The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Part 1

My next two reviews are both on movies that are harsh and in your face. Breaking Dawn Part 1 puts everything right in front of you no matter what the scene is about, and it isn’t afraid. With the “Twilight” series books so popular among all age groups and facets of life, there were some very hard to imagine and grotesque scenes in the book that to put on screen made them even worse. This blogger was not prepared for the birthing scene – I forgot out painful and bloody it was. Bella deteriorating over time was for lack of a better word grotesque and very hard to watch. The scene where she breaks her back and her knees right before the baby comes was the worst part. I had to look away. But this book isn’t all peachy keen – it is dark and this moment in her life was the darkest it had ever been. It makes sense that the moment right before she is to become this amazing, beautiful being would be dark and mad and gross.

The progress was a little slow in places but if you had read the book, the first half of the book was slow. It had to be to set everything in motion for the second half of the book. The last 20-30 minutes of the movie were fast paced however. The audience went from a fight between the wolves and vampires to the birthing scene and Bella’s climax of her deterioration to then a very serene montage of everyone in the house watching over Bella as she transforms into a vampire calmly.

The acting hasn’t been anything spectacular in any of the movies but it wasn’t supposed to be. What these movies have done has jump started the careers of Robert Pattinson and Kristin Stewart in ways that they hadn’t dreamed. The Hunger Games should do the same for Jennifer Lawrence and Josh Hutcherson in the next few weeks. But I am getting off topic. Even though the acting wasn’t anything Oscar worthy, the one thing that was surprising was how effortless the acting was for everyone in the movie. After watching the first one again, I appreciated just how easy it was for the actors to get into the characters and shoot off the lines as if they were saying them every day. Maybe it had something to do with that this is the 4^th movie and they have had a few years to practice getting into the character they are playing but who knows.

I caught the second half of Twilight, the first in the saga series on TV last night and I was amazed. I never noticed just how careful Edward was with Bella in the first movie. When you compare it to Breaking Dawn Part 1, Edward was 100% overprotective of Bella. He was so worried about hurting her that he couldn’t see anything else. In this movie, Edward is much more relaxed and laid back. He knows that he can control himself with her – her blood does not make him crave her. He is able to bite her in various places of her body to get the venom working to save her life without lingering for more. In Twilight, be was barely able to stop sucking the venom out of Bella after James bit her at the end.

Edward wasn’t the only one who had a dramatic change. Bella was scared, paranoid, anxious, and freaked out when she first met Edward Cullen. She was always worried that Edward would decide to run away and leave her behind. She pleaded with him in the hospital after her accident to stay with her and never leave. In Breaking Dawn, she is cool, collected, excited and happy that she finally has Edward all to herself for the rest of her life. There is no more worrying about if he will leave because she knows that he won’t. Over the last 3 movies/books, Edward has come to realize that no matter how far apart they are they will always come back together. NO matter how much distance he tries to put between them, he will always come back to her and she to him. There is no denying that and no stopping that. So they both decide to live their lives and be happy. And then the unexpected pregnancy happens and everything goes out the window.

One of the things that happens when a book is split into two movies is the audience feels a sense of incompleteness. For the readers, they know there is more to the story after Bella is turned and for the movie goers they know that there is more suspense waiting for them after hearing the exchange from the Volturi. Everyone wants more – and they want it now. But this is where the business side of Hollywood kicks in. The producers and distributors knew that by making the movies a full year apart, the craving for the final installment would increase over the 12-month period making the last movie a huge success. Everyone wants their Twilight fix. And in November they will come running to get it.