Eclipse | Teen Ink

Eclipse

November 27, 2010
By Suhyoon BRONZE, Guangzhou, Other
Suhyoon BRONZE, Guangzhou, Other
3 articles 0 photos 15 comments

Favorite Quote:
"Prestige! Is that nothing, sir? The respect of fools, the astonishment of children, the envy of the rich, the scorn of the wise." BARNAVE


Stephanie Meyers takes the three most clichéd themes of 21st century cinema—love, jealousy, and revenge—to launch a new bestselling genre dubbed vampire romance. No matter how many movies interpret and extol true love, teenagers today with their share of break-ups and rejections, don’t buy it. This is where Meyer succeeds by validating the concept of true love. With a supernatural element of vampirism—a faithful, intelligent, and gorgeous vampire—she captures even the most cynical of my generation. The concept of forbidden love and its risk prone nature is irresistible to teenagers who revel in seeing logic succumbed by bodily passions.
Bella Swan is a tolerably good looking girl (at least in the book) just as uncertain about her love life as any other teenager. When Bella moves in with her dad to a place called Folks overcast 365 days a year, her life finds a new purpose: to become a vampire and make love for eternity with her new sexy boyfriend Edward, full-time vampire. In the prequels of the series, Twilight and New Moon, Bella and Edward fall in love, thus disturbing the natural order of the universe, and save each other from the consequences. In this third book/movie of the series, the main plot is keeping Bella alive from Victoria’s wrath. In New Moon Edward killed Victoria’s mate for trying to kill Bella. To revenge her mate, Victoria starts building an army of newborn vampires at Chicago. In order to protect Bella, the Cullens and the werewolves collaborate for the very first time. However, a more subtle plot is frequently reminded of in the movie. Bella—being a human—has feelings for Jacob who helped her get on during Edward’s coordinated absence in the second book. Repeatedly in the movie, she is faced with the dilemma of living a warm blooded human with Jacob or—as Jacob puts it—a walking corpse with Edward.

Bella ignores all logic to follow her feelings for Edward. Once she turns into a vampire, she loses her family and friends. And according to Edward and Rosaline, living an un-aging life as a vampire is an empty one without a future. Such unconditional love has no logical justification but love. Neither does it need one. Bella’s best excuse for preferring Edward until the end is summed up in four words, “I love you more.” which makes perfect sense. However Bella ruins it by trying to justify her choice further when she asserts that living in dangers of the vampire world helped her feel genuine for the first time. She feels that this is her destined world. But the same would hold true for any other girl confronted with the perfect partner in life.

Loving more than one person is a powerful theme in this movie. Meyers paints this feeling with innocent pigments. People can compare their own “guilty” feelings with Bella’s and justify their situations. Bella is a straight and faithful partner for Edward; she simply has something for Jacob too. No one can help feeling as long as they stop it from making the decisions. So no one blames Bella for this little inconsistency. She’s the imperfect (and extremely lucky) human of the story. However, if our perfect Edward were to do the same, fans would be outraged. After all, Edward has every reason to be happy while the tanned six pack Jacob with his heartbreaking sincerity is discarded. The winner of the story may be Edward but as I peer down the dim rows of sniffling seats, Jacob Black, played by Taylor Lautener, has won all the tears.


The author's comments:
Meyers isn't our next Toni Morrison or Bradbury, she just found the right idea in our beauty-obsessed teenage culture.

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