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#23 - The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1
Bill Condon, 2011
A young woman gets married to her vampire sweetheart, but complications set in when she falls pregnant.
Breaking Dawn Part 1 seems like quite the odd film even by the already-bizarre standards of the Twilight franchise. It practically feels like an epilogue as it finally resolves the love triangle that drove the last two or three films by having human protagonist Bella (Kristen Stewart) marry her vampire boyfriend, Edward (Robert Pattinson), which understandably doesn't sit well with unfortunate werewolf Jacob (Taylor Lautner). What is especially unusual about this film is how little concern it shows for plot in general. The first half of the film is about Edward and Bella having their wedding and honeymoon, while the second half is about the problems caused by Bella falling pregnant. That really is all there is to the plot of this two-hour film. It doesn't have too much connection to the series' over-arching plot involving the encroaching vampire war save for a brief nightmare scene and a mid-credits scene, plus many of its scenes definitely feel like padding. Some of this padding works - I did get a few chuckles out of the intentionally comedic montage of wedding guests making inappropriate toasts - but not enough to stop it from being referred to as padding. The lack of plot provided by the first half of the film is arguably over-compensated for with the second half, where Bella becomes pregnant with a vampiric fetus that threatens to suck the life out of her in an extended bout of PG-13 body horror.
As if to compensate for how the series reaches a whole new level of ridiculousness when it comes to mixing dull romance with supernatural conflicts, the film actually attracts some relatively decent talent behind the camera. The most noticeable aspect involves the presence of Oscar-winning cinematographer Guillermo Navarro, who is at least able to infuse the film with some half-decent visuals from time to time. Oscar-winning writer-director Condon seems like he's been brought in to elevate material that needs to be handled with care so as to seem totally ludicrous, but even he can't salvage material that really does push the absurd extremes in which the Twilight series regularly finds itself. There's a lot going on here that you do have a bit of trouble believing made it into a commercially successful franchise film, but even the off-the-wall nature of many developments does not translate to remotely satisfying entertainment. The actors, well, they're still the same as always. As with the other sequels, there's some aspects that only just keep it from being irredeemable - however, this film's bizarre journey from sterile scenes of wedded bliss into one incredibly misguided tale of paranormal pregnancy simply causes too many problems in one way or another.
Bill Condon, 2011
A young woman gets married to her vampire sweetheart, but complications set in when she falls pregnant.
Breaking Dawn Part 1 seems like quite the odd film even by the already-bizarre standards of the Twilight franchise. It practically feels like an epilogue as it finally resolves the love triangle that drove the last two or three films by having human protagonist Bella (Kristen Stewart) marry her vampire boyfriend, Edward (Robert Pattinson), which understandably doesn't sit well with unfortunate werewolf Jacob (Taylor Lautner). What is especially unusual about this film is how little concern it shows for plot in general. The first half of the film is about Edward and Bella having their wedding and honeymoon, while the second half is about the problems caused by Bella falling pregnant. That really is all there is to the plot of this two-hour film. It doesn't have too much connection to the series' over-arching plot involving the encroaching vampire war save for a brief nightmare scene and a mid-credits scene, plus many of its scenes definitely feel like padding. Some of this padding works - I did get a few chuckles out of the intentionally comedic montage of wedding guests making inappropriate toasts - but not enough to stop it from being referred to as padding. The lack of plot provided by the first half of the film is arguably over-compensated for with the second half, where Bella becomes pregnant with a vampiric fetus that threatens to suck the life out of her in an extended bout of PG-13 body horror.
As if to compensate for how the series reaches a whole new level of ridiculousness when it comes to mixing dull romance with supernatural conflicts, the film actually attracts some relatively decent talent behind the camera. The most noticeable aspect involves the presence of Oscar-winning cinematographer Guillermo Navarro, who is at least able to infuse the film with some half-decent visuals from time to time. Oscar-winning writer-director Condon seems like he's been brought in to elevate material that needs to be handled with care so as to seem totally ludicrous, but even he can't salvage material that really does push the absurd extremes in which the Twilight series regularly finds itself. There's a lot going on here that you do have a bit of trouble believing made it into a commercially successful franchise film, but even the off-the-wall nature of many developments does not translate to remotely satisfying entertainment. The actors, well, they're still the same as always. As with the other sequels, there's some aspects that only just keep it from being irredeemable - however, this film's bizarre journey from sterile scenes of wedded bliss into one incredibly misguided tale of paranormal pregnancy simply causes too many problems in one way or another.