Review of The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (2010) by Dylan D — 14 Oct 2013

By the time The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn two-fer has come and gone in theaters and home video, there will probably be some hot new property that will effectively eliminate all traces of Twilight from the social consciousness and take the reigns as new king of the bestsellers-turned-blockbusters; Harry Potter's hanging on thanks to the ongoing movie releases, but there's little doubt that that series, too, will diminish greatly in stature once the wizard has waved his wand goodbye to theatergoers, the Blu-ray reviews are in, and the discs are lining the shelves of collectors around the world.

What does that all mean to The Twilight Saga: Eclipse? The answer is simple. Even if this film and the whole of the series have become overrun with Edward and Jacob mania, it'll soon fade away into the ethers of cinema lore, replaced by another can't miss oh-so-hot series and the corresponding good-looking actors who will grace the covers of tabloids and adorn the walls of high school girls everywhere, leaving that Taylor Lautner poster or that tell-all Robert Pattinson book collecting dust or returning to the Earth in some landfill.

It's hard to imagine a series that's become as polarizing as Twilight due almost exclusively to mass overexposure of its stars; no doubt a fatigue with the constant bombardment of "Edward!" and "Jacob!" has obscured most everything surrounding the Twilight universe, but look beyond the actors and there's a decent movie that's certainly not as lean and ripped as its actors but is nevertheless attractive and well-made in its own right.

Eclipse won't be accepting any Oscars this season, but it's a good, hearty sequel that stands up better than most "part threes" out there. Love it, hate it, or accept it at face value, Twilight -- subjectively speaking -- is a good series and a (so far) decent collection of movies that get a bad rap because of mass overexposure and limitless hype.

Don't worry, calm down, and by all means avoid it if it's really that annoying, but many might be surprised that there's actually a fair movie in Eclipse that's more than two hours of a shirtless Taylor Lautner and a hunky Robert Pattinson gazing out towards a googly-eyed audience.