The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part One kind of broke my spirit

Twilight Tuesdays is a weekly column in August 2024 where Lisa Laman reviews and breaks down the three Twilight movies she's never seen before Eclipse and the two Breaking Dawn installments. For this second entry, it's time to go to the first-half of the franchise's conclusion...

Twilight’s grand finale begins with a reflection on mortality. Voice-over narration from protagonist Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) comments on how “childhood is not from birth to a certain age…childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies.” It’s a quite suggesting that nobody knows everything about this terrifying world. No matter how old we get, the naivete of our youth endures, at least on certain matters. We cannot escape this facet of reality, just like we cannot evade the inevitability of death or all relationships coming to an end. Or perhaps it’s an assemblage of words meant to look profound on a Tumblr post at two in the morning. Maybe it’s both.

At least there are potentially weightier meanings one can read into that opening narration. Unfortunately, little else in The Twilight Saga – Breaking Dawn: Part One is complex or interesting enough to warrant multiple interpretations. This is a stagnant motion picture where the cynicism of the entire Twilight enterprise is glaringly apparent. Flashes of camp, like that baseball sequence, that occasionally crept into prior installments are abandoned. In their place are creative choices that only instill devastating disappointment.

Bella (Kristen Stewart) and Edward (Robert Pattinson) are getting married! That’s the big event kicking off Breaking Dawn: Part One. Watching this event unfold upended a perception I’d always carried through seeing this matrimonial event in ads and trailers. I thought Edward and Bella said "I do" in some lavish foreign locale. While they go to South America for their honeymoon, the pair utter their vows in the backyard of the Cullen’s house. No clue where I got that erroneous perception of this wedding’s geography.

Once this lavish event wraps up, Bella and Edward bone for the first time, which impregnates the former character. Her fetus is growing at an accelerated rate and giving birth to a vampire baby may kill Bella! This sudden development angers Jacob (Taylor Lautner) and especially his larger werewolf tribe. A half-vampire half-human creature would inevitably cause a lot of harm in the world. Wolfpack leader Sam (Chaske Spencer) wants to eradicate the newborn (and its host) promptly. Amidst all this chaos, one question lingered in my brain…why would you sideline Bella Swan like Breaking Dawn – Part One does?

This whole franchise supposedly functions as teenage girl wish-fulfillment material. It’s a story of an everyday person who catches the fancy of not just a cute boy. He's also an immortal cute boy who is a vampire. That emphasis on “Bella is just like you!” is why the best sequence of the entire movie is a montage of Bella hyping herself up before sleeping with Edward. She shaves her legs, inhales and exhales into the mirror, reassuring herself that she can do this. It’s a glimpse into Bella’s vulnerability that I found oddly touching. Here’s a reminder that, amidst the CG werewolves and vampires, this story is ultimately about a human being. She's vulnerable, nervous, and any other emotion you can think of. Combining a discernible human teenager with a heightened idealistic romantic scenario makes total sense for wish-fulfillment cinema aimed at younger audiences.

Naturally, Melissa Rosenberg’s screenplay (adapted from Meyer’s novel and likely inheriting its problem) sidelines such a deeply important character. Once Bella gets preggers, she’s confined to a couch looking sickly. Bella Swan has never been a profoundly deep character. However, the other three Twilight movies firmly existed from her point of view. Existing as a human in the middle of so many fantastical elements lent Bella a mildly engaging underdog quality. Removing her from the equation and shifting the action to Jacob and Edward removes any traces of this saga's dramatic momentum. The human element is gone. Even the wish-fulfillment fantasy material has vanished once the pregnancy plotline kicks in.

It doesn’t help that Bella’s entire plotline revolving around keep a fetus that could kill her reeks of pro-life garbage. Of course this is the kind of woman-fronted movie Hollywood would put into thousands of screens. Motion pictures about women of color as activists, flawed human beings, or any other more interesting roles languish in obscurity or never get made at all. Ladies can’t dominate the screen unless they reinforce the status quo that women only exist to breed children, even if they sacrifice themselves in the process. It’s disturbing conservatism masquerading as the faintest “girlboss” progressivism.

This whole plot point also pivots Twilight away from being wish-fulfillment fantasy for teens into a wish-fulfillment fantasy for parents. Amusingly chaste material has always seeped into the conceptually trashy Twilight world (like Edward’s insistence on waiting until marriage before he and Bella have sex). Breaking Dawn – Part One, meanwhile, posits ideas that would’ve fit right into country tunes like “Cleaning This Gun (Come on In Boy)”. Young women exist as objects to carry children. All other worth is defined in their relationship to men. Breaking Dawn – Part One reassures parents that abortions are never necessary, there will always be a man to protect your daughter, and that grandkids are inevitable.

What’s soothing for a very specific kind of mother runs afoul of Twilight’s ethos of working as teenage girl wish-fulfillment. It makes sense a market would exist for movies about two supernatural hunks fighting over a teenage girl audience surrogate. However, does that same market yearn to be sickly, nearing death on a couch, only marked as important because of their wombs? The icky subtext of prior Twilight movies bubbles to the surface in Breaking Dawn – Part One. Such an abrasive development leaves this entry highly lacking in fun.

Centering Bella’s Breaking Dawn- Part One’s storyline solely around her fetus isn’t just regressive, it’s also lazy storytelling. That’s the default storyline for most women in cinema! Give her something to do that’s as kooky as the strangest parts of Twilight’s lore! Another problem with putting Bella on a couch or bed nearly the whole runtime? That means much of the focus shifts to Jacob. Taylor Lautner’s performances didn’t get any better as this franchise went along. That’s a reality crystallized with Breaking Dawn - Part One’s emphasis on big emotional displays from this shirtless werewolf. He grunts, he wails, he makes agitated huffing sounds. Yet nothing Lautner does registers as emotionally engaging or even just campy.

He’s too broody and aloof in his performance to ever make Jacob remotely interesting. Pattinson chews his way through bombastic melodramatic moments while Stewart injects as much angst as she can into Bella’s words. Lautner, meanwhile, is a flat line. There's no commitment or boldness in his work, nor is there an engaging screen persona that can make him innately transfixing to watch. Lautner is also plagued by dialogue deliveries humorously reminiscent of how adult film star Steve Rambo would say certain phrases. Maybe the Twilight Saga should’ve left Lautner on that street corner where they found him. Alas, they did not. 

Breaking Dawn - Part One eventually sidelines interesting or amusing side figures like Alice (Ashley Greene) and Jessica (Anna Kendrick) to make this story all about male-identifying characters. What a frustrating narrative detour for this saga, especially since the man the script primarily focuses on is the one-note anger of Jacob. All the turmoil padding out the runtime also confusingly hinges on Sam. Though appearing in the last two installments, Sam left nowhere near enough of an impression to function as Breaking Dawn – Part One’s primary antagonist.

Director Bill Condon exacerbates this problem by culminating the Sam/Jacob storyline with a poorly edited and dimly-lit fight scene between digital vampires and CG werewolves. It’s not enough for Breaking Dawn - Part One to fail as a romantic melodrama or wish-fulfillment fantasy. The production’s third act even beats the DC Extended Universe movies to the punch with an uninvolving skirmish concerning a boring CG baddie. 

Also strangely distracting in this feature is what a step down its visuals are from its predecessor. This is clear right from the start when Bella is trying on potential heels with Alice. Immediately, the lighting in this scene is…off. The actors and backgrounds are familiar, but why is everyone so shiny? The lighting’s exceedingly brighter, which could signal the impending happy event of a wedding. However, that lighting style continues even as the story's mood turns darker. Surprisingly, this isn’t because of something simple like the saga shifting from shooting to digital between Eclipse and Breaking Dawn. This two-part finale was also shot on 35mm like its predecessors. The growing influence of digital cinematography is not to blame for this issue.

However, what did change was that Condon and company used a series of Arricam and Arriflex cameras on this feature. Eclipse, meanwhile, used Panavision cameras. That shift in cameras explains the discernibly different look of Breaking Dawn - Part One, though some visual shortcomings still confounded me. Why did certain characters, like Alice in that aforementioned shoes scene, look green-screened into clearly practical backgrounds? Breaking Dawn’s cinematography emphasizes massive gulfs between characters and their backdrops that are often distracting. This franchise has traded Eclipse’s overdose of cramped close-ups in favor of another distracting visual shortcoming!

Doing some research, one possible reason for these visual problems could be Breaking Dawn – Part One’s heavy emphasis on pronounced digital elements like CG accentuations to make Bella look pregnant. Digital trickery was also used to drastically alter lighting sources and erase Stewart's wrist-cast during the big wedding sequences. Maybe the rest of the movie experienced more digital touch-ups compared to New Moon and Eclipse? That way those CG elements didn’t stand out as much? Whatever the reason, Breaking Dawn – Part One looks a little less tangible than its predecessors. It’s another way the penultimate Twilight movie is a step down from its predecessor. 

Breaking Dawn - Part One is a wash as a movie, but there are a handful of elements worth commending. For one thing, this particular entry really leans on needle drops. That provides consistent amusing reminders that one is watching a discernibly 2011 movie. Bruno Mars, Christina Perri, Angus & Julia Stone, they're all here and Condon's directing often lets the tunes drive big emotional beats. Composer Carter Burwell (returning after doing the score for the inaugural Twilight movie) doesn’t deliver anything truly outstanding in his orchestral compositions. However, his score is still an agreeable aspect of the proceedings.

For me, one of the most entertaining parts of Breaking Dawn – Part One was a montage during the big wedding of various people in Bella and Edward’s wedding giving speeches to the happy couple. Father of the bride Charlie (Billy Burke) dryly emphasizes how he could ruin Edward’s life while Jessica amusingly mourns that Edward didn’t notice her in some top-notch comedic line deliveries from Anna Kendrick, among other testimonies. Even this set piece is undermined by Condon's unwillingness to let the camera linger solely on the speakers. Constantly cutting to reaction shots from the crowd undercuts the comedic momentum of this sequence. Just cut from one speaker to the next, do not let the viewer's gaze leave this awkwardness! Still, it’s an amusing enough scene even with its overcompensating editing.

I also enjoyed the visuals in the first half of the end credits, which alternate between black, white, and red backdrops for text. It looked like an end credits scheme to a more anarchic and aggressive movie. I just liked those vibes especially since they contrasted so heavily with the preceding movie!

All the creative problems in the world couldn't stop The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part One from making an extreme chunk of change at the box office. Domestically, this feature grossed $281.2 million. That sum cemented how consistent the Twilight movies were in their box office hauls. All four Twilight sequels had box office grosses in the $281-300 million range. These movies didn't attract moviegoers of all ages or backgrounds, but the die-hard fans would show up no matter what. It’s staggering to consider any other modern franchise with such reliable box office hauls. Just look at how the final two Hunger Game movies made significantly less than their predecessors. Even the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Star Wars saga produce gigantic money-losers like The Marvels and Solo: A Star Wars Story.

With this entry, The Twilight Saga was no longer the fresh kid on the block. It’s the inevitable outcome for any movie saga that gets past three installments, particularly when you breeze through that number after just three years. Plus, four months after its November 2011 debut, The Hunger Games would premiere. Katniss Everdeen would have no problem snatching the YA-movie crown from Edward and Bella. However, just because the November 2008-June 2010 peak popularity of the franchise had faded didn’t mean Breaking Dawn – Part One failed at the box office. Heck, its North American haul was consistent with New Moon and Eclipse’s domestic grosses. If a movie as bad as Breaking Dawn – Part One couldn’t dilute audience interest in this franchise, then Twilight, much like the naivete of childhood, was bound to go on forever…or at least for one more movie.