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Movie Review: The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part I

Seth Paul

Well, at least the Twilight series now seems fully aware of its real purpose: the first scene of the new film The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1 is Jacob (Taylor Lautner) running out of his house and, in full view of the camera, ripping off his shirt to screams of delight from the young women in the theater. Make no mistake: no matter what I say about this film, by the time I finish writing this review, the main fan base will have already made the movie a bazillion dollars and will be waiting breathlessly for the next installment. And while it may have its minor good points, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part I won’t make the uninitiated any more inclined to watch it.

Anyway, for anyone who doesn’t know, Team Edward has essentially won: Bella (Kristen Stewart) and Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) get married, and while away on an island off Rio de Janeiro they…um, consummate their marriage as only a human and a vampire can (i.e., in a PG-13 film, mostly off screen with lots of furniture getting destroyed in the process). However, Edward still is waiting to turn her into a vampire until they get home…which turns out to be, on the surface, a bad idea. Even though it’s supposed to be impossible, Bella becomes pregnant, and the vampire/human baby grows to term within a matter of weeks. Deciding to keep the baby even if it kills her in the process, the couple returns to the relative safety of the Cullen household, where Jacob wrestles between his duty to destroy the child abomination and his love for Bella.

For a 90-minute film, this would actually be an exciting, taut, and suspenseful entry into the series. However, the movie is nearly two hours, and that extra 30-45 minutes is comprised of people sitting around and saying things. Not important things, just things. And therein lies not only the biggest problem with this movie, but the whole series; a romantic relationship between a young girl and two competing supernatural beings is made boring because nobody does or says anything worth watching or hearing. The wedding and honeymoon take up about half of the film’s running time, and yet despite a handful of some admittedly funny moments, most of this time is devoted to scenes that lead nowhere. Perhaps these scenes are interesting in the book (I’ve never read any of them), but here they just sort of…exist. And for people so desperately in love with each other, Edward and Bella never say anything romantic or memorable; they just sort of make vague proclamations of undying love for each other.

Even when things start getting more interesting, they still never go far enough. When we see a pack of the gigantic CG werewolves (which, while fake, do have good design work) talking about how they are going to deal with the Cullens once and for all, the scene ends after a few seconds, and we’re back to vague people talking about vague things. There is no clear arc or rising action; even the birth itself is fairly anti-climactic, as even when it’s over it still feels like nothing of importance has happened. And that’s really the failing…trying to steal thunder from Harry Potter and Kill Bill, the producers made a terrible decision in trying to bilk this series with a two-part finale. If they had chosen to excise material from this one, or just bite the bullet and make a single two and a half-hour movie, we would’ve gotten a product that is far superior and much more watchable.

But as I said earlier, even if they compressed the film, those who don’t like the earlier films won’t like this one much in the first place. Kristen Stewart plays Bella just as listless and empty-headed as ever…I wanted to say the character is less horrible in this one because she’s finally picked one of the boys over the other, but even in this movie she still taunts Jacob with “I love you so much” overtures…right in front of her husband, no less. Everyone else does the best with the sloppy material they’ve been handed (especially Michael Sheen in his quick cameo appearance, and acts with enough squealing delight to make The Rocky Horror Picture Show look tame in comparison), but it doesn’t change the fact that the material cannot be saved.

However, if you find yourself dragged along to this film unwillingly, take heart that there is enough unintentional comedy to make even the most boring stretches at least tolerable. Jacob’s epic stand-off against the pack leader is made into a laugh-riot thanks to a few choice camera angles and dialogue superimposed over wolf snarls, as is the completely unnecessary and awkward PG-13 skinny-dipping sequence during Bella and Edward’s honeymoon. Also of pure camp value is the fighting scene where the vampires and werewolves square-off for approximately 30 seconds for no good reason other than to show people throwing werewolves into trees at high velocity, and a moment near the ending involving Edward and Bella’s baby and a cartoon “Ding!” noise effect. Leave it to the Twilight series to turn what is supposed to be a truly epic and important moment into a gag Bugs Bunny would be proud of.

But, really, there’s almost no reason to write this review. Everyone who is a fan of the series is going to see it no matter how bad I say it is, and everyone else already knows they don’t want to see it anyway. But even if the Twilight films overall aren’t my cup of tea, the very idea that anyone could take vampires and werewolves fighting and make it overlong and boring shows that they could’ve taken steps to make the films remain true to their core and still manage to be watchable by most people. That after four films there has been no major improvement to the formula that started it all shows that they’re perfectly happy making a trashy, soap-operatic saga that will be largely ignored years from now solely because it’s a huge moneymaker right now. If that’s the case, I think Jacob said it best halfway through The Twilight Sage: Breaking Dawn – Part I: “I already know how this will end. I’m not going to stick around to see it.”

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Seth Paul

When not failing to write novels and screenplays, box-office guru Seth writes humorous comedy tracks for films under the name "The One Man Band" that can be found at Rifftrax.com. Although, he has recently succeeded in writing the novella "Jack Alan and the Case of the Not-Exactly Rocket Scientists," available as an eBook on Amazon. He is also the English voice of Zak in "Zak McKracken: Between Time and Space."
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