Alright, I’m going to level with you all here – before this weekend I had never seen a Twilight movie. Somehow, despite the significant amount of time I spend in darkened theatres, this franchise just sort of slipped under my radar. It’s shocking, I know.
I thought about maybe taking a pass this week, waiting it out until I had something more up my alley to write about – after all, I’m well aware of how much these movies mean to their fan base, and it’s a fan base I don’t really want to get on the wrong side of – but for some reason it just didn’t seem right to skip this one. I’d like to consider myself a pro, and pros review everything, not just the movies they’re familiar with. It was time for me to earn my imaginary pay cheque.
So I did what any self-respecting journalist in my situation would do: I got a 15 year old girl to explain it all to me. She caught me up on the whole backstory – the Jacob/Edward situation, the different families, the politics of vampires and werewolves. And she didn’t just stop at the basics either. I could tell you where original author Stephenie Meyer was during the wedding sequence, the significance of Bella being covered in feathers, and just exactly how the screenwriter altered the book for the film’s ending. In just a single weekend I went from knowing nothing about the series to being completely immersed in its quirky little universe.
And to be honest I can see the appeal. Whether you love the books or hate them, Stephenie Meyer has created a world onto itself, and that’s something to be applauded. There are many very charming aspects of the Twilight universe and in particular Breaking Dawn Part 1; I would be lying if I said otherwise. The mythology is complex, and you can’t help but be a little drawn in by it.
But it’s charming in moderation. There are only so many times we need to watch as a brooding Robert Pattinson gives Kristen Stewart that look he gives her before we get the point that yes, he is most certainly in love with her. And the same goes for Bella’s constant need to be rescued. A lot of the time it feels like the sole purpose of the movie is to find new ways of putting her into danger, only so she can be rescued by one of her two suitors and they can duke it out for her affections. With story beats like that, the idea of a strong female lead in Twilight is more fantasy than the film itself.
It’s a romance movie though, and obviously much of that is to be expected. I think maybe my biggest criticism of Breaking Dawn isn’t that it tends to recycle the formula, but that it takes itself so seriously for so much of its running time. If it would just lighten up every once in a while and embrace the fact that, at times, its story can be quite silly, it would go a long way towards silencing many of its critics. There was a great scene early on in the movie where many of Edward and Bella’s wedding guests gave toasts that ended up being quite funny. Where did that levity go at the end?
Part of the problem may lie in the fact that this is only one half of the Breaking Dawn book. For those of you familiar with the source material you’ll notice that part of the ending was modified to give the film a more natural conclusion. And because much of Part 1 seemed to cover the setup of the book, it tends to move rather slowly at times with a noticeable lack of action. It seems that most of the real fighting has been reserved for Part 2.
But something tells me nothing I say is going to do much to sway fans and non-fans alike. Whatever your expectations are going into this movie, they’re likely to be validated by the end of it. Breaking Dawn Part 1 isn’t trying to win any new fans for the series, only satisfy those who have been there the whole time. In the end it accomplishes exactly what it set out to do.
