A Portent of the Misery to Come | TBWB: Eclipse Review Part 1

[Music] to succeed as a writer it's important to know what makes a well told story at their core stories are about change changes in characters changes in the world or they could be used to show why certain viewpoints might need to be changed only ken's allowed in here alice are you blind don't you see the family resemblance that's my brother there's eclipse which does show change in the characters but almost exclusively to make those characters look awful this book is much worse than new moon [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] as i go along in this dreadful saga i can't help but notice that each book has its own definable faults that set it apart from the rest of the series twilight was a slog of shallow introductions to bland characters and very underwhelming vampires new moon was a nightmare in sluggish pacing and had only 10 minutes of plot eclipse however is all about shallow exposition dumps and character assassinations god i really can't wait to get to the last book about a final climactic battle that doesn't actually happen and heavy pedo vibes anyway eclipse is the third book in stephanie meyer's twilight saga the series whose success can only be attributed to a deal with an outer god take your pick on which one it came out in 2007 the fans went nuts i read it 13 years later and hated it blah blah you know the rest the movie adaptation came out in 2010 while most of the cast did return for this one there were some new faces like bryce dallas howard replacing rochelle lefeve as vicky the dangerous ever looming antagonist from new moon with exactly zero lines in the movie and no appearances in the book there's also jodell ferland who played some newbie vampire whose inclusion is actually worse than nothing as she is introduced then killed with less than five minutes of screen time amounting to little more than a distraction for the plot and yet her character would get a novella called the short second life of brie tanner that's like getting a novella for the guy who refills the vending machines on the death star it should be no surprise that eclipse was nominated for several razzy awards including worst director worst couple worst screenplay and many others however they lost all but one of the categories they were nominated in the series got lucky because that was also the year's sex in the city too and shyamalan's the last airbender came out and those took most of the razzies in 2011 although it really sucked for jackson rathbone he won worst supporting actor for both eclipse and saka in the last airbender oh i'm sorry i meant soca and of course both the book and movie were financial windfalls with a box office return of almost 700 million dollars the movie earned more than 10 times its production budget the book sales were even more impressive by comparison within the first 24 hours eclipse sold over 150 000 copies which were book sales numbers that hadn't been seen since harry potter by 2008 more than 4.5 million copies of eclipse had been purchased by rabbit fans or in my case beleaguered bibliophiles whose job it is to break down why these books suck thank god for used bookstores so what makes this story worse than new moon are the stories alleging abuse between bella and her suitors exaggerated does this book even have a plot and who gets spared from the character assassinations that i mentioned before let's find out as we blindly stumble through this doorstop of a book this is eclipse [Music] the movie opens by fixing one of the principal issues of the book by breaking away from bella's point of view we see a kid named riley as he gets attacked by a vampire and is left to die and transform we never got this moment in the book and opening the movie with it was a bold decision this gives us a backstory to riley and we get scenes later on showing his progress as a vampire as he grows i'll save further discussion on riley and his team of evil vampire followers for later but just seeing him is enough to round out the story and make the universe feel that much richer the twilight books all suffer from bella telling things from only her perspective first person limited perspectives are a popular writing style and have been used very effectively plenty of times the hunger games trilogy the dresden files and larry korea's monster hunter international are all excellent books that utilize this style however as the description implies it's inherently limited the main character needs to be interesting and compelling strong enough to carry the story on their own shoulders and while the protagonists of the examples i just listed are able to keep the story engaging bella is not and for several reasons but the one i want to focus on now is because she is a very passive character protagonists come in all shapes and sizes but something to consider is that most modern audiences prefer an active protagonist rather than a passive one actor protagonists have goals in mind that they vigorously pursue they take action to rise up against a dark lord to get that dreamboat to fall in love with them to discover that lost treasure you get the picture yes bella does have goals as far as marrying edward and becoming a vampire with him but that event has already been set in motion and will pretty much happen with little exertion on her part and because she rarely takes action on her own bella is very easily considered a passive protagonist passive protagonists do not really take charge oftentimes they only react worse sometimes they react while other characters take action for them again like what we see with bella especially in this book now passive protagonists can be done well but that's usually something you find in classic literature one of my favorite books the inferno cast dante as a very passive protagonist doing little more than ask a question now and then while virgil took care of the occasional obstacle however this worked because dante was written to be an observer a student while virgil taught him the ins and outs of hell the purpose of the divine comedy was to teach the reader about the importance of devotion to god through detailing the afterlife well that and it was a special screw you from algeria to his detractors hell even harry potter was a passive protagonist for several chapters in his first book evolving into an active protagonist when he discovered quidditch there are times when using a passive protagonist actually benefits the story like if they're entering a new world and don't understand things yet or if they're being used to observe and teach a reader a lesson through their experiences like what you sometimes get in children's books however bella doesn't get this kind of pass she spends most of the book pondering about life and the world around her instead of interacting with anything yes she did rush to italy to stop ed from killing himself and that is an active role and she ran from her protection to fall for the evil vampires trap in the first story but two moments of action through three books isn't enough to declare her an active protagonist the vast majority of the prose takes place inside her head and she spends almost no time interacting with a plot or making her own decisions edward or jacob will suggest something and whether or not bella agrees with it or even wants to go with it she often gets pulled along for the ride i think a lot of this stems from meyer's love of classic literature from authors like jane austen charlotte bronte and margaret mitchell among others meyer's attempts to emulate their writing styles either through imitation or just constant reference comes across like a kid playing dress-up she didn't study enough to understand what made those authors reputable and she didn't have the natural talent to capture the moment in the same way if you've seen my new moon review then you know that meyer doesn't really understand the classics all that well since she equated romeo and juliet to a romance story that ends in suicide and if you agree with that i implore you to go back and reread romeo and juliet act 5 scene 3 pay attention to the prince because he pretty much sums it up for you however while there are plenty of passive characters in classic literature modern audiences prefer protagonists to take more active roles bella could have been used to explore the world of vampires and werewolves she could have been a semi-passive observer guided along by a love interest who tried to keep her safe in a world fraught with unseen dangers but pushing him to do the right thing and stop the bad guy or whatever the plot could have entailed unfortunately the world bella finds herself in is so simplistic that it can be accurately explained in a few sentences well that was a lot of talking for a single concept hey npc how far are we into the movie about 20 seconds awesome we're off to a great start the next scene starts us off in the proper twilight manor with bella pretentiously monologuing something that she stole from some classic texts some say the world will end in fire some say an ice from what i've tasted of desire i hold with those who favor fire the poem she's quoting is fire and ice by robert frost which was included in the book in an early page that served more like an intro quote separate from the actual story and like so many other times when meyer invokes some classic texts she doesn't understand what it means for context here's the poem some say the world will end in fire some say in ice from what i've tasted of desire i hold with those who favor fire but if it had to perish twice i think i know enough of hate to know that for destruction ice is also great and would suffice when poetry is done well it'll have at least two meanings surface level for literal definition and a deeper meaning for a more symbolic interpretation granted this is true of novels as well but one thing at a time on the surface fire and ice is about the world ending in one of two ways and a speaker who's wondering about them when you look at this poem and compared to the events in eclipse there is a parallel between fire and ice that matches jacob and edward respectively especially in regards to their body temperatures in a later scene in the story we see bella freezing on a mountain ed can't help her because he's dead and has no body heat so jacob has to spoon her to save her life since he's an inhuman space heater in this way we see that jacob represents fire and edward represents ice and at a shallow glance the speaker of the poem seems to be okay with either fire or ice which is a running issue that bella plays with in the story when she can't decide if she wants edward moore or jacob however all of that falls apart when you look at the symbolic interpretation paired with fire is a line about desire and ice is paired with hate desire here could represent a deep passion or rage which does reflect jacob a little considering how much he pines for bella and how his wolf side is fueled by anger but it also kicks him out of any romantic equation that meyer's trying to raise a little passion akin to a friendship or a little excitement about something can be harmless but if left unattended for too long it becomes destructive and overwhelming that means that jacob actually becoming bellow's boyfriend love or husband or whatever is dangerous and potentially harmful and considering everything that jacob does in this book i think that's a very apt comparison but not by design i'll have a lot to say about jacob later in the review but i think you can see why a relationship with him and bella as seen through the symbolic meaning of this poem is risky and ultimately doomed to fail it's not really a love triangle if one of the principal characters gets bumped out of the race before it begins the correlation of ice and hatred doesn't match with edward though so we can throw that right out in the book he's highly protective of bella doting on her in very unique ways kidnapping counts as romantic right he does openly hate the wolves but he claims to calm down and give them a chance about halfway through the story edward's hatred of jacob doesn't match with the poem though since bell is representative of the speaker the vampire werewolf feud is a separate concept that has nothing to do with bella making a choice between ed or jacob edward doesn't hate bella so the symbolic meaning doesn't work here either no matter how you look at it meyer's interpretation of this poem doesn't work beyond a shallow literal interpretation and that's not where poems shine poems have far deeper meaning and reach more people through a creative use of language to mean more than what they first appear it encourages interpretation discussion and when used correctly can be some of the most clever writing you can find and i don't even like poetry that much at least i'm not bastardizing somebody else's work to prop up my own pretentious self-serving [ __ ] anyway we see that this story picks up a short time after the last one maybe a few weeks after our couple came back from italy bella and ed are together again although bella is still super grounded for fleeing the country make a deal you're not grounded anymore well that was easy charlie's always been a unique character in the series in part because he was the only one i found even slightly bearable the small town cop trying to reconnect with his distant daughter made him sympathetic and he always seemed like he was doing his best although he didn't know how to do it he just wanted what was best for bella even if it meant removing himself from the equation if you're going to jacksonville live with your mother but eclipse ruined him we'll save his worse offenses for later in the story when they come up but his introduction in this book was almost a complete inverse from everything we've seen of him thus far to the point where it almost reads like a joke in fact this may be the single worst character introduction i've ever read outside of an actual parody book and to prove that i also read the harvard lampoon's parody book nightlight each book introduces the father figure in a ridiculous manner in one the dad trips and crashes into a keychain display stand in the other the dad fails at cooking spaghetti so hard that it congeals into a single gooey lump now i posted this question to twitter asking followers to pick out which one was the parody and most of you got it right congrats but the fact that so many people couldn't tell really should indicate something about meyer's writing i did leave out that the dad and the parody tripped over a toddler but i didn't want to make it too obvious also i'm assuming that a number of people remember the answer from reading eclipse in their youth you should read this book though it's pretty funny especially if you're familiar with twilight's copious flaws while charlie does eat out a lot and has a favorite diner i'm really concerned at his complete lack of skills in the kitchen not only did he boil the spaghetti until it was a solid mass that was so dense bella had to use a steak knife to cut into it but he also tried cooking the sauce in the microwave still in the jar complete with the lid on top which if you didn't know is an excellent way to start fires i swear to god this is real spaghetti is a great basic dish to start learning how to cook for charlie to not even marginally grasp that at his age with a kid leads me to believe that outside of diners he sustains himself entirely on cereal and waffles so charlie tells bella that she's not grounded anymore if she uses her newfound freedom to hang out with her friends and not just ed like jacob he's going through a really tough time right now his dad's really worried about him bella and jacob's relationship was one of the earlier fumbling points from the book jacob had written a clumsy note for her apologizing for how he acted in new moon but when bella tried calling him jacob never picked up the phone and when she tries to drive out to visit [Music] him the only problem is that she's missing some key components to her engine hey did you do this to my truck well you have to understand your safety is everything to me i remember when all the furor against twilight was first hitting the internet and everyone claimed that ed was abusive there are a few moments here and there in the first two books that are a little controlling or unusual but the real garbage is in this book the steps ed takes to protect bella comes straight out of stephen king's misery minus the sledgehammer almost done it's bad in the movie but it is far worse in the book he mostly just restricts her movement and only lets her go to school or home in the movie which is not only an indicator of abuse but human trafficking but in the book he takes this to another level he takes parts out of her car so she can't drive to the reservation to visit jacob he stops bella from giving jacob a comforting hug out of jealousy he threateningly tailgated bella when she managed to get her truck working driving only a few inches behind her like something out of criminal minds he has to know where bella is at all hours of the day and when he's out he has alice spy on bella and use her psychic powers to intervene if needed and the sad fact is those are not all the examples i could list going to the source and listening to patterson's breakdown of his character doesn't make things any clearer he has 17 year old guy emotions you know being jealous of other guys who fancy his girlfriend i buy that ed being a walking corpse is 17 but are you telling me he hasn't matured beyond that after living for more than a century is that normal for vampires or is ed a uniquely immature jackass no matter the answer it isn't good even bella picks up on ed's suffocating nature in the book and commented edward's shielding arms had become restraints bella realizes that she can only see jacob when edward was away on a hunting trip so on some level she was aware that she was being trapped at one point ed had so little trust or regard for bella that he arranged for alice to kidnap her for a slumber party weekend that was really just alice making sure bella couldn't see jacob sure he did it under the guise of keeping her safe from the wolves because their anger made them unpredictable just look at sam's fiancee emily and the scar sam gave her but ed went way beyond what was reasonable to the point where out of context it almost sounds like a joke but it's not a joke ed's behavior is actually very common among abusers who utilize psychological and emotional abuse he never hit bella but he got into her head to the point where she was actually doubting what she was allowed to do this is creepy it is not to be emulated he does eventually calm down by the halfway point but it was after constant begging from bella it resulted in no deep lessons learned no apparent developing trust or respect for bella's position and no real redemption from ed he suffers no punishment no misfortune no karma and doesn't even get a meaningful apology this isn't ed seeing the error of his ways this is him giving up because he was sick of the badgering can i see jacob no can i see jacob no can i see jacob no can i see jacob can i see jacob no can i see jacob god fine yay ed doesn't apparently regret his actions he doesn't try to atone for the way he treated bella and he never really makes amends he just arbitrarily changes his mind at one point and that's pretty much the end of it and the book never goes into much detail about it it never treats edward like he was in the wrong or that he had anything to be sorry for though to be fair he never indicated he was doing anything right outside of some misguided must protect milady moment the consequences of ed's psychological abuse is given the same weight as eating the last brownie obnoxious but forgiven with a hug and if you thought that was bad wait until i get to jacob so ed and bella sit with some humans at school so they can blend in you may vaguely recognize bella's regular friends none of whom i can actually name from memory here's some homework for anyone still defending this series write an essay detailing the character differences between jessica and angela as well as their contributions to the plot the humans are discussing human things that bear absolutely no weight on the story in any conceivable fashion in this scene alone they're just discussing an upcoming valedictorian speech that you will forget by the time the speech is over let's see we got my fellow students right wow right we are the future anything is possible if you just believe you remember how they were only tangentially attached to the story a new moon like the friend who bella abandoned for a motorcycle ride or the third wheel who went to the movies with bella and jacob well now the friend game is even less important to the story they're in this scene a graduation scene and a party scene that's it for the whole movie and pretty much the book and sure the story's not about them it's perfectly fine that we don't get every detail about them we don't need to know why one was raised by their grandfather or why one was afraid of clowns on the third grade but you know what would be like the bare minimum they're freaking names the girls get name-dropped in the movie but the guys are forgotten about and let's not forget the myriad of other human friends bella has in the book most of whom just get mentioned and barely have any time to make an appearance i don't even know why they were included are they just there to make bella look like a regular teenager by proxy the closest contribution anyone from this group provides that i can actually list and this is me being very generous with terms is the valedictorian speech the one friend gets on stage and talks about how it's okay to make mistakes while there is a thematic connection to what's going through bella's mind worrying about becoming a vampire and leaving her parents and regular life behind neither the book nor the movie make any attempt to link it back to bella directly she doesn't look back at the speech and reflect on it she doesn't have an epiphany and during the scene she doesn't even seem to register it i've decided to throw a party so alice unilaterally decides to host a graduation party at the colon estate the very notion is so mystifying that it sends shock waves throughout the lunch table a party at your place i've never seen your house no one's ever seen their house well as long as it doesn't have a sex dungeon but while the humans are gushing over visiting the cullen's posh manor alice has another vision of the future but this ominous note is left out for now so we can jump to a scene that wasn't in the book i wonder what's wrong there's someone missing in seattle over a year ago charlie's done what he can riley's parents visit charlie asking for any updates on the case he was the kid whose attack opened the movie this scene wasn't in the book but it does condense a fair bit of nonsense every 50 pages or so meyer would drop this reminder about these unsolved murders happening in seattle she rarely added anything new with each reminder so these moments were all very repetitive whether it be charlie telling bella not to go to seattle because it isn't safe or bella reading an article in the newspaper topics like this can be repeated in stories but there has to be some new twist on it each time like uncovering some new secret or getting someone's personal take on the matter in fact the seattle killings were given such a backseat on the book that they came across more like a c plot that no one was paying attention to constantly saying people are dying in seattle isn't engaging it's rote repetition for people who can't stay focused while going through this trash oh yes and in a moment of wisely truncated screenwriting this scene also gives us two other elements the first is this line you know something about this we've been tracking the situation in seattle for a while unexplained disappearances killings if the situation gets any more conspicuous the volturia will step in the vampire mafia's main focus is keeping the world of vampires a secret from humans considering that these killings have been going on for months i'd say the vulture are doing a spectacularly terrible job the movie never details the death count but the book specifically states that these murders have been occurring for three months and have racked up 39 confirmed deaths it's in national headlines in fact all the victims have had multiple broken bones and were burned so badly that the only way to identify anyone was through dental records now we do learn later on that the volturi are involved so their absence is explained at least in the movie but this factoid is absent from the book and i'm assuming it's explained in breaking dawn still for the book to raise the question of why having the vampire mafia not intervened yet and not even try to answer it or give even the slightest cover story comes off as very sloppy writing meyer also screwed up in this description and set the stakes too high sure our vampire heroes can still reasonably take this thread on the way the book set it up but it feels like the rest of the country isn't reacting at all some of you may recall a few years back when the dc snipers were at large and the entire country was on alert i lived in the area they were driving around and they were on the news daily with less than one sixth the kill count the broken bones in immolation sound like some dangerous murder cult is on the rise how has this not resulted in the fbi swarming the city or the military hell i don't even understand the vatican sending a few representatives although using crucifixes would be an understandable response considering the perpetrators and if you'll forgive that massive tangent allow me to go on another massive tangent bella my parents wanted to remind you about the airline ticket you got for your birthday ed gets bella to visit her mom for the weekend down in florida and that scene was a screaming waste of time all it established was that bella's mom noticed how differently she acted around edward and how they complimented each other she of course noticed this because ed came to visit florida too pardon me sir but don't you glisten like a disco ball in the sunlight i mean that's not normally a problem as long as you stay out of one of the sunniest states in the country i honestly want to know how ed got away with this did he stay inside during all daytime hours did he strategically hop under cloud cover while they were out does sunscreen prevent glitter skin if you layer it on thick enough what is the answer and how did bella's mom not see his avoidant behavior as completely alarming then again it's florida slow tuesdays eat your headlines about a guy setting his hospital bed on fire to get the nurse's attention you don't even have to look that one up you know it's real but while the scene is a distraction in the movie it's even more meaningless in the book the entire visit to florida is such a non-event that it's told on a flashback as bella's headed back to washington on the return flight chapter 2 ends with ed breaking bella's truck so she can't see jacob and chapter 3 opens with bella on the plane home she flashes back to chatting with her mom and it only lasts for a single page which considering meyer's bloviated writing style should really tell you something this is an author who spent an entire page detailing every minute thought that went through bella's head when she saw laurent in new moon effectively killing all sense of pacing and leaving its violated corpse face down in an inner city gutter then again this is coming from a guy who so far spent more than 20 minutes complaining about an adaptation and hasn't even made it 15 minutes into the movie this is the rest of my script people we've got a ways to go [Music] you

Channel: KrimsonRogue

Views: 50,045

Rating: 4.9737201 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: q3u_huuX8oA

Length: 27min 18sec (1638 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 03 2021