The Thing about the Twilight Series...

OK, first things first, full disclosure is only fair:

1 - I have read the entire Twilight series (twice)
2 - Eclipse was my favourite book in the series
3 - I am resoundingly on Team Jacob
4 - I don't consider myself my a "Twi-hard"
5 - I planned to write a movie review for Eclipse but it became this commentary on the overall series instead and what the movies could have been.

Eclipse is a mediocre movie and a fantastic Twilight film. The best way to understand this distinction is to understand the books which contain the same inherent problem as their feature film offspring: they are not stand-alone stories.

The truth, and perhaps the driving force of the tween/34teen obsession, is that ALL FOUR BOOKS comprise ONE story. The elements of storytelling: plot, character, conflict, setting/atmosphere and style only make sense when the entire series is read and assessed as a whole. Within themselves each book is not a story and because of this fact each movie based on an individual book fails to satisfy as a cinematic story.

To illustrate:
The Twilight series adaptations are often (controversially) compared to the film versions of the Harry Potter series with the HP entries consistently being voted superior for their storytelling and ability to engage a non-reader audience. But the HP films are provided with self-contained stories (adventures) in the source material. Even though an overriding evil is present throughout the books, each novel has its own clear tale to tell and own specific conflict to resolve which translates to a more compelling film in a direct book-to-screen way. Another example would be the Chronicles of Narnia which contain setting and character linkages but each book is a distinct adventure. The Twilight series does not function this way.

The Twilight-verse is built on a story that flows through four novels with the ultimate problem being developed along the way. Thus, the plot, the characters, the conflict do not advance all that much within one book but are quite satisfying across the entire quadrilogy. A better comparison of the how the Twilight books work - and how the movie versions should have been contructed - is to look at the Lord of the Rings series. (OK - Nobody kill me for this comparison. I recognize the difference in calibre but elementally both series are very similar.)

LotR is physically structured into 3 books but the actual story spans across them all with smaller narrative tales and character reveals embedded within them. The sub-threats in the LotR story are all tied to the larger context of the main story through character choices and/or plot developments. The division of this epic tale into the physical books is somewhat thematic but largely practical.

The same is true for the Twilight series which is why the stand-alone films built directly (painstakingly so!) upon a specific book have failed to impress. In the end, these adaptations are only a fraction of a story, that, in the case of the second film (New Moon) is flat without its bookend narratives to support it. Eclipse has shown to satisfy film audiences more because the actual book has the most traditional and complete story structure but it still requires an understanding of the Twilight universe to be compelling.

Perhaps, if the producers of the Twilight films had some foresight (vision? inspiration? artistic intent?) that could have taken a note from the Lord of the Rings production and fashioned the Twilight films in a similar fashion. Realizing that the core of the audience would be highly aware of the ENTIRE series and ravenous for visual details, they could have played with the overall series story to make better narratives for the cinema.

For example, LotR moved the battle with Shelob from the physical book two into the third movie making the cinema story-telling more balanced without omitting a main story point from the source material. This process of crafting contained movies from the full series could have allowed for character flashbacks earlier in the series instead of following Bella's book path of introductions and a new audience would have gotten character depth and fans would have gotten more character coverage overall. The LotR approach would also have worked to bring the themes of the books into greater focus rather than the emphasis on plot tasks the audience is handed out now. Of couse this only applies in hindsight and the first film was optioned and produced while the series was still a cult, rather than worldwide, phenomenon and so I can only lament at the missed opportunity.

I suppose this rambling is said to give pause to the wealth of critics who have derided the books, the films and the fans for the Twilight-mania. True, Stephanie Meyer is not a goddess fo prose. But, her writing has an addictive quality that invites you to follow along. For those readers who make it past the chaste christian messaging the books offer an intriguing tale of loss of innocence and rise in personal power at a time in life when everything feels like the end of the world and asks: so what if it really is forever?

Coming back to the films, I think it is time to stop judging them as original artistic works that require some cinematic merit. I think I have established above that the opportunity for that has been squandered. So accept the films as visual enactments of a fractured story built for fans who are carrying all the glue to put it together. If non-fans of the book never see the movies or gain entrance into the Twilight world, who cares? There are obviously enough fans around the world to give the franchise a positive return on investment so just let them have it.

As such, the only true challenges for the movies are:
1 - did the actors give justice to the characters?
2 - were all the key moments played out?
Finally, Eclipse has managed to deliver on both of these details which is why it is a perfect Twilight film.