Fine, it might not perhaps be the most linguistically correct thing to have two colons in one title, but you can blame those pretentious money-hoarding halfwits at summit entertainment who seem to think that giving a film title the prefix "The _____ Saga" will automatically give it an air of class. Or perhaps I should be blaming Stephanie Meyer, who infected us with this slow, laborious and oppressively boring series in the first place. It is thanks to this woman that there now exists four films telling a story that, to be quite frank, could be fit into one, given the fact that nothing happens in the first three.
It wasn't until Eclipse's turn to defecate all over every vampire/werewolf book/film/game/song ever made that the film actually bothered to try developing some of its cast, and even then they only bothered with the two least interesting characters in the Cullen family. And now, we have Breaking Dawn, the film where conflict increases, Bella gets married, knocked up with a demon baby and almost killed, (and goes through all those life changing events wearing the exact same emotionless expression, mind you) Jacob finally imprints on someone, the werewolves fight the Cullens, and Bella is finally turned into a vampire (though the ramifications of this won't be known to those of us who haven't bothered to read the books for another year). Did I mention that this review contains spoilers?
Anyway, just how does Breaking Dawn do overall. Well... not ridiculously bad to be honest. The series faces all of the problems that held back the first three films, namely the relentless slow pace, the lack of acting talent on display from any of the three lead actors, nay, the entire cast (with the exception of Carlisle and Charlie), the lack of any sense of attachment to any of the three main characters (and again, most of the cast), and the fact that the Twilight story just doesn't translate well to the big screen in any way. All that said however, this film is easily the most tolerable of the series thus far. Maybe it's because my expectations were just so low going into the film, maybe because I've gotten used to how bad the main characters are that it doesn't cause the same scornfulness that the first three films will always have directed at them, I don't know, but I can say this at the very least: this was the first Twilight film that genuinely seemed to be trying to entertain me. Sure, there are a lot of times when it didn't succeed, but at least it was trying, at least it seemed to care whether or not I had a decent movie-going experience, and that is more than I can say for the first three, particularly New Moon. On the whole, the film probably gets more wrong than it does right, but it does do a few things right, again, more than I can say for the first three. For one it opens with the wedding, which was a good choice, get it out of the way early, and the wedding itsself moves just quickly enough to stop me getting too bored. The most interesting moments come from Charlie's mixed emotions towards his daughter getting married, and the guy playing Charlie (who's name tragically escapes me) does a more than competent job. Then there's the honeymoon, which goes on for far too long, and features what I dare say will probably be the biggest let down of the whole series for the Twilight faithful... the sex scene. Now, this scene has had a lot of build up to it, we've sat through six and a half hours worth of characters not doing anything remotely interesting, and what do we get? Ten seconds. Let me repeat that, although doing such a thing purely for effect purposes seems fairly redundant in a text-based medium, but I can't resist drama. Ten seconds. That's it. They're in bed, we see Edward breaking the headboard and that really is it. I know they're trying to keep the age rating down, but they really couldn't have done a little better with this scene, which in a better film, a better series, could have been a very emotional and intense moment. But then again, this is Twilight. Then we discover Bella is pregnant, which I suppose does create some dramatic tension, and the film handles it fairly well (with the exception of the ridiculously bad judgement on the part of the film makers who decide that Edwards housekeeper, only just introduced ten minutes beforehand, should be the first person they go to for advice, who then promptly exclaims "Death!" upon examination of Bella's belly). Then the film turns it's attention to without a doubt the worst part of the Twilight series: Jacob. Jacob hears that Bella is feeling unwell, heads round to the Cullen's house to see what's going down, tries to convince Bella to terminate the foetus (though Rosalie, probably the least likeable member of the Cullen household continues to aid the propagation of the film's pro-life theme and instead refers to it as a baby) and then some more very boring things happen, the second act for the most part is a total bore, let's just cut to the films climax. I will say that the labour scene is gut-wrenchingly brutal, and was winning points right up until the moment where Edward finally decides to turn Bella into a vampire... by injecting vampire venom into her chest... through a syringe. WHO'S IDEA WAS THAT?!?! I mean what the hell, why on earth is a syringe being used. How determined is this series to take all the vampirism out of being a vampire. They can go out in sunlight, crucifixes, holy water and stakes through the heart aren't mentioned at all, they don't sleep in coffins, and now they don't even bother biting their vampires to be, they just inject them like they are administering some sort of vampiric booster shot. God dammit. Jacob imprints on Bella and Edwards new offspring, another fairly uninteresting scene, the vampires and werewolves fight in a terribly done fight scene where it is an impossibility to tell who is winning, considering everyone is moving so fast and the camera is cutting more often than if David Fincher was shooting it, if he had found out the day before that his wife was having an affair, his whole cast had died, and the entire film had caught fire and been destroyed, the day before it was due to be released to expected critical and commercial acclaim. Where was I? Oh yes, Bella finally wakes up from her comatose state, her eyes are red, the credits roll, everyone's hap- wait, what? That's where your going to end your film. Just Bella waking up? Fine, fine, I'm beyond caring at this point, I know your trying to hook everyone in and make them pay you more money for seeing the final part of this drivel next november, but fuck you anyway.
On the whole, Breaking Dawn still isn't a good film, though it is a marked improvement on it's predecessors, and perhaps part two might finally give us a Twilight film that I can say with honesty was actually good. For now, part one still suffers the same problems of it's predecessors, but this time there are some halfway good moments to accompany it. It's a shame the series has taken so long to start finding some quality, had it started on this note, then by this point, the series might actually be of some merit, instead of being what it will always be remembered as: a bleak chapter in the history of cinema that should be flayed, gutted, buried and forgotten about.
I'm typing this in a starbucks and my time is limited, so forgive me for not talking about the films second act, let me just summarise it here: BOOOOOOOOOOORING.
Good night, and good evening
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