The Twilight Saga: Eclipse [Blu-ray]

Believe it or not, I actually quite enjoyed the original 'Twilight' - not enough to ever really want to watch it again, but it passed a couple of hours. I always think it was a bit of a victim of its own success. It was so popular the people who made it realised they had to drag out of the story no matter what.In the original, a young teenage girl, Bella Swann, moves to a small American town where she falls in love with a local vampire, Edward Cullen. Yeah, it's a bit cheesy and mainly aimed at 'young adults', but, like I say, it killed a couple of hours. The trouble was that the film has to end when the protagonists get together. Therefore, with a romance film, if you're going to make a sequel you then have to come up with new ways of keeping them apart.'Eclipse' is now the third entry in the series and even the second one was a bit of a stretch as to why these people who were so 'completely in love' should be apart. It plays heavily on a - supposed - 'love triangle' with a werewolf character, Jacob, and, at the time time release, there was plenty of hype in the media about whether you were on 'Team Edward' or 'Team Jacob.' Again, the whole point of the trilogy (to date of release of this film) was for Edward and Bella to get together, therefore it's hard to believe she'd suddenly ditch the vamp for the wolf.Now, maybe all this wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for the fact that the characters themselves are just so one dimensional. Bella is played by Kristen Stewart and Edward by Robert Pattinson who, believe it or not, both can actually act. It took a while for these two young actors to shake off their typecasting and show they could do more than just stare at each other with mouths slightly open. Plus, for a film (mainly?) designed for young teenage girls, I do find a lot of Bella's decisions pretty, er, 'suspect' in her eternal quest for love - hardly a good role model in my opinion. In fact, she's a bit of a 'Mary Sue' where everyone loves her despite her complete lack of personality and even being pretty selfish.I know there are a lot of teens who love this franchise and every installment. I'm just not a teen any more and was never really that romantic to begin with, therefore this just seemed to be flogging an undead horse a little too far. My sixteen year old daughter would completely disagree. She's probably going to make me watch parts four and five soon.

I saw this at the cinema on Friday and thought I would post a review for all those potential DVD buyers. I really liked the sound and feel of Twilight but thought New Moon wasn't quite as good; different, but not quite as good. Eclipse was better than New Moon and probably equal to Twilight in my opinion.The story was well adapted from what is quite a thick book. I felt they included the right amount of necessary scenes - the creation the newborn army, Rosalie and Jasper's back stories, Edward's proposal, the Quileute legends, the (great) scene in the tent etc etc and left out bits that didn't really affect the storyline; not an easy task, I'm sure. I liked the look of the film too - Bella appears softer and wears slightly more make up and warmer colour clothing, Edward's clothes are less formal than in New Moon and it all feels more relaxed in line with Bella's happiness I suppose. Kristen Stewart is pretty good as Bella - I've mentioned it before that she still doesn't have a huge range of facial expressions, but she was better in this film, even smiling occasionally which makes her much prettier. Robert Pattinson was also less stiff and formal in his acting and Taylor Lautner almost made me switch to Team Jacob - he looks fantastic, acts well and seems to really enjoy the whole process. Billy Burke as Charlie got the best lines but I have to admit I preferred the original Victoria. I'm glad Jasper came to the fore because he was actually quite good.The effects were great - the wolves in particular - and I really liked seeing the Cullens in action for the first time. The chase and fight sequences were very good and quite tense. Couple of ropey moments when Jacob was carrying Bella, but on the whole really good. The soundtrack was first class too.OK, the (slight) negatives. Well, it wouldn't be a balanced review otherwise! A huge amount of the film is extreme close ups of the actors' faces - not really a problem, but it was a relief after a while to have a wider shot. I thought the wigs and contact lenses just weren't right and made the Cullens look somewhat comical at times. Carlisle, Rosalie, Jasper, Victoria and even Bella's wigs looked too obvious and the golden contacts were just too much - better in previous films. I don't know what's happened to Esme - she looked awful and I don't hold with the film version of Rosalie being the 'most beautiful being on the planet' according to Bella, but that's just my view. Also check out Edward's hideous trousers as he gets out of the car for the practise session!On the whole though, pretty good and I look forward to the next instalment.

This is a great film . I was missing two dvd of the twilight saga but now it’s complete.