Movie Review: The Twilight Saga: Eclipse

I suppose this makes me an old fogey, but the more I watch The Twilight Saga, the more I wish someone would just throw some good, cold water on Bella, Edward, and Jacob and then send Bella off to college to grow up a little.
 
"The Twilight Saga: Eclipse" picks up the story of pretty Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) and her intense love triangle with the dreamboat vampire Edward (Robert Pattinson) and the muscular werewolf Jacob (Taylor Lautner). After nearly losing Bella to mean vampires in Italy, Edward has vowed to never leave her again. They spend sun dappled afternoons in a wildflower meadow, gazing into each other's eyes and kissing intensely but chastely. Bella has extracted a promise from him to turn her into a vampire at her next birthday.

However, deep in his furry heart, Jacob (who seems allergic to shirts) knows Bella loves him too and decides to fight for her.

With Bella, fighting for her is a literal endeavor. For one little mortal, she sure has a lot of enemies. This time, a renegade army of newborn vampires is building. Clearly, they have nothing good in mind.
 
To his credit, Bella's father (Billy Burke) is the only person who notices how inappropriately intense is her relationship with Edward. He encourages her to get out, see friends, do other things. He worries that she's giving up too much for Edward.
 
He's right. In her quest to become a vampire and spend eternity by Edward's sparkly side, Bella is willing to give up friends, family, future dreams of college and career, hopes of children, indeed life itself. "I will never want anything more than I want Edward," she tells Edward's sister.
 
Ah, to be seventeen again.
 
This, of course, is why God gave fathers to seventeen year olds. With the benefit of years of perspective, he knows that while she may always want Edward, there will be a great many things she will desire in addition to him. Fathers get out the metaphorical hose and try to keep seventeen-year-olds from doing anything stupid. Sadly, Bella's father is reduced to a bleating voice in the background as the movie focuses in on her angsty, intense passion for Edward. And Jacob.
 
This girl just doesn't know what she wants.
 
Edward does. He makes a good argument for marriage, and for waiting for sex until they are married. The film takes the intense passion the two feel for each other and channels it into the romance of marriage. In novelist Stephanie Meyer's capable hands and the hands of the screenwriters, marriage is portrayed as the most romantic of outcomes for Edward and Bella. It's not just a "don't do it" message about sex, it's a return to the idea that their wedding (and wedding night) will be the most romantic of moments, completely worth waiting for emotionally.
 
This is the best of the franchise yet. Emotions smolder satisfactorily, with a few self-aware moments of humor. Jacob is almost never fully clothed, which seemed important to the mostly female audience. Edward, thankfully, keeps his shirt on. Some of the Cullen clan tell their back stories, which are short but interesting.  The battle scenes are satisfying and might even wake up the husbands, fathers, and boyfriends roped into watching it. And Kristen Stewart does that fluttery thing with her eyelashes a lot, by which you know she's very moved. You'll love it.
 
What concerns me is the very nature of Bella's love. Edward is bossy to the point of being controlling. He's always there, but they never do anything. They don't hike or fish or go shopping or watch movies or play Wii or volunteer at a soup kitchen or even work at the local ice cream shop. They never laugh. They talk about their feelings. It's all intensity all the time.
 
I certainly don't want my daughter looking for the type of love that consumes everything, including her personhood. While the emphasis on marriage is refreshing, the film begs the question what is the purpose of love, romance, and marriage? Is it solely to love and adore each other? I'd like to think there's more to it. I'd like to think love and marriage is the way by which we create a team to journey through life and affect the world. A team that enhances each other's strengths and reduces each other's weaknesses. (Bella and Edward don't have weaknesses, except her physical ones which will be changed when she becomes a vampire.) A team in which each person's goals become shared goals, whether to create great art or feed hungry children or be the best insurance salesman in Hoboken. A team that raises children, if so blessed, in a household of love and warmth that radiates light out into a dark world.
 
After all, staring into Edward's orange eyes might get old after a couple hundred years.
 
If the inward-focus of love is all there is, the intense talks and wildflower meadows, then Bella's desire to become a vampire and adore Edward throughout eternity makes perfect sense. However, if that inward focus is designed to evolve into a greater outward focus, then she will surely miss out.
 
These are the types of things you can talk to your teens about, if they are donning “Team Jacob” tees on the way out the door tonight.  (Or, if you are.)  After all, that parental “bleating noise in the background” is important, and doesn’t have to be in the background.

Not a Twilight fan?  Read our Twilight Haters' Survival Guide!