Twilight: Eclipse entertains even skeptics of the series

By Cody Kitaura
Citizen Staff Writer
Special to Scoop

Call me old fashioned, but I thought vampires wore capes. And turned into bats. And slept in coffins.

None of that is true in author Stephenie Meyer’s wildly successful Twilight franchise, but it didn’t stop hundreds of fans from packing into Sacramento’s Esquire IMAX Theatre for a midnight showing of the newest installment on June 30.

The series, which first hit the big screen in 2008, revolves around Arizona-native Bella Swan’s (Kristen Stewart) move to an unfamiliar high school in rural Washington state, where she falls madly in love with vampire Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson), all the while being thrown into dangerous vampire turf wars and werewolf rivalries.

Eclipse, the third of the four-part series, was released June 30, and shattered records for the biggest midnight release in U.S. history, grossing an estimated $30 million on its first night.

The film revolves around the hunt for clues as the vampire protagonists fear out-of-control, “newborn” vampires may be behind a string of mysterious killings in Seattle. As danger seems more and more imminent, werewolf heartthrob Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner) confesses his love for Bella and sets out to convince her that he’s a better mate than cold, undead Edward.

Fans of “traditional” vampire tales will revel in the flashbacks showing the human lives of the bloodsucking characters before they were immortal. One such flashback shows Jasper Hale (Jackson Rathbone) as a Confederate soldier in the Civil War, while Edward’s early-1900s persona shows through as he describes how his romance with Bella would have gone during his time.

“I would’ve courted you,” he says during a tender moment in Eclipse, explaining how he would have “stolen a kiss or two.”

His old-fashioned nature irks Bella, who is eager to skip the chaperoned strolls and get to the real intimacy. She urges Edward to bite her and turn her into a vampire so they can spend eternity together, but he resists.

The feeling of this installment was radically different from past Twilight films, and the move was a positive one. Each film in the series is overseen by a different director, and Eclipse’s David Slade was a surprisingly successful choice. Slade, a 40-year-old Briton with a Cullen-esque complexion, was previously more known for gory horror films and music videos than tween-heartthrob flicks, but Eclipse winds a sense of dark suspense with the requisite web of romance.

The film’s target audience hasn’t shifted from that “young adult” crowd, but the few fathers present at the midnight showing (who likely weren’t there by choice) could find enjoyment at least in the film’s few fast-paced action scenes, which were energetic and well done.

And if the more reluctant attendees weren’t able to enjoy that part of the film, they could at least revel in the audio-visual candy store that is the Esquire IMAX Theatre, located at 1211 K St. in downtown Sacramento. The massive screen and booming stereo seem to make any movie more engaging.

Eclipse was destined for success before any of its core fans had seen even a frame of the actual film, but luckily the movie does enough to keep even the non-rabid fans engaged.