Television soap operas are famously slow-moving; a week’s worth of episodes can go by without anything actually happening.
The “Twilight” movies have quickly assumed that model. And maybe because Stephenie Meyer’s “Twilight” novels are such a runaway pop-culture phenomenon, the movie adaptations can afford to be slow, talky, and full of close-ups of ardent lovers repeating the same set of phrases they’ve whispered since the first film.
Yes, Bella is still torn between Edward and Jacob. Yes, the werewolves and vampires fight. Yes, Edward continues to refuse Bella’s sexual advances until they are married.
Oops, I mean Edward continues to refuse to turn Bella into a vampire until they are married. Although the sex thing is true, too; the “Twilight” saga continues to be one of the weirdest abstinence fables ever spun.
If you’re confused by any of this, you clearly haven’t joined the bandwagon yet. “Eclipse” is part 3 of the saga of a teen girl from Forks, who falls in love with Edward the sparkly-skinned vampire.
(By the way, the title on the opening credits is “Eclipse,” but it’s being promoted as “The Twilight Saga: Eclipse,” so I have no idea what to actually call this film.)
The first movie, I thought, was pretty good at teasing out the supernatural metaphor that stood in for the usual angst and hormonal surgings of adolescence. The second movie, “New Moon,” brought in giant computer-generated wolves and more action.
“Eclipse” comes to a near-standstill, with rivals Edward (Robert Pattinson) and shirtless wolf-boy Jacob (Taylor Lautner) needing to join sides to protect Bella (Kristen Stewart, once again giving a better performance than she probably needs to).
The new director is David Slade, who managed the action of “30 Days of Night” and does a similarly mechanical job here. This sequel assumes familiarity with the previous installments, as supporting characters (and there are many) pass by in ways that will be significant only to the clued-in.
Howard Shore’s musical score is truly huge and bombastic, which emphasizes how little is going on in the story. A much-anticipated climactic battle, pitting the (relatively) good vampires and werewolves against the bad vampires, is a special-effects jamboree with almost no blood spilled (can’t risk the PG-13 rating, folks).
And the baddest vampires of all, Dakota Fanning and her hifalutin mob, literally show up after the fight is over, by a half-hour. Oh well. Maybe in part 4, huh?
No rush, after all. The “Twilight” movies have all the time in the world, and you’re going to feel every minute.
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