Eclipse is my second favourite book after Twilight in the Twilight series. I finally watched the movie this afternoon (to avoid the long lines that inevitably accompany a Twilight movie during its first week) with the hubby in tow - he now claims that I owe him big time after he sat through the film. In reality, the third installment was actually better than the first 2 - Summit finally appears to be increasing the budget for these films after experiencing the huge returns. However, the third installment is also the one that deviates the most from the book.
In this movie Bella (Kristen Stewart) faces up to the fact that while she belongs with Edward (Robert Pattinson), she definitely has feelings for Jacob (Taylor Lautner) as well. Victoria (the mate of the vampire that the Cullens killed in the first movie/book) wants revenge and decides to go about building an army of newborn vampires to fight the Cullens and achieve her goal of killing Bella. In the meantime Jacob decides to reveal to Bella just exactly how he feels about her - while Bella is deciding between Edward and Jacob, the army of vampires advances to Forks to kill her. Is Bella safe? Does she finally make a choice? That forms the rest of the movie.
The chemistry between Taylor Lautner and Kristen Stewart appeared to be much better than that between Robert Pattinson and Kristen (however I wonder if there is any truth to the observation made by Joey to Chandler in Friends... if someone is a couple in real life, the chemistry on screen or on stage is not as great) - don't get me wrong, I am completely on Team Edward but I felt Bella and Jacob were more believable. I want Edward and Bella to be more passionate and I don't think the lead couple did that - I feel their performances were too restrained. Edward does look very handsome in this movie. In other Twilight news, they have broken the next movie into 2 parts - that is the best decision because the book is almost 800 pages long and has a lot of material to cover which would be next to impossible in 1 2-hour movie.
So the verdict: you will enjoy this movie if you are a Twilight fan. If you are not acquainted with this series, I would suggest reading all 4 books by Stephenie Meyer and watching the first 2 movies before sitting down to watch this one. Enjoy the rest of the weekend!!
