Review: The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1 (2011)
Oh Twilight Saga, you have returned to form. Sweet, enjoyably bad form.
While I found Eclipse to be a great disappointment, it was a relief to watch Breaking Dawn: Part One, which was delightfully entertaining and fascinating in the way only Twilight can be. So, let's dive into it.
In this fourth instalment of the Twilight Saga film series, Bella (Kirsten Stewart) and Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) get married, and everyone is apparently completely fine with it, apart from Jacob (played by Taylor Lautner), who is appalled by it because of his love for Bella, and the fact that she will be turned into a vampire like Edward. Worse still, he realises Bella plans to have sex with Edward during their honeymoon, which could kill her. Jacob's objections aside, Bella and Edward go on their honeymoon, where Bella gets pregnant. Unfortunately, the fetus is slowly killing her, and with the wolves now rising up against the vampire Cullen family, is there any hope for Bella and Edward having a future together?
Unlike the previous films, Breaking Dawn: Part One is based on the first half of a book in this series, and not a whole one. As someone who has not read the books, it is my personal belief that this film didn't need to exist. I am quite certain that the one Breaking Dawn book could have been made into one film. I feel like the majority of the plot with Bella and Edward's wedding and the pregnancy could have been covered in the first forty-five minutes of a whole film, compared with whatever Breaking Dawn: Part 2 has to offer, with the wolves subplot being better spread out between the two.
The first half of this film is Edward and Bella having fun being newlyweds, and the second half of this film is Bella dying because of her intense monster pregnancy, and Edward resenting her for being pregnant (by him!) and potentially leaving him alone by dying, which he firmly believes is her choice.
However, this film brings me makes me question of how Bella was able to get pregnant at all. Yes, I know that when a 108 year old vampire man loves a teenage girl etc, but when vampires have died in this series, they're revealed to be broken like china. So how does Edward have anything flowing through him to impregnate someone with? According to Stephanie Meyer, he has venom (the same venom that can turn someone into a vampire) that also works as his sperm, but I don't know how that works to make a baby exactly? It just doesn't seem very well thought out, amongst other things in this series.
If you read that link above to Meyer's explanation of vampire insemination and pregnancy, she states that female vampires can’t get pregnant because their bodies are no longer able to change. That’s fine, (and suits Rosalie’s character arc well) but it doesn’t make sense within the Twilight films for one very noticeable reason: their hair. The hairstyles on these characters change throughout the series –notably on Esme and Alice- which doesn’t work in terms of logic. Using Alice as an example, her hair gets shorter with every film. If she’s chosen to cut it, doesn’t that mean it won’t be able to grow back? And how do they get away with dying their hair? Shouldn’t the rules of hair be closer to that in Interview with the Vampire? In that film, there is a little girl vampire called Claudia, who angrily cuts off her hair one day, only for it to grow back and be the way it was at once. This works because this is how Claudia's hair was when she was transformed, which is part of her curse to stay one age and look the same for the rest of her immortal life. I suppose this train of thought doesn’t necessarily target this film in in the series in particular, but it’s something to think about.
I want to commend the film for doing something completely unexpected in the chick flick genre: the two main characters have a wedding at the start of the film and nothing goes wrong. Apart from Edward’s worry about Bella becoming a vampire, and her well-done nightmare sequence that portrays her fear about her first bloodthirst, there is no real drama here (Jacob tries, granted, but like I said before: no real drama here). It is a staple of the chick flick/chick lit genre to have an interrupted wedding, or a drama surrounding it, but here, the characters actually get married with ease and the rest of the film allows us to witness them getting on with their lives as a united couple. That concept alone is actually rather refreshing. The following execution? Not so much.
These two go on their honeymoon, and that whole part of the film is rather boring. It is largely for this segment that I don’t think this book needed to be made into two films. We’re basically watching Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart have a holiday for about half an hour. They do have sex, which leaves Bella wounded. Edward is appalled with himself for this, and refuses to sleep with Bella again while she’s still human for her safety. I respected Edward for this, considering he essentially had Bella grinding on him and literally begging him for sex during this part of the film, which must have made things harder for him, except oh wait, something did get harder for him, because he caves in and has sex with her again. I wasn’t a fan of this, but sadly, it wasn’t a completely unexpected turnaround.
When Bella gets pregnant, Edward reminds us that he can be a completely awful person, seeming to blame Bella for it. It was a little bit funny when he decided to Google what his child could look like though, considering he's been around for over one hundred years. While I sympathised more with Bella than Edward in this situation, I found her a bit frustrating too. She seemed almost willing to die, when she and Edward should have worked together to learn how she could have stayed healthy during the pregnancy (of course the half-vampire fetus needed blood!). I was just wondering the whole time why Bella couldn’t be turned into a vampire so she would be strong enough to carry it (it is only now that I have done research that I’ve learnt what Meyer said about female vampires being infertile, but still, as a viewer this wasn’t made clear and should have been). The makeup on Bella for the scenes where she was supposed to look bad was really well done though, and the appearance of her weight loss was really quite jarring and almost upsetting to see at times.
The only character who I really liked during this pregnancy plot was Rosalie, played by Nikki Reed. She stepped up to help Bella when her own husband refused to, and she was ready to embrace the baby –whatever it was- when it came, because she it was the closest thing she would ever get to having her own child, something that she really wanted that was sadly taken away from her. I really liked her in this film, and looking back, she’s probably had one of the better character arcs in this series.
Think about it though. Both of them fell in love with their childhood female friend; both of them hate the guy she ended up with (mostly because she chose someone other than them); both of them fall out with and break the heart of the female friend because she didn't love them romantically; both of them were devastated when the female friend died; both of them resented the female friend's child because it outlived her, and was the living proof that she had loved someone other than him, and both of them grew to care for the child in question. Although in Jacob's case, he fell in love with the child, a literal baby.
What I’m trying to say is… Jacob Black is an awful person. He pestered Bella for the past two films and most of this one about her life choices because they don’t involve her being in love with him, only to claim her less-than-a-day-old daughter as his True Love. He’s seventeen. It’s a baby. What is wrong with this guy? I don’t care that he envisioned a grand ol’ life together with her when she’s legal, someone please remove his paws from the baby right now and take him away.
On the subject of the wolves, I have to talk about what is probably my favourite bad scene in the film, which is where the wolf pack has a heated conversation. This is the first time we have seen the wolves in one of these films where the actors playing the pack members have dubbed over their CGI wolf counterparts, so we can understand what they are saying. This isn't a bad idea, and the lead into it is good. We see the wolves running to their meet-up point, while we can hear their barks blending into agitated human voices that evoke the sound of excitable dogs. However, when they do finally come together and they started their conversation, we find that the voice acting in this scene is awful. For some reason, everyone seems to be saying their lines very loudly, in attempt to sound powerful, yet the emotion isn't there. Everyone has weird filters over their voices, and I don't know why: they sound more like robots than dogs, or indeed anything that can emote. Jacob's delivery, in a key point in the scene for him, particularly sounds a little off. Overall, I found the conversations between the dogs in Pixar's Up to be more realistic than what these wolves shared here. I mostly found the wolf subplot tiresome and dull, mostly because it felt rather pointless overall. I don’t care about any of those characters (Seth, played by BooBoo Stewart, is the only one I don’t mind so much) and I’m reluctant to see what this leads too.
This film also pulls a Marvel on us and brings in a mid-credits scene, which features the Volutri. I suppose they’re coming back then. I don’t have any feelings about these characters, which is sad, because I’m guessing I should. To me, it’s just Martin Sheen and a couple of other guys wearing red eye contacts and looking a bit pale though. Maybe they were more intimidating in the books?
I need to talk about the baby, Renesmee. Firstly, the name is awful. It’s a conscious mash up of Edward and Bella’s mother’s names, Renee and Esme. It’s a sweet idea I suppose, but neither of their mothers are openly around as much as their fathers are, and if you mashed Carlisle with Charlie, at least you could get Carlie (or Carly), an actual human name.
Ghastly name aside, I posted a link on this blog’s Facebook page a few days ago to a video about the original Renesmee that was going to be in the film, which was a puppet. The puppet was a creepy looking Chuckie type thing, with the only moving part of its face being the eyes. This creation was deemed unusable, as no one would believe Edward and Bella would create such a ghastly thing. However, they didn’t want to use a real baby, because apparently it wouldn’t be able to make the right facial expressions that were necessary for the character. So CGI was brought it.
Nikki Reed as Rosalie, holding the puppet Renesmee
The CGI Renesmee that the filmmakers chose for the end result
I don’t actually think the baby is as bad as people claim, but that doesn’t mean it’s good either. It just doesn't look natural. They really should have just used a real baby. I don’t think it’s the end of the world if she can’t smile yet. Also, how will the baby age if she’s half vampire?
Now it’s time for me to talk about the best character in this series, and the great injustice this film throws him. While my personal favourite character is Carlisle, I acknowledge that the overall best character in this series is Charlie Swan, Bella’s dad (played by Billy Burke). Poor Charlie deserved so much better. I would love to see these films from his point of view. Charlie’s just a simple man, trying to be a good dad to his estranged daughter and a good cop so the people in his hometown Forks can depend on him. His daughter starts fixating on this weird pale kid at her school who looks oddly older than her. Next thing Charlie knows, they’re dating. One day, she is horrible to him and yells that she's driven her away, just as he drove away her mother, his ex wife. Does Charlie get an apology for this? We never see it, so we can never be sure.
He wants to establish some boundaries, but just as he does, the weird pale kid dumps his daughter and she spirals into a terrible depression. He tries to be compassionate and help her, rushing to her aid each night as she lets out piercing screams that haunt him, as she sleeps. She won’t talk to him. All he can do is watch it happen, and try to help her move on when she’s ready. He encourages her to befriend Jacob, who he believes is a good kid, and he’s happy to see how good he is for her. But one day, they suddenly aren’t friends anymore and she’s back with the weird pale kid, who Charlie doesn’t like because his daughter doesn’t seem like she’s in love with him. Instead, it seems like she’s obsessed.
Bella and Charlie in Breaking Dawn: Part 1
The pale kid and daughter decide to marry and joke that telling Charlie will be the hardest part of it, but poor innocent Charlie actually stands by and lets them get married, although he's not entirely thrilled about it and makes this clear to Edward in his speech to them during their wedding.
However, when his daughter’s on her honeymoon, she’s becomes ill and stays that way for months at a time. She won’t let him see her, and they can only talk on the phone, where he knows she will keep secrets from him. So, poor Charlie – who by the way, watched a couple of friends die during these films, while also dealing with unsolved cases of missing children- is left alone, wondering and worrying about his weird daughter and her even weirder husband and in-laws. He doesn’t even get to know he's granddad. Surely he’s got to learn about the vampire thing in the next film?
Overall, this film was kind of boring, but I’m just grateful that the love triangle is now finally over. I enjoyed the wedding speeches scene, and a couple of unintended laughs that were delivered on the way. The first half of this film provided the light fluff that was very much needed after Eclipse, and the second half of the film offered some serious moments, a few well done (Bella's appearance during her pregnancy and the birth scene) and the others somewhat camp in their cheesiness (the wolf gathering scene). Aside from that, I think fans would have flocked to see a two and a half hour film, and this should have been squished down to fit into that with the rest of the Breaking Dawn book.
THE SCOREBOARD
Chick Flick Check List Elements: 1, 5, 7, 15, 21, 26, 32, 37, 42, 46*, 49, 52, 54, 57, 61, 64
Total: 16
Is this really a chick flick or will men like it too? Chick flick
Would I recommend this film? Yes, but only if you’re watching the whole series – apart from the first one, none of these work as a standalone.
Quote of the film: “Edward will be a good husband. I know this because I'm a cop. I know things… like how to hunt somebody to the ends of the earth… and I know how to use a gun.” – Charlie Swan
Film rating: 5/10
