At least things are a little more interesting for audience members who aren’t fixated on Stephanie Meyers turgid prose – mostly thanks for new director David Slade’s slick direction. The Seattle set opening is grim and dark and drenched in rain, setting things up nicely for what is easily the most attractive and ferocious film in the series.

Sadly, no amount of well presented action scenes can disguise the fact that Eclipse is desperately short on story. The entire movie is a long winded excuse to manufacture a fight between vampires and werewolves in which none of the principal characters are in danger. Along the way, Bella makes gooey eyes at two supernatural creatures who really should kill her for being such a tease and jarringly re-cast Victoria (Bryce Dallas-Howard, formerly Rachelle Lefevre) flits around rather ineffectively.
At least we get some backstory this time as a random sampling of the Cullen brood delve into their tortured histories – almost making you wish that we could see their more mature stories on screen rather than this basic teenage fantasy. Leads Pattinson and Stewart are thankfully slightly less awkward and now you that when vampires get hit really hard they turn into glitter.

EXTRAS: There’s a lively commentary from overly giggly Stewart and Pattinson with another from author Meyer and producer Wyck Godfrey. You’ll also find an exhaustive 90 minute documentary with some candid conversations and access. There’s 10 minutes of deleted and extended scenes with optional commentary, music videos and a photo gallery. And, for the truly machoistic, there’s a ‘jump to...’ feature which compiles every scene with Edward and Jacob – the first runs a staggering 46 minutes while the second lasts just 30.