Trailer Tuesday - The Twilight Saga: Eclipse

Well, if you haven't seen the trailer for The Twilight Saga: Eclipse by now, you'll only have to wait out a few more days to escape, because the film opens tomorrow, Wednesday, 30 June, in North America, South Africa and pretty much the entire rest of the world... except Japan. In fact, most places are actually offering midnight screenings of the movie, kicking off at 23:59 tonight - specially for giddy Twihards.


In case you don't know, Eclipse is the third film in the Twilight film franchise, which is, of course, based on Stephenie Meyer's wildly successful fantasy-romance quadrilogy of books. In installment #3 in the series, 18 year old Bella Swan's (Kristen Stewart) life is growing increasingly complicated. High school graduation is looming, her vampire boyfriend Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) will only turn her into an immortal if she marries him, and suddenly she's struggling to choose between Edward and her best friend - and apparent soul-mate - Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner), who just so happens to be a werewolf, and therefore a sworn enemy of vampires. If all this wasn't enough, the vampire world's law enforcers, the Volturi, are insisting that Bella becomes a vampire; redheaded bloodsucker Victoria (Bryce Dallas Howard) is still out for revenge and someone is creating an army of super-strong newborn vampires in the nearby city of Seattle.

As if being a normal, human, lovestruck teenager wasn't tough enough?

For the record, what's notable about The Twilight Saga this time around is that Spider-Man 3 and Lady in the Water's Dallas Howard has replaced lesser known Rachelle Lefevre as Victoria, and the film is directed by British helmer David Slade - who already has some experience with movie vampires, in the form of the distinctly "meh" 30 Days of Night. At the same time though, Slade did also direct the intense, and excellent Hard Candy, so he's definitely a filmmaker with talent. I will also give Slade credit for making vampires monstrous and frightening again in 30 Days of Night - and this treatment seems to have been carried partly through into Eclipse with his depiction of the newborn vampire army.


Anyway, Slade will definitely have to put his talent to work with the film adaptation of Eclipse. I completed the novel this past week in preparation for the movie's release and found it to be dull, dull, dull. The events depicted in the trailer above fill about 150 pages of the 550 page paperback - which mostly consists of Bella running back and forth between Edward and Jacob, while the series supporting characters finally explain their origins and motivations in detail.

For once I'm actually more than happy for the filmmakers to take some liberties with the source material. And judging by the previews, they have. In the book - which is written from Bella's perspective - 80% of the action takes place "behind the scenes." By contrast, in the film the vampire army, as well as all the supernatural beastie combat, seems to take centre stage. As far as I'm concerned, this is a smart decision on the part of the filmmakers. Better to ignore Stephenie Meyer's lazy writing, discard complete fidelity to the novel and and instead immerse viewers in the action.

God knows audiences will need some distraction from the crap acting and horrible CGI-vampire leaps that have come to be associated with the Twilight movie franchise. Here's hoping that Eclipse delivers a jump in overall film quality.

The Twilight Saga: Eclipse will be showing in normal theatres and at IMAX from tomorrow.