Just to get this out of the way right up front, Eclipse is by far the best of the Twilight movies so far. Many of the annoying things of the past movies were fixed and it looked fabulous. That being said, the problem that even the best Twilight movie is always going to have, and this is completely insurmountable, is that it is based on the Twilight books and as such follow two of the most vapid and uninteresting characters ever written as they bumble their way through a co-dependent and abusive relationship while completely ruining the lives of the characters around them who are far more interesting in the first place. For all the good that was done in Eclipse, for all the improvements made, it is still based on Eclipse and Eclipse still sucks more ass than a two dollar hooker trying to make the last hundred the day rent is due.

Like all of the stories in the series, this one revolves completely around Bella (Kristen Stewart). The other characters only exist to take care of her and interact with her. There is no sense that anyone does anything but think about her, pine for her, try to protect her or back up the people who do those things. She is still the target of revenge for Victoria (Bryce Dallas Howard), the girlfriend of the vampire who was obsessed with hunting her from the first installment. She is out to kill Bella so that Edward (Robert Pattinson)will feel the pain she felt for the companion that he killed. Toward this end she has started building an army of newborn vampires in Seattle to do battle with the Cullen clan. She is causing so much chaos that there is fear that the Volturi, the Vampire royalty of sorts, will show up to deal with it and swing by to see if Bella had been turned into a vampire like she was supposed to…so again that revolves around her too.

Along the way the love triangle between Bella, Edward and werewolf Jacob (Taylor Lautner) continues and continues to make no sense. Bella continues to swear up and down that she is hopelessly in love with Edward despite the fact that he does nothing but mope around and disconnect the starter in her truck to keep Bella from seeing Jacob. He constantly demands that she do as he says under the guise of his concern for her safety but really he is just a possessive dick. As a character, I like Jacob a lot better although he  acts like a possessive dick as well.

There are some interesting characters, though, and Eclipse gives them a bit more screen time and it is a better movie for it. Likewise actual action happens this time around so that is nice too. Sadly, any time the story starts going somewhere interesting it always comes back to boring and vapid Bella.

David Slade is the new director on the picture and he comes with a solid pedigree. Hard Candy showed he knows great pacing and is good with scenes that are just conversations and 30 Days of Night showed that he knows action and how to set up tension. These skills served him well here. The film is darker than the previous films and is much edgier. The action plays better too. When someone is thrown into a wall it looks like it was done with force as opposed to a slow motion shot that looks like it could be an avant garde Banana Republic ad. For the first time the vampires seem dangerous and vicious. And the werewolves, while still too fluffy and cuddly, look less like something that a grade schooler whipped up in Final Cut and more like something that exists in the world and could eat the shit out of you. The performances were generally better from the supporting players as they were given a chance to actually act and I credit Slade with getting it out of them. The shots and angles were also well done and the movie looks very sharp.

So that is the good. The writing is substandard all the way through with the same bullshit dialogue of the books and previous movies. Scenes of dialogue, despite being paced better, still feel like they drag and the shit people say to each other is so overwrought and melodramatic that I was worried that my eyes would get stuck in a permanent roll. Likewise, the fight choreography consisted mostly of vampires running at each other screaming and then clothes-lining or body slamming one another. I really don’t think that the fight choreography should so closely resemble a scene from the Sound of Music.

Another problem is with the principles. I’ve seen Kristen Stewart act well in the past and Robert Pattinson was a fine Cedric Diggory, but they are really flat and terrible in these movies. They have all the sexual chemistry of a bit of wood and a rock so it makes it pretty difficult to buy into their relationship and their love for each other even if it weren’t such a terrible and abusive relationship. It is kind of amazing that the two actors are dating as I would think that their natural attraction and intimacy would translate on screen. As it is the only sexual tension on display is between Edward and Jacob in a tent on a mountain. I am not saying that Jacob should have spit on his hand and taken his furry train to Pooperville but it would have been more interesting that just about anything else that happened in the movie.

There are a lot of things here where an improvement was made but then it was undone by some other issue. The music is a good example. The licensed songs in the movie were great and typically fit the mood pretty well. The score, however, was about as subtle as a loony tunes score. The scene where one of the bad vampires is sneaking around Bella’s house is probably the best example of this. It sounded as if someone was having a seizure on the violin and it was enough to jar you right out of the movie.

I mentioned that the movie looked good and it does. The make up and costumes were the best of the series…but then the Volturi show up and look like rejects from an all goth Renaissance Fair. I really don’t get how anyone in the production let them get in front of the cameras looking like that. Much like how I don’t understand how no one took Joel Schumaker aside and slapped the shit out of him for putting nipples on the batsuit or giving Batman ice skates, I don’t get how those costumes made the final film. It looked very much like someone’s idea of what goth looks like when they’ve never been outside a Coldwater Creek.

These things really illustrate that it doesn’t matter how much talent you throw at this series it isn’t going to ever be more than a rushed money grab utilizing substandard material. You have a good director working off a script written by a writer for Dexter with talented special effects people doing good special effects that still look goofy by their nature and HOWARD GODDAMN SHORE (Lord of the Rings trilogy) doing the score and it still sounds like it wouldn’t make the cut on an 80’s instructional video. These are good and talented people and yet none of it adds up to a good movie. I don’t know if it is because the material is just that substandard or if no one involved gives a shit beyond the number of zeroes on their paycheck but it doesn’t matter because the end result is a bad movie. And not even bad enough to be hilarious. It is just good enough to be really bad.

Conclusion [4.5 out of 10]

So is Eclipse a step up above New Moon and Twilight? Absolutely. Is it a good movie? Absolutely not. There are a lot more good things to say about it than previous installments but all the talent in the world can’t elevate bad writing and the source material is some of the worst I’ve ever read. Like I said before, Michelangelo himself could carve the most beautiful statue in history out of a slab of shit and it would still just be a statue made of shit.