acted compared to the first two, but personally I feel out of it's teenage demographic.
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