In case you haven’t heard the news, the director of “Eclipse” has been officially chosen. And my own personal first thoughts when I heard the news? Well, I have like a million of them.
I’ve interviewed David Slade before, and he’s a very smart, charismatic guy who harnesses some immense filmmaking tools. That said, I definitely thought “30 Days of Night” was a disappointment. It had a lot of fatal flaws in it, usually whenever the blood would stop flowing and it was time for us to actually start caring about the characters. “Hard Candy” also flirted with moments of brilliance, but I still feel like Slade’s best work is ahead of him.
What I am beginning to enjoy, however, is Summit’s decision to hire a different director for each film. Which is surprising, because I was definitely hoping that Catherine Hardwicke would oversee the entire series after the first “Twilight” became such a big hit. But if you’re a movie buff (and not just a Twilighter first and foremost), this is developing into a very interesting cinematic experiment.
And whereas Weitz seems likely to try and play things closer to Hardwicke’s blueprint, Slade is the kind of proudly defiant filmmaker who will want to shake things up a bit. For better or worse, the end result is going to be a trilogy of films filtered through three very different lenses.
Will Slade depict his vampires more violently than Stephenie Meyer imagined in the novels? Will he give such thespian-minded stars as Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart the opportunity to dig deeper into the sadistic nature of Edward and Bella’s romance – or will his thirst for boy-friendly action push the film too far in the other direction? Most importantly: Does this mean that Josh Hartnett is gonna play Seth Clearwater?
All these questions, and many more, remain to be answered in the months to come.
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