Have I really still not spotted The Twilight Saga: Eclipse?

I’m shocked to find that I still have not spotted this. There’s like two trailers and a scene released already ;)
And while I’m writing about Twilight - I’m both excited and annoyed that Bill Condon is going to direct Breaking Dawn (the 4th book, the 4th & 5th film). Excited cause he’s an interesting choice and annoyed because I was previously hoping not to get excited for Breaking Dawn at all cause I detest the book ;-P

{FILM SPOTTING}

The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (USA, 2010)

Release Date (Poland): 1st July 2010
Release Date (worldwide): 30th June 2010
Director: David Slade
Cast: Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner, Billy Burke, Ashley Greene, Jackson Rathbone, Nikki Reed, Kellan Lutz, Elizabeth Reaser, Peter Facinelli, Dakota Fanning, Anna Kendrick, Michael Welch
Production House: Summit Entertainment, Temple Hill Entertainment, Maverick Films, Imprint Entertainment, Sunswept Entertainment
Plot: (from imdb)

As a string of mysterious killings grips Seattle, Bella, whose high school graduation is fast approaching, is forced to choose between her love for vampire Edward and her friendship with werewolf Jacob.

Trailers and clips
Twilight tradition dictates that the trailers should be bad and they are…. but (and I’m not sure whether this should worry me or whether I should be happy about it), I think they look better than usual…
The theatrical trailer has been out for a while now:

I snorted at the “As long as we get to kill some vampires” line - love the sarcasm and the delivery. Also, the action sequences are looking unusually good. And I really like Pattinson in the snowy bits (and the snowy bits themselves look nice too ;)).
The teaser trailer which has been out for ages:

The actual content on this one looks disgustingly soppy and cheesy ;-P However, the field of blue flowers looks gorgeous and some of the lines (particularly Lautner’s) sound great (as in the delivery of them ;-P the lines themselves are a bit too far on the soppy side of things ;-P).
But what has me very hopeful is the Edward & Bella scene that has been released:

The sceptical part of me thinks that…
If this turns out to be as soppy, sentimental and generally awful as New Moon then I would have seriously considered not seeing Breaking Dawn. The problem is that now that Bill Condon is attached I probably will want to see it even if Eclipse turns out to be awful (which I still consider to be a very real possibility :]).

The excited part of me thinks that…
There is hope that this will not be as dreadful as New Moon. I say this because:
1) The Bella & Edward scene has a very different style of editing to what we saw in New Moon. It’s common practice to shorten or make a scene a bit more dynamic when releasing it for promotional purposes, so I’m not sure if that’s how the scene actually appears in the film. But the kind of changes that are usually made would mean the scene should look worse in its promotional version to me, so I have a lot of hope regardless ;)
One of my biggest bugs with New Moon was how dynamic the editing was. You just can’t do that kind of editing when you’re relying on awkward humour and when you have Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart as your leads :] The two of them have a beautifully restrained style of acting and their silences say as much as their actual lines do.
The released scene has relatively long shots and awkward silences, yay! *grin* And Pattinson and Stewart both look much better in that scene than how I remember them in New Moon *sigh of relief*
2) While the scene looks very soppy indeed, it’s a different sort of sentimentalism than what we saw in New Moon. If that’s the direction they’re going in with the soppy stuff then it may well work for me.
3) I think that of the four books, Eclipse is the one that translates to the screen most naturally. There’s a lot in it that should look really good on screen. I’m particularly keen to see how the whole Edward-Bella-Jacob dynamic plays out. There should be a lot of hilarious scenes. Both guys get extremely possessive of Bella, which should be fun to see. And then there’s Bella getting annoyed with both of them (she even runs off with Jacob while Edward can’t do anything about it *grin* and then there’s the sleeping bag scene! *grin*). I can really imagine Pattinson, Stewart and Lautner pulling off some great moments.
4) Another problem in New Moon was the Hollywood mentality of “OMG, we have to put in some action sequences or only girls will want to watch this”. New Moon as a story does not lend itself naturally to action. So they started inventing things and changing stuff to put in the action, making a total mess of the story in the process. Eclipse has some very good and natural moments for action, so hopefully they will not have to destroy the story to put in the action they so crave :]

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