The price for surrendering your virginity is so high in “Twilight Saga: Eclipse” that even Edward Cullen, the proposed tool of surrender, balks at it. Like him, you would become one of the undead. This is a price that Bella Swan, the virtuous heroine, must be willing to pay. Apparently when you marry a vampire, even such a well-behaved one as Edward, he’s required to bite you.

This romantic dilemma is developed in “The Twilight Saga: Eclipse,” the third installment in this inexhaustible series, by adding a complication that has been building ever since the first. Jacob Black, the shape-shifting werewolf, is also in love with Bella (Kristin Stewart), and she perhaps with him. Jacob (Taylor Lautner) and his tribe are hot-blooded and never wear shirts, inspiring little coos and ripples of delight in the audience. Here is a fantasy to out-steam any romance novel: A sweet young girl is forced to choose between two improbably tall, dark and handsome men who brood and smolder and yearn for her.

Nothing is perfect. There is a problem. The flame-tressed vampire Victoria (Bryce Dallas Howard) has been active in Seattle initiating new vampires, or Newbies, who in their youth are ravenous for blood and would have superhuman strength, if they were human. Victoria wants to destroy Bella in revenge for the murder of her boyfriend James. Edward and Jacob both vow to protect the girl they love, and their fellow vampires and werewolves of course are prepared to fight to the death in this cause. This is true buddy love.

The movie contains violence and death, but not really very much. For most of its languorous running time, it listens to conversations between Bella and Edward, Bella and David, Edward and David, and Edward and Bella and David. This would play better if any of them were clever conversationalists, but their ideas are limited to simplistic renderings of their desires. To be sure, there is a valedictory address, reminding us that these kids have skipped school for three movies now. And Edward has a noble speech in which he tells Bella he doesn’t want to have sex with her until after they’re married. This is self-denial indeed for a 109-year-old vampire, who adds a piquant flavor to the category “confirmed bachelor.”

Of Taylor Lautner’s musculature, and particularly his abs, much has been written. Yes, he has a great build, but I remind you that an abdominal six-pack must be five seconds work for a shape-shifter. More impressive is the ability of both Edward and Jacob to regard Bella with penetrating gazes from ‘neath really dope eyebrows. When my eyebrows get like Edward’s, the barber trims them and never even asks me first.

There is a problem with the special effects. Many of the mountain ranges, which disappear into the far distance as increasingly pale peaks, look suspiciously like landscapes painted by that guy on TV who shows you how to paint stuff like that. The mountain forests and lakes are so pristine we should see Lewis and Clark just arriving. And the werewolves are inexplicable. They look snarly enough, have vicious fangs and are larger than healthy ponies, but when they fall upon Newbies they never quite seem to get the job done. One werewolf is nearly squeezed to death, and another, whose identity I will conceal, hears “he has broken bones on one whole side.” Luckily, repairing the damage is only a night’s work for Dr. Carlisle Cullen (Peter Facinelli). The problem with the effects is that the wolves don’t seem to have physical weight and presence.

Much leads up to a scene in a tent on a mountaintop in the midst of a howling blizzard, when Bella’s teeth start chattering. Obviously a job for the hot-blooded Jacob and not the cold-blooded Edward, and as Jacob embraces and warms her, he and Edward have a cloying cringe fest in which Edward admits that if Jacob were not a werewolf, he would probably like him, and then Jacob admits that if Edward were not a vampire — well, no, no, he couldn’t. Come on, big guy. The two of you are making eye contact. Edward’s been a confirmed bachelor for 109 years. Get in the brokeback spirit.

The audience watched this film with rapt attention. They obviously had a deep understanding of the story, which is just as well, because I doubt anyone not intimately familiar with the earlier installments could make head or tails of the opening scenes. The Twilight movies are chaste eroticism to fuel adolescent dreams, and are really about Bella being attracted and titillated and aroused and tempted up to the… very… brink!… of surrender, and then, well, no, no, she shouldn’t.

More articulate, more plot-driven than the previous segments, “The Twilight Saga: Eclipse,” the third film of Stephenie Meyer’s successful book series, is artistically the most interesting and engaging chapter thus far.

However, it also proves that the particular story and the dilemmas faced by the central characters are far more important than the specific director assigned to the project, though helmer David Slade should get some credit for the higher level of acting and better production values.

Relying on more action and events, and less mood and attitude, “Eclipse” is a revenge-driven romantic movie, which should please the fans of the books as well as the supporters of the first two movie chapters. Regardless of what kind of reviews it gets, the third installment should score big (perhaps the biggest) for its distributor, Summit Entertainment, which will open the picture on June 30, in the midst of the summer season. (The previous installments were released on Thanksgiving weekend, see below).

In less than five years, Phoenix housewife-writer Stephenie Meyer has become a worldwide publishing phenomenon. The translation rights for her four “Twilight” novels have been sold in nearly 50 countries and 100 million copies have been sold worldwide. Her books have been on the bestseller list for over 142 weeks.

Two notches above the previous chapter, “New Moon,” which suffered from an indulgent, overly long narrative and a pretentiously gloomy mood, “Eclipse” is functionally directed by David Slade, who had previously made “30 Days of Night” and “Hard Candy.” Smartly, Slade pays greater attention than his two predecessors to storytelling and characterization, and as a result, his youthful cast, headed by Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner, comes across as more appealing than before.

Though giving this saga a different visual style from that of his predecessors (the first by Catherine Hardwick and the second by Chris Weitz), Slade shows than an intelligent director can shape the literary material into an engaging picture, given the broad base of the book series, and the sepcific dramatic elements at this phase of sprawling narrative.

By now the trio of characters are so established and the basic ingredients of the saga so familiar that it may be hard for any director to give the franchise a truly personal touch; I am not sure that the fans want it, either

In this tale, scripted by Melissa Rosenberg, the young, sexy, and endlessly confused Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) once again faces danger, albeit of a different kind. Seattle’s environment seems to be ravaged by a string of scary and unexplained mysterious killings, not to mention the quest for revenge by an uncontrollably malicious vampire.

But, like in the previous chapters, what count the most are matters of the heart. And, indeed, Bella is now forced to choose between her love for Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) and her friendship with Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner). Bella’s decision, which is depicted as the most fateful she has had to make, goes beyond selecting a personal favorite–it could ignite the long-lasting but dormant conflict between vampire and werewolf.

Time is not in Bella’s favor since her graduation is quickly approaching. As an outsider among her cohorts, she is preoccupied by different concerns. While most of her high school friends deal with their education–receiving college acceptances, sending graduation announcements–Bella is torn by another conflict. She is struggling with Edward’s compromise to marry him before he agrees to be the one to change her into a vampire. Bella knows that her decision will have consequences not only to herself, but also to her family and her friends.

“Eclipse” is enriched by the fact that Bella’s dilemma is placed in a broader, more dramatically menacing social context than the previous segments. Playing with the blind spots in the Cullen Family’s mystical gifts, an unexplained force has created a Newborn Army, made up of the newly turned vampires. The viciousness and uncontrollable blood lust of these bizarre creatures appear to be strongest in the first months of supernatural life.

There’s some question as to the origins of this specific war? Are the new vampires the product of Victoria (Bryce Dallas Howard) in her single-minded pursuit of vengeance, or the creation of Volturi, who wants to ensure that Bella follows through on her intention to become immortal?

In the movie’s second reel, the Newborn Army, led by the pawn Riley (Xavier Samuel), makes its way towards Forks and the Quileute land. As a result, the Cullens and the Wolf Pack are forced to put aside their instinctual conflict and form an alliance that would protect Bella and their community from a larger threat.

As they prepare for battle, Bella is eager to learn more about the secret history of the Quileute tribe, the growing Wolf Pack, and the origins of Jasper and Rosalie. She firmly believes that this knowledge will help her understand the bonds among the wolves and her love for Jacob Black, perhaps even contribute to the protection of those she loves.

Technically, too, production values and special effects of “Eclipse” are better than those of the former pictures, a joint function of the large budget as well as skills of director Slade in giving the sage a more pronounced (though still impersonal) visual style.

Take a long breath: There are two more movies to be seen in this franchise, based on Summit’s decision to split the fourth (and last book) into two pictures, perhaps following the model of the “Harry Potter” saga.

Team Edward or Team Jacob?

For anyone who has a ready answer to that question, the arrival of “The Twilight Saga: Eclipse” is as welcome as a northwestern breeze in the middle of a torrid heat wave. And they will most likely feel well rewarded by this respectful, unfussy installment of their beloved “Twilight” series, in which 17-year-old heroine Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) inches ever closer to becoming a vampire and joining her forbidden love, Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) forever.

Of course, there are complications, not least among them Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner), her childhood friend — oh, and part-time werewolf — who has a knack for showing up at inopportune moments. “Doesn’t he own a shirt?” Edward asks mockingly at one point. And it’s true, Jake and his posse give more ab action than the entire cast of “300″ (with better tattoos).

In “Eclipse,” Bella is also being pursued by the flame-haired Victoria (played by Bryce Dallas Howard in a role originated by the unceremoniously axed Rachelle Lefevre), who is busy amassing an army of “newborn” vampires to wreak vengeance on Bella and the whole Cullen clan.

But anyone interested in seeing “Eclipse” knows this already because, like “Harry Potter” and “The Lord of the Rings,” the “Twilight” movies are designed not as movies that work as cinematic objects themselves, but rather as illustrations of books whose fans approach them with the exegetical seriousness of sacred texts. As such, “Eclipse” succeeds with honor, if not panache, moving the story along with economy and focused momentum. As Catherine Hardwicke did in the first “Twilight,” director David Slade pays close attention to mood and atmosphere, a sensitivity that last year’s “New Moon” grievously lacked (somehow both frenetic and plodding, it wound up feeling like “The Da Vinci Code” mashed up with a feminine-hygiene commercial).

With all the talk about the Big Change to come after graduation, with Bella longing for physical intimacy with Edward and Edward valiantly resisting, the cardinal “Twilight” themes of longing, chastity and protection are stronger than ever. More deeply psychological than the first two, “Eclipse” goes further not just in advancing the story but also in illuminating the tension that Bella embodies — between autonomy and surrender — and clarifying her desire to become a bloodless, marmoreal being who has no human connections. With Edward, she explains at one point, she feels “stronger, more real, more myself.”

Still, for characters with such provocative complications, Bella and Edward are extraordinarily bland, especially channeled by way of Stewart and Pattinson’s slurry, reticent delivery and resistance to making eye contact. Barely recognizable beneath pale makeup and brown contacts that give her a dilated, doll-like stare, Stewart registers emotion mostly by looking as if she’s just eaten a bad sandwich. The film’s most animated scene isn’t between her and Pattinson, but between Pattinson and Lautner, as their characters discuss their rivalry with good-natured guy talk. “Face it, I’m hotter than you,” Jake says to the cold-blooded Edward.

Filmed mostly as a series of close-ups of people talking, with occasional flashbacks and blurry, nearly incoherent action scenes, “Eclipse” will look fine on an iPhone, which for its teenage audience is probably all to the good. If Slade doesn’t necessarily advance the medium with this installment, he nonetheless advances the franchise, with enough lucidity and skill that he’s persuaded at least one erstwhile agnostic to take a stand. Team Jacob, all the way. Shirts are overrated.

We all knew director David Slade could take on the violence.

Fresh off his vampire slaughterfest “30 Days of Night,” Slade joined the “Twilight” franchise to orchestrate a vampire war. And, yes, he plunges us into a gripping melee of superstrong beings. The squeamish should be glad that vampires don’t bleed when their heads and limbs are severed.

But who knew that Slade would prove just as adept at the smaller, quieter, more personal scenes?

It’s a good thing, too, because “Eclipse” is, arguably, the best of Stephenie Meyer’s four “Twilight” novels, with plot strands interwoven into quite the page-turner.

There’s the deepening romance between human Everygirl Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) and her vampire heartthrob, Edward Cullen (heartthrob Robert Pattinson). She wants to become a vampire, too, so they can spend a teenage eternity together, but he says she should remain human longer — at least until he can make an honest woman of her.

Marry? At her age? Ugh, she thinks, and presses her chaste, old-school hottie for more than PG-13 kisses.

In the two previous “Twilight” films, Bella and Edward seemed more uncomfortable, more distant, even, sorry Kristen Stewart, just plain bored. But this time they’re not only passionate, they’re actually enjoying each other’s company.

For Team Jacob, there’s the tension of the love triangle, thanks to Bella’s werewolf best friend, Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner, bare-chested for much of the movie, leading Edward to ask, “Doesn’t he own a shirt?”).

Jacob wants Bella all for himself, vampires be damned, and she’s tempted. He ignites jealousies that go beyond your basic competition over a girl; Bella is caught in a rivalry of sworn supernatural enemies.

Lautner, too, has progressed for this third installment, gritting his teeth, clenching his fists and convincing us of his pain as he pleads for Bella to choose him, not “the bloodsucker.”

And then there’s the specter of violent death, which the studio gleefully played up in the trailers (Romance? What romance?) in hopes of luring guys to the theater. News of a murder spree in nearby Seattle has pierced Bella’s peaceful town of Forks, Wash.

Gangs? A serial killer? Worse: an army of out-of-control “newborn” vampires, recently created by the vamp Victoria (Bryce Dallas Howard) to avenge the death of her lover, James. (How dare those Cullens kill James in the first movie just because he was trying to murder Bella!)

Can Edward and his family save Bella (again) as well as their own alabaster skins? Can they persuade the wary werewolves to become their allies and crush the invading horde?

Slade and screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg smartly go beyond the book, using scenes culled from Meyer’s new novella about a minor vampire character, “The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner,” to portray the growing menace, to make us feel the tension as we see what’s coming.

And yet the night before the enemy is due to arrive, Slade deftly switches tone. As Bella sleeps, hidden away in a tent in the mountains, Edward and Jacob have a believable heart-to-heart, showing grudging respect for each other — and nuanced feelings.

In short, the film’s arsenal of action and emotion makes “Eclipse” the best “Twilight” movie yet.

‘ECLIPSE’
★★★

Note to captains of motion-picture industry: Acquiring the rights to bestselling vampire novels can increase ROI and help your bottom line.

With the ink still damp on $709.7 million of worldwide box-office gross from “Twilight Saga: New Moon,” Summit Entertainment well debut part-three franchise “Twilight” installment “Eclipse” into 4,408 engagements Wednesday, many of them offering midnight engagements.

With that theater count including 193 IMAX locations, Summit Entertainment officials are moving “Twilight” out of November for the first time, giving the film access to its young-female core demographic at a time when its constituents are out of school.

Conservative forecasts predict the PG-13-rated film will gross $150 million domestically in its first six days of release, spanning through the holiday weekend. That would usurp the $142.8 million three-day opening for “New Moon” last November.

“Eclipse,” which returns the core cast of Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner, will also debut in 41 foreign territories this weekend.

“We hope our opening day will be bigger on opening day because our audience isn’t getting up for school,” noted Summit distribution chief Richie Fay.

With tracking surveys revealing the “definite interests” of young female demographics to be in the almost unheard of 40-percent-and-above range, “Eclipse” will try to improve on a male-demo turnout that tallied less than 20 percent of the total audience for “New Moon.”

“We think being in IMAX this time around will help with that,” Fay added. “IMAX has the tendency to broaden the audience.”

Oh, how I swooned when Edward pulled out the ring and asked Bella to be his lawful undead-ed wife!

And how I marveled, in the drippiest of the three “Twilight” pictures so far, at how Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson have begun to murmur in precisely the same cadences, which is to say, with no cadence at all!

Warning: You surely cannot trust this review of “The Twilight Saga: Eclipse.” I am unreliable, unrepresentative and unrepentant regarding the first two “Twilight”s — both of which I liked, especially compared to the other abstinence-only vampire/werewolf/teen romance franchises out there.

Already, “Eclipse” has garnered notices praising it as the best and most action-packed of the three. Which I don’t understand. For me it’s the most ponderous and most sloppily directed, and by far the most deadening when the dramatic necessity known as “talking” must be confronted, in between battles.

Director David Slade composes every shot for maximum readability on a BlackBerry. HUGE, woozy, hand-held close-ups. Some moviegoers get dizzy watching a “Bourne” film; I get dizzy watching Slade’s technique, which isn’t technique at all: It’s just any old shot at all, sometimes “verite” (i.e., shaky-cam), sometimes not.

“Eclipse” finds the human Bella (Stewart) inching closer to her decision to marry Sir Fwoopy Hair (Pattinson) and become a vampire, thus breaking the werewolf heart of Jacob (Taylor Lautner), the most famous resident of Camp Shirtless. The wolves and the vamps must broker their differences to take on the bloodthirsty vampiric “newborns,” slowly making their way from Seattle down to the town of Fork, where Bella’s police chief father (Billy Burke) is taking, like, forever to solve the unsolved murders.

More happens in “Eclipse” than in the previous “Twilight” zone, “New Moon,” and yet it’s duller. The people will come no matter what, make no mistake. Even if nobody made a third “Twilight” film a collective imagining of the thing, involving the most rabid five percent of the worldwide fan base, would still gross $500 million. (The first “Twilight,” directed by Catherine Hardwicke,” made $408 million; the second, directed by Chris Weitz, made $709 million.)

Slade may throw lots at the camera, but he paces everything like molasses running uphill. (His earlier films include “Hard Candy,” well-acted garbage in a confined space, and “30 Days of Night,” which proved that he can a make a movie with vampires in it, if not a good vampire movie.) Lots of folks barely got through “New Moon” alive, with all its molto elegiaco brooding. However self-serious, like the first “Twilight” it offered a sustained mood and some considered filmmaking.

Here, less. The characters have grown more naïve and stilted and sluggish. The music does not help. The first two outings were scored by Carter Burwell and Alexandre Desplat, respectively — two of the most atmospherically persuasive composers in the business. The new score, by the ordinarily talented Howard Shore, is gunk.

Now and then a performer or two grabs your interest. Batting first for the Volturi, Dakota Fanning makes most of the other young pups on screen look pretty unimposing. The violence carries more blunt impact than it did in the earlier films. But you cannot tell me this is a livelier film than the first two. It merely has more characters, more competing interests, more necks snapped. The fourth and fifth “Twilight” features are to be directed by Bill Condon, who has done everything from “Gods and Monsters” to “Kinsey” to “Dreamgirls.” That sounds more like it. “Eclipse” gets the job done, the job being the on-screen delivery of adapter Melissa Rosenberg’s compressed verison of the Stephenie Meyer novel. But that’s all it does.

2 stars

I was one of the residents of “tent city” for those three and a half days at LA Live. Anyway, my Rob encounter was pretty EPIC! You see this is my third Twilight premiere and although I’ve always had the opportunity to briefly speak to him behind the barriers on the red carpet and to also get an autograph I never got the chance to take a picture with him so I was determined to get one this year. Well to make a long story short, it finally happened and it couldn’t have been a better experience. As soon as Rob made it to my area across from the press he started signing autographs immediately in true Rob form. When he finally was in front of me I told him that I’d been to the previous two premieres and had never gotten a picture with him and proceeded to ask him if I could. He looks at me and smiles and says “You do look familiar, I remember you.” I tell you even if it was a lie, I don’t care. Robert Pattinson said he remembered me! How freaking awesome is that? After that I told him that I watch all his movies even the ones hardly no one watches like The Haunted Airman (when I get nervous I babble). He just laughed and asked me if I liked it in his very proper British accent. Of course, I said yes but the whole interaction at that point was just unbelievable and just plain cool! My friends tell me I chatted him up even a little longer but to be honest with you a lot of it was a blur as he dazzled me yet again!

The Twilight Saga comes close to that sweet spot between swooning silliness and special effects slaughter with Eclipse, the third film in the series.

Director David Slade (30 Days of Night, Hard Candy) doesn’t grasp teens in heat the way Catherine Hardwicke did in that overwrought, hormonal first film. He seriously soft-peddles the violence (little blood). But he delivers a lighter, more watchable fantasy about young love between a young blood and an old old-fashioned vampire.

Edward (Robert Pattinson) is determined to marry Bella (Kristen Stewart) and Bella is determined to bed Edward after this, their senior year at Forks High. “Change me,” she pleads. “Not yet” he teases. It’s the most Mormon of the Stephenie Meyer adaptations thus far.

Jacob (Taylor Lautner) is growing more canine and more cocky, despite Bella’s rebuffs. Her dad is looking for a little “separation” between his daughter and her hot-and-heavy/cold and undead love. And Edward is preparing the girl for life after her conversion — her “last Christmas together” with family, and “last visit to mom in Florida” are on his list.

But there’s a threat in nearby Seattle. Vampires are run riot, an army being recruited by the mysterious and vengeful Victoria, played with fleeting fury by an otherworldly Bryce Dallas Howard. She has big plans for Bella and her beau.

It’s a jokey, self-aware movie, with members of that Harem of Hairdressers, the Cullens, joking about throwing a party because “How many times are you going to graduate from high school?”

Bella hangs around Jacob’s pack — “I know, I smell like a dog.” It takes thirty minutes for werewolf Jacob to go topless — “Doesn’t he own a shirt?”

Slade masks the special effects, which he uses sparingly. State of the art of not, a digital dog is still a digital dog.

Touching flashbacks tell us the history of the Native American wolf packs, and of how a couple of the Cullens came to be vampires.

But despite moments of poetry in fields of purple wildflowers (purple is the color of this Twilight, after the amber of New Moon and the blue of Twilight), there’s not much heat between the leads. They’ve settled in as old marrieds and are frankly a pretty blase pair. We still don’t feel any conflict in Bella over which lover to choose.

The dullness of the performances (one-note Dakota Fanning returns) really stands out when somebody like Howard, or Up in the Air’s Anna Kendrick (as the class valedictorian) turn up and liven up heir scenes.

But it’s a breezy two hours — too chatty and too long – sure to please the fans and less likely the non-converted. Whoever finishes off this saga, they’d be wise to go to follow Slade’s road map. He has an idea of where that sweet spot is.

The Twilight Saga: Eclipse

Cast: Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner, Bryce Dallas Howard, Ashley Greene, Jackson Rathbone

Director: David Slade

Running time: 2 hours, 4 minutes

Industry Rating: PG-13 for intense sequences of action and violence, and some sensuality.