Last night was the release of Eclipse, the third movie in the Twilight franchise. Theaters were packed; Team Edward/Jacob loyalties ran high; anticipatory squeals filled the air.

The movie that unfolded wasn’t worth any of it.

This has gone beyond cinematic “worth” in the context of inscrutable teen tastes, or a shift in the zeitgeist, or any of the other trends that set their intended audience alight while mystifying everyone outside their demographic. This is about a two-hour movie that has to pull its bookend voiceover into the film to explain plot points it never shows, as the camera pans over a lengthy establishing shot of a forest.

…More than once.

The trend is distinct. Twilight will never be mistaken for a classic (it’s a decent teen flick and a terrible vampire movie), but for all its flaws it’s actually a movie; it has a cinematic vocabulary and a story with a beginning, middle, and end. New Moon was less coherent (though mercifully less blue), more a collection of filmed scenes from the book than a movie in its own right, and it killed time between halfhearted dialogue and CGI fight scenes by blasting its soundtrack as loudly as possible. But Eclipse, which has arguably the most movie-friendly source material of all four books, somehow manages to be the least cohesive, most awkwardly-assembled installment yet.

Why the decline?

First, to better understand the downward slide this franchise has taken, know that a character who has been speaking a regionless accent for two and a half films has a flashback to his time in the Confederate army, and carries the Texas drawl forward with him for the rest of the movie. This is the kind of decision which several people have to sign off on. It is the kind of decision which requires on-set maintenance. Eclipse is the kind of movie in which this decision makes it to the final cut.

With that general quality control in mind, let’s look at some likely factors for the slide.

The first and foremost reasoning is that truly spectacular adaptations of bad literature are rare, and so the movies can only be expected to be as good as the source material. That actually gets the movies a pass on nearly everything (the vacuous and off-putting Bella from the films still somehow manages to top the version in the books). This helps explain why Twilight worked where it did, since it had the initial tension between its romantic leads. It also explains a lot of the problems with New Moon; when your primary romantic lead drops off the scene for 400 pages and your secondary lead had less than a dozen lines in the last movie, good luck carrying that narrative tension. (Also, here is a vampire bureaucracy. You’re welcome.)

However, of all four movies, Eclipse is working with something closest to a real plot: the vengeful Victoria creates an army of newborn vampires (better, stronger, faster than they were before!) to pick off the Cullens; the overseeing Volturi are forced to get involved, which puts human Bella in danger; the werewolf pack and the Cullens face off; and Jacob and Edward both make their claims on Bella’s heart as the final battle barrels down on them.

And yet, with all this cross-antagonism and potential intrigue, the movie flounders as soon as Edward and Bella appear onscreen, and makes little attempt to carry any further tension. (There are several lengthy scenes of characters talking about how they will eventually have to make a decision. Adventure!)

Eclipse does have its almost-accidental moment of real fun, when a grinning Jasper leads a werewolf training session on how to beat the crap out of a vampire, and uses various family members as crash test dummies to demonstrate techniques. Like Twilight’s vampire baseball, or New Moon’s werewolf pursuit of Victoria, the scene transcends the plodding plot and becomes, for a moment, a movie about the thrill of being supernatural. (And, like the scenes in its predecessors, that moment does not last long.)

Those oddly-synchronous moments aside, the disparate list of directors who have helmed these outings are part of the quality problem. Even in the Harry Potter films, which have each made an attempt to be a standalone and engaging piece of cinema, the final product varies wildly by director, and that was with a list of directors who were picked with apparent deliberation, after the scope of the phenomenon was known.

Catherine Hardwicke probably remains the best choice that could have been made for Twilight. Having already made a claustrophobic teen movie or two, she knew her material, and at the time of filming the book had not quite caught fire; everyone involved was ostensibly making a cult movie based on a YA book. (We all know how that turned out.) Chris Weitz, director of the floptacular Golden Compass, was reportedly brought in at the last minute after Hardwicke and Summit couldn’t agree on a production schedule for New Moon, which might help explain the slapdash effects. But David Slade is the man behind the intense 30 Days of Night and the even more intense Hard Candy; with that resume it seems bizarre that we ended up with a movie as milquetoast as Eclipse.

But the most likely answer to the series’ decline, and a sad truth in any case, is that it no longer matters to anyone involved how bad the movies are. The core audience is so wide and so devoted that questions of quality simply don’t apply. If you are seeing a Twilight movie in all sincerity, then you want to see a list of your favorite scenes brought to life on the screen, and the franchise’s only goal now is to provide them. Those who come looking for craftsmanship, or even coherence, will starve.

The good news is that if you are seeing a Twilight movie to mock it, you’ll feast every time.

[This piece originally appeared on Tor.com]

On the heels of Warner Brothers’ gothic take on Little Red Riding Hood, Paramount has landed a dark fairy tale of its own. It’s pushing Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters into production, with a projected release in 2011. Producer Adam McKay promises “a steampunk vibe mixed with a little bit of a goth edge and hyper-cartoon violence.”

A dark steampunk retelling of a classic fairy tale? What could go wrong?

In completely unrelated news, McKay also revealed to MTV that producers have approached members of the cast of the Twilight films about starring.

Under the cut, some wild speculation. (The nice thing about a cast of three hundred people under 25 means you can get a pretty decent betting pool going if you put your mind to it.)

The film, co-written and set to be directed by Tommy Wirkola (lighthearted Nazi-zombie flick Dead Snow), seems like the sort of high-concept vehicle that could support an under-the-radar cast, like Kick-Ass (mentioned frequently in the interview by a clearly-jazzed McKay). On the other hand, show me something that wouldn’t benefit from the built-in Twilight fandom and I will pass out from shock, so there’s sound logic behind courting your Cullens of choice.

The question is: which ones?

The franchise’s two most bankable stars—Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson—have been scrabbling for artsy period pieces and gritty indie dramas just to escape typecasting, which they will have to continue to do for the next two hundred years before people stop referring to them as Bella and Edward, so the chances of them being up for a stunt-heavy fairy-tale witchfest together are slim.

More attainably, Jackson Rathbone seems to be the cast’s dark horse in terms of fan appeal, and will probably gather more fans after The Last Airbender is released. Bonus: his slate hasn’t quite filled up for the year, so they might actually be able to snag him. Double bonus: by then, he should be plenty used to the stunts.

For Gretel, it seems like a no-contest for Dakota Fanning—and it might not even be a lost cause. (Hey, she did Push.) If she turns it down, though, I’d say the next best thing would be Rachelle Lefevre, who was unceremoniously dumped from Eclipse. She has more screen presence than most of the Backup Cullens, and at least she doesn’t have the Twilight scheduling worries any more.

Though it sounds like Hansel and Gretel has its sights set on the biggest stars it can get. Says McKay, “It’s such a great script that I have a feeling people are going to be dying to play roles in it. Also, the witches are awesome in it. Nasty, mean witches, and we’ll get some great actresses for them as well.” (Finally, the actresses over thirty will have something to do!)

We’ll be keeping tabs on this one as it goes into production, since it would be great to have a steampunk fable that doesn’t end up like The Brothers Grimm. And if you can’t wait for a dark-fairy-tale fix, SyFy’s version of Hansel and Gretel is due in just a few months, which should be plenty to whet your appetite.

[This piece originally appeared at Tor.com.]

Little Red Riding Hood, the original story about a girl and a wolf meeting cute, is getting a new, romantic retelling from Warner Brothers. If you think that this is not an attempt to use its metaphorical teeth to take a bite-related pun out of Twilight’s success, then you have never seen a movie before.

Naturally, anything as phenomenally popular as Twilight is going to spawn a subgenre; since Twilight can basically print its own money by now, there’s no point in straying too far from the proven concept. Warner Brothers has even hired Twilight’s Catherine Hardwicke herself to direct, which is such a genius move I can hardly believe it. (Summit released her from her contract before filming began on New Moon, citing scheduling difficulties, a move that, given fan reception of New Moon, might have been a mistake.) Of all the big-and small-screen Twilight spinoffs that have been put into production, scoring Hardwicke might be the single best move any of them has made.

They’ve kept up the good work by casting Amanda Seyfried as the young lady in the red hood. This is a bonus for two reasons: firstly, she’s a much better actress than Kristen Stewart (who I am hoping will pleasantly surprise us all in The Runaways); secondly, she has a pretty big resume that mixes indie projects (Veronica Mars, Big Love) with blockbuster cred (Dear John, the execrable Mamma Mia!). This box-office track record both neatly maximizes the target audience and gives her a buffer against typecasting.

The story itself has the same potential any fairy tale has, and the same pitfalls. Writer David Johnson is coming off the heels of last year’s other young-girls-are-secretly-terrifying thriller, Orphan, which is good or bad news depending on how much you believe the camp in Orphan was intentional.

(A brief tangent about adapting this particular tale. Orphan’s Esther seems like a prototype of the Riding Hood Warner Brothers is going for, an unsettling and sexualized young woman; unfortunately for Johnson, “unsettling and sexualized” is a nutshell description of Angela Carter’s The Company of Wolves, a previous (excellent) retelling of Red Riding Hood that’s going to be tough to top. If it’s a modern spin, things will be easier for him; he’s been beaten to the punch by Hard Candy, which is about as dark as it gets, but is not a genre flick; plus, Hard Candy is the least romantic movie ever made, so whatever romance Johnson can manage will have room to breathe. Okay, time in!)

We’re still awaiting casting news of any human or beastly love interests; I’m guessing two, one of each, and neither old enough to rent a car, just because there’s going to be a lot more love triangle and a lot less psychological horror if Warner Brothers is going for the audience as directly as appearances would suggest.

This is clearly a cut above the upcoming SyFy disasters, but for now, all this news has done is make me want to go home and pull out my DVD of In the Company of Wolves.

[this piece originally appeared on Tor.com.]

Okay, I had so many issues with this movie I cannot even begin. Luckily, this covers most of them. The line report, movie notes, and me freaking out, below the cuts!

Please note: in the interest of thoroughness, this post is epically long. My bad.

The line was smaller than last year (because we went to a smaller theatre), and we stood calmly in the back-and-forth of velvet ropes. For an hour and a half. (Hint: after an hour and a half, no line is calm.)

At 11:55, the theatre door opened and people streamed out. One of them was carrying a life-size Jacob cutout, which she had to hold over her head as she stepped over the ropes to the exit, because people kept reaching out to touch it. She totally beaned at least four people on her way out. When someone asked, politely, “Where did you get that?” she grinned and smarmed, “Early screening. Invitation only,” and swanned down the escalator.

At the realization that the theatre had scheduled an advance screening that didn’t let out until five minutes before their intended screening, the volume level rose sharply.

When, ten minutes later, the theatre doors opened again, there was a stampede.

Women leapt over the velvet ropes, elbowing one another out of the way. Screams erupted as people got smacked. Sharp shouts of “Hey! HEY!” came from people near the front of the line, who were trying not to get trampled by the wave of people. Someone tripped, and was tripped over. Someone screamed, “Watch my poster!”

It was over in maybe twenty seconds, but holy shit, you guys, those fans are NOT KIDDING.

And then it was time for the movie.

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There’s a moment early in New Moon where Edward walks up to Bella in painfully-extended slow motion for their morning “No, I love you more”s. Proto-werewolf Jacob Black materializes to wish Bella a happy birthday. As Bella and Jacob talk, Edward stands a few feet away, glowering; when Bella hugs Jacob goodbye, Jacob makes a face at Edward over Bella’s utterly oblivious head, as music pounds behind them all.

This pretty much sets the tone for New Moon, a sequel to last year’s angsty steamroller, Twilight. Twilight was unevenly acted, awkwardly constructed, and so blue-tinted it might have been filmed through a bottle of Windex.

New Moon is worse.

Part of this disaster, admittedly, is not the fault of the filmmakers. The pushcart plot that teetered along carefully in the Twilight novel begins to wobble off the rails almost immediately in New Moon, as the series removes the pivotal Cullens from Forks, introduces a werewolf pack, retcons a powerful coven of vampires who live in Italy (come for the pasta, stay…for eternity, muahahaha!), and pulls two of Twilight’s feral vampires back into the mix.

Even with all Twilight’s flaws (and oh, they were legion), Catherine Hardwicke did manage to catch the kernel of the story—the teenage obsession with something better, more devoted than what life usually provides—and build a film that didn’t exceed its scope. In Hardwicke’s hands, the story was about a girl who falls in love with the Best High School Boy Ever, with some bad vampires handwaved into the last twenty minutes just to coast through a conflict on the way out.

New Moon’s kernel is the story of a girl whose entire life revolves around having a boy in it, and when the one she loves skips town, she takes up with the one she knows is waiting in the wings, until she can convince the other one to reappear. It’s a pretty tough sell, so I can understand where director Chris Weitz tried to up the Epic Storytelling ante in an attempt to give the movie some scope. However, if you’re going to do that, you should be good at it, and the last epic Weitz made was The Golden Compass. (Awkwaaaard.)

Weitz peppers the film with dream sequences that look like perfume-ad parodies; he blasts the soundtrack under dull shots to try to establish mood; he paints his leading man chalk-white only to the jaw, then gives him a ghostly apparition that looks like a Scooby-Doo villain; he creates werewolves whose close-ups are expressive but who move like the Heat Miser. (As if to distract from their wolf forms, he makes sure each pack member has a limitless supply of cutoff jeans – and no shirts. Werewolf packs don’t give a crap about your fast-food guidelines, okay, McDonald’s?)

Once, by accident, Weitz stumbles on a cinematic sequence, in which vampire baddie Victoria gets chased through the forest by the pack of werewolves. The scene has an otherworldly quality that suggests the true scope of this conflict. Luckily, that never goes anywhere, so we’re in no danger of sitting through a good film.

Weitz’s birthday-party-magician efforts to impress are palpable; however, it takes nothing away from the essential repulsiveness of the three characters at its center. Bella gets dumped by Edward (for her own safety, naturally), and spends thirty minutes grieving via night fits normally seen in three-year-olds. Edward’s spirit appears at random intervals to scold her like she actually is one. Jacob wants her to be his girlfriend—except it’s too dangerous—except she’d better not go back to Edward Cullen or else. Thank goodness her vampire BFF Alice shows up to bring Bella back to poor Edward before Bella has to stand up for herself!

Sadly, that’s not even an exaggeration; the underlying misogyny of the first movie has dropped all pretense, and is backpedaling to 1550 full speed ahead. Bella is a cipher, defined entirely by whichever male character is currently trying to dictate her behavior. And it doesn’t stop there! Of the two female characters introduced in the film, one is vampire Jane, a baby-faced Volturi enforcer, and the only character who calls its leader “Master.” The other is Emily, girlfriend of werewolf-pack leader Sam, who bears a faceful of scars from a time she made Sam angry and he turned into a werewolf and attacked her. The anecdote is told with sympathy—for Sam, whose guilt is presented as the tragedy of the incident. (I don’t know what to tell you; I just report the news.)

There are some bright spots in the form of supporting characters like snarky Jessica, disgusted with Bella, and goofy Mike, mocked at movie night when he can’t handle excessive violence and gore (like a real man should!). Meanwhile, Michael Sheen (an excellent actor who has a bad habit of saying yes to anyone who hands him a check) swans through his scenes as vampire leader Aro with the finger-licking delight of a Tim Curry University alumnus who’s confident no one will hold this film against him. Normally he would be wrong; however, when the three leads deliver performances so stilted they’d get you kicked out of a high school play, Sheen’s gleeful hamminess is a welcome relief.

New Moon, an uneasy balance between small-scale love story and chapter of a larger vampire/werewolf arc, handles neither well; the good news is, it ends up the funniest movie of the year. Weitz, you’ve succeeded at last!

[This post originally appeared at Tor.com]