July 2, 2010 -- The third in the Twilight series of films may be the best, but it still leaves room for doubt as to whether or not this series will ever amount to anything except huge amounts of money. Fortunately for the filmmakers, money is all that counts in Hollywood, and this series is a real money maker. Last year's episode of Twilight was one of the two top prize-winners, along with last year's installment in the “Transformers” franchise, as one of the worst films to strike box office gold. “The Twilight Saga: Eclipse” is actually not a bad film. It isn't good, either, but at least it is better than the first two.

In this film (I'm assuming here that you have seen the first two films) we get the clearest expression of the romantic triangle formed between Bella (played by Kristen Stewart), her main squeeze, vampire Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) and werewolf Jacob (Taylor Lautner). We also get some background into the long-running feud between vampires and werewolves. While the acting isn't bad, this romantic triangle is still not very convincing. Jacob does come up with some good reasons why Bella should choose him, including 1. He's human, 2. She wouldn't have to become a vampire to be with him, 3. She would not have to sever her connections with her family to be with him. Makes sense to me. The problem is that within the Twilight universe there is very little downside to being a vampire, as opposed to being a human. In most vampire stories, there are severe drawbacks to being human, like the inability to withstand daylight. There are very few limitations to being a vampire in the Twilight universe.

Another positive thing about this movie is it has some pretty good action scenes, including a big fight between werewolves and vampires. I liked the idea that there could be an alliance between vampires and werewolves and I liked the showdown between some vengeful vampire killers and Bella's defenders, Edward and Jacob. I really hated the outright murder of a young vampire girl by the self-righteous vampire enforcement squad called the Volturi, however. That was real turn-off for me. There is a hint in this movie that the Volturi are not only willfully negligent in their duties of enforcing vampire rules, they were playing some kind of political game to try to destroy the Cullen family of vampires. This might have been interesting if there was the slightest bit of depth to any of the movie's characters, but it really isn't very interesting. I suppose this tidbit will become the source of more conflict for the plots of future Twilight movies. I wish there were more interesting sources of conflict. This film rates a C.

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