After recently viewing Pixar’s brilliant Toy Story 3, I began racking my brain to come up with third movies in a series that stand out as the best.  It’s a rare feat, but arguments could probably be made for Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Goldfinger, Harry Potter and the Prizoner of Azkaban and a few others.  Azkaban, certainly, stood out above its two predecessors and the same can be said for the third chapter in The Twilight Saga: Eclipse.  While I struggled to find reasons for the following the first two films received, I actually enjoyed—or, at least tolerated—Eclipse, a vast improvement over Twilight and New Moon.

The focus of the plot is again the love triangle between the human Bella, the vampire Edward, and the werewolf Jacob.  Like its forerunners, Eclipse finds plenty of opportunities to bring the trio together for some awkward encounters filled with petty bickering and jealousies.  As this is the central focus of the series, it’s unfortunate that it is the weakest element of the film.  Fortunately, the plot outside of the love triangle is much improved and entertaining enough to make sitting through these scenes at least bearable.

After a string of mysterious disappearances and deaths in Seattle, the Cullen family begins to suspect that the vengeful redhead Victoria is forming an army to seek and kill Bella: part of a revenge plot to make Edward feel the pain she felt when he killed her lover James in the first film.  The army is made up of newborns (newly created vampires) that are stronger and meaner than veteran vampires due to the amount of human blood still present in their body tissue.  Fearing for Bella’s safety, Jacob helps to create a rare truce between his kind and the Cullens, and recruits the rest of his pack to join the fight.

The subpar special effects of the first two films have, for the most part, been upgraded and this makes the climactic battle scene all the more enjoyable.  There’s also a fun training sequence that precedes it, even though I never quite figured out exactly what lessons were being taught.

The film also delves a little further into the backstory, using some interesting flashback sequences.  We learn the creation stories of Rosalie and Jasper, along with the first confrontation between Jacob’s ancestors and the vampires.

All of this helps to open up the story beyond the central love triangle.  Although new-to-the-series director David Slade does away with many of the glamour shots that plagued the first two films, the romantic rivalry is still played out in ugly sneers, and petty-sounding crybaby rants.  There is one scene late in the film, however, that works quite well as Edward is forced to set aside his pride in consideration of Bella’s health.  In this scene and others—often involving Bella’s father Charlie—the movie also develops a bit of a sense of humor.  Having mostly laughed at the two previous films, I found myself laughing with this one on a few occasions.

It’s also in this scene that I saw something genuine from actor Robert Pattinson, who plays Edward.  In the previous two films and for most of this one, the actor has always seemed too stiff and awkward.  It’s not just the vampire in him, because I saw the same stiffness in his performance as Cedric in Harry Potter and even in the recent romantic drama Remember Me, a film I quite enjoyed.  At some point in this scene it is as if something clicks and Pattinson’s acting seems genuine.  It spills over into the rest of the film and, hopefully, into his future career.

As for the other two principals Kristen Stewart and Taylor Lautner, they never reach this point and both often sound as if they are reading their lines straight off the page.  This is especially true of Stewart’s unhelpful voiceover narration that fortunately is forgotten about as the film progresses.

With two more movies planned in the Twilight series, it is nice to see them moving somewhat in the right direction.

The Twilight Saga: Eclipse is rated PG-13 for “intense sequences of action and violence, and some sensuality.”  There are some limbs and heads taken off during the battle sequence, but since they are vampires there is no blood, which makes it seem somewhat less violent.

Courtesy of a local publicist, Jeff attended a promotional screening of The Twilight Saga: Eclipse.