Many folks here have seen the Eclipse film by now (along with the rest of the nation!), and perhaps even stood in ridiculous lines. Others of us are waiting for things to calm down a bit a before we brave the Cineplex (that’s me). In any case, we wanted a spot here at HogwartsProfessor for folks to post their thoughts on the film as an adaptation of the text (read: not to gush over the physiques of actors 🙂 ) after they’ve seen it.
Because the Twilight books are narrated by a single character, while a film can and almost always does show several perspectives, and because Meyer made the Bree Tanner manuscript available to the film makers and actors, the relationship between the text and screen may be particularly interesting.
- For the serious readers here who have seen the film, what changes from the text do you find most or least effective?
- For those not yet clutching your ticket stubs, what are you anticipating or dreading?
What I am dreading is that the screen writer, who has stated she is on the opposite side of the spectrum when it comes to values and religion, will take out the best parts of the books (for me at least). I never got the sense that she wanted Bella to be an innocent old soul and has rewritten her character.
Lynn, you so are so thoughtful; I’m just hoping Jasper’s Civil War scene has some degree of accuracy :)!
Two thumbs up from from a serious reader friend on the left coast:
You know, I thought the first Twilight movie was rather lame, the second one kind of enjoyable in a campy sort of way, but this third was “a cut above” and actually felt like a solid, well-constructed, well-acted, well-conceived, well-scripted, and enjoyable movie. (And 63% of the “Top Critics” at Rotten Tomatoes agree.) The characters’ choices were plausibly explained in intelligent discussions between them – which makes me think better of the source material from which these discussions were clearly drawn. Even some of the absurdities of the earlier installments retroactively fell into places as “tried that – didn’t work, won’t do that again” learning experiences. The large youngish crowd in the theatre ate the film up with a spoon and gave it an appreciative ovation at the end (in which I participated). One sign of the times… the half-naked buff wolf boy was the clear teen girl favorite, while Pattison periodically elicited audible creeped-out reactions. Whither goth vamp fascination? BTW, some of the “you can love more than one person” rhetoric whiffed a bit of Mormon “Big Love”, but didn’t stray too far out of the norm for “torn between two lovers” storylines.
Elizabeth, sorry to disappoint you, but the only part of Jasper’s history we got to see was the interplay between him and Maria, including just prior to his turning, and a little bit of him with her army. All with a very heavy southern accent. But it was good to see him have a bigger role in the movie, as he did in Eclipse more than in the first two novels, and to see the (new) actor portraying the southern gentleman soldier in a physical way. That is, not just the accent but also his body posture seemed more “soldier straight” than “I’m afraid I’ll devour you if I stand any closer” as in the other two films.
My overall opinion of the movie as a movie: Eclipse seemed to lack the terrible bits that Twilight and New Moon suffered from (Pattinson and Stewart have improved their acting skills dramatically) but also lacked the depth and understanding of the richness of the story line that I saw in New Moon’s production. So it was better, but also worse.
On the changes from the text:
As with the previous two movies, there was more of the “bad” vampires shown earlier in the movie than in the novel. In this case, this was the Seattle newborns, of course. The Seattle scenes were very, very dark (cinematography as well as content). Having recently been there on holiday, I have to say I don’t know why they didn’t use some of those marvellous underground basements and passageways (old buried sidewalks) that Seattle has – and why Meyer didn’t write them in to Short Second Life for that matter; but it was very grey and appropriately gloomy nevertheless. At times, I found the dichotomy between Seattle scenes and Forks scenes too much. Going straight from Edward asking Bella to marry him, to newbie vamps feeding in the rain was a bit too much of a contrast for me to deal with. While I thought the overall balance between Forks and Seattle scenes was good, I wished they could have segued between the two with a little more finesse.
Fred and Diego don’t get a look in, which disappointed the group of readers I went saw the movie with.
The biggest addition to the storyline was that Riley was in the script as a kid from Forks who had been turned by Victoria on a rainy evening out in Seattle, specifically to take advantage of his knowledge of the area around Forks. And also perhaps to explain how Edward knows his name in the fight scene, which astute readers would realise is because Eddie can read Riley’s mind, but even the most observant moviegoers who haven’t read the books might otherwise wonder at. I can see why this change was necessary. But more importantly, along with the novella Short Second Life, I think it added another perspective to the “what if Bella had fallen in love with an evil vampire?” hypothetical.
Surprisingly, Bree doesn’t play much of a role in the movie, after all the novella hype. But she is the only other newborn army vampire we get to see up close, other than Riley, so while I wanted more of her, I didn’t feel too much like I missed out.
Jacob – with all his desperation to get Bella to choose him, not Edward – was portrayed with skill and compassion. I think Lautner is becoming a very good actor, but some of his lines were fantastically written, as well. The scene where he faces Charlie after Bella hurts her hand on his face was absolutely hilarious, and delivered marvellously. And when he forces her to kiss him, it comes over as being an act of understandable desperation totally lacking in violence, not an almost-rape as some people complain of that scene in the book.
I think Edward and Bella are both more believable in this movie than they are in the book Eclipse. I might add here that, were it not for the delightful backstories we get in Eclipse, it would be my least favourite of all the Twilight Saga books. I don’t like Wuthering Heights, either. The actors have improved dramatically and the lines, while for the most part almost exactly those from the book, were selected with a good eye to making their actions believable, understandable (especially to someone who hasn’t read the books) and also a bit less extreme than the book. I appreciated that.
There were a few missing elements, but I felt most of them were completely understandable to streamline the movie to fit into the required time slot. So for example we saw Leah phase the same time we met her, whereas in the book Bella doesn’t find out she’s a werewolf until after the council meeting. They conflated the two scenes where Jacob turns up at the school on his motorbike. We missed finding out that Jacob won’t age – a source of immense frustration to Bella, and another spur to her desire to be turned, but not really necessary to the script. Imprinting was in, but no sign of Claire. Which wasn’t surprising. Or was she only in Breaking Dawn anyway? I can’t remember.
One thing I found frustrating was the almost complete lack of literary allusions. This was one of the things I thought was done the best in the New Moon movie, and there wasn’t even one reference to Wuthering Heights in Eclipse at all. Frost’s “Fire and Ice” poem was there, but I didn’t notice any Bronte.
My biggest confusion: Esme’s hair was black. Why? I just don’t get that. Some nigredo thing? Why?