Starring: Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart, Taylor Lautner

Directed by: David Slade

So yesterday, I went to the mall to see the movie, “Twilight Saga: Eclipse” the newest Twilight film. I will be discussing the storyline so there will be major spoilers. So if you haven’t seen the movie yet, do not read any further.

Plot/Synopsis: The story is about an evil redheaded female vampire named, Victoria that wants to kill Bella. Victoria sets up her own army of newborn vampires to help with her mission. As Victoria is on her way to kill Bella, a love triangle is trapped between Bella, Jacob and Edward. Both Edward and Jacob are in love with Bella, but of course, Bella wants to be with Edward more. Throughout the film, we see a bit of hatred between Edward and Jacob. Later in the film, Jacob and Edward threw their hatred aside to get along so they can save Bella’s life from Victoria and the newborns. As Victoria tries to kill Bella, her mission is interupted because the Volturi returned to kill Victoria.

Yes, I know the “Twilight” series has always been a target for it being aimed at tweens and the series being written by a woman named, Stephenie Meyer. It is mostly men out there trashing the series only because it’s aimed at tweens. Yes, I agree that the series is kind of aimed at tweens, I won’t deny that either but after seeing “Eclipse”, what I saw wasn’t a tween movie and I’m going to explain in this review.

In “Twilight: Eclipse” what I saw was a film that was pretty maturing, in the directing and writing part. What I’m saying is, this film is more adult like. The film got a PG-13 rating after all. Why is this? Because the movie wasn’t really aimed at young teenagers. I believe the reason for the PG-13 rating was that there was a lot more violence and more blood than the first two Twilight films. The first two Twilight films were too family friendly, indeed, but this one is more on the darker side. Plus, there were a few love scenes that were almost sexual that couldn’t get a PG rating. Of course, there are plenty of shirtless muscle guys in the film.

Another popular attack of the film are the werewolves. A lot of Twilight haters like to make fun of the CGI werewolves, saying that they look more like dogs instead of the werewolves like you see in movies such as “American Werewolf in London”, “The Wolf Man”, and “The Howling” why, Twilight werewolves don’t look like those. The thing that people make the mistake with werewolves in the film is, they aren’t really werewolves. In the books, Stephenie wrote that they are actually shapeshifters. They are also decadents of actual wolves. This is what Stephenie had to do in order to make the wolves more family friendly for the teens.

As for vampires in Twilight surviving during the day, not being killed by a stake through the heart, and not being afraid of the crucifix…in vampire fiction you can create vampire survival however you want. In vampire fiction, most vampire authors make vampire survival differently. The HBO TV show, “True Blood”, the vampires survive differently too and the same with that new vampire movie, “Daybreakers” with Ethan Hawke. Stephenie had a different vision with her feel of vampires. Every vampire fiction has their own way of killing a vampire, and in “Twilight”, the only way to kill a vampire is dismember their body parts and burn them. And in that movie “Daybreakers”, the only way to kill a vampire in that film is either by sunlight or explosion.

You see, not every movie or book needs to have the same way of vampire survival or death. That’s the freedom of creative writing and freedom of speech in America. Back to “Twilight: Eclipse”, yes, there are also plenty of love scenes and muscle guys for the girl fans. The goal with this film was that they wanted something for everybody in it. The love scenes and the shirtless guys for the girls. The action and the violence for male fans. The film’s directing style greatly improved from the first two films. David Slade is a great director since he did “40 Days of Night”. Maybe that was why this film had a mature feeling. There is also an improvement in the dialogue and the acting as well.

Overall, I thought it was a pretty good “Twilight” movie. The series is improving every film. The reason the film had a mature feeling to it ’cause the film was too dark and violent for tweens to see. When I saw the film in theater, I didn’t see a theater full of young teenage girls surprisingly. Yes, there were some tweens in there, but not as much as there was when I saw the first two films in theater. What I saw was an age range of mostly 20’s – 30’s, both male and female in the theater audience. Summit Entertainment’s goal with Twilight, is that they want these films to be for everybody, not just tweens. That’s why they decided to experiment with a PG-13 rating, to see what kind of age differences they get of an audience in theaters.

The reason I like these series is because I’m a huge fan of vampire fiction. I admit Stephenie’s stories is a bit of a guilty pleasure for me, but for some reason she draws me into reading them and seeing the movies. Since most people are into “Harry Potter”, I decided to be into “Twilight” instead.

Score for “Twilight Saga: Eclipse” = *** (3 Stars as in “good)

Kev