You knew this day would come some day. They finally made a decent Twilight movie.
Among my many, many complaints with this series has been that the protagonist--a teenage girl named Bella--is useless, pathetic, and completely reliant on her boyfriends to the point that she would kill herself if they broke up. She does everything her vampire lover--Edward--says, and she never contradicts his creepy behavior like stealing her car's engine spark so she won't see other guys or sneaking into her room at night and watching her sleep. Worse, she obsesses over the guys she likes relentlessly and spent the last three films either trying to bed them or crying that they weren't talking to her.
Well, it has taken four movies, but Bella finally grows up. The beginning of Breaking Dawn 1 sees Bella finally marrying Edward. (One comment on that: If I get married I am not going to notify my parents by mailing them a wedding invitation, especially if I still live with them). The beginning of the movie is a touching and suspenseful look at the nervousness and excitement surrounding such an important life decision; the camera isn't just showing the drama, it is showing the little details of everyone concerned. It is very romantic, but also very real.
After the wedding, Bella and Edward go on a honeymoon to Rio and consummate their relationship while she is still human. The scene is sensual, but it isn't the gratuitous kiddy-porn New Moon and Eclipse were. Also commendable is the decision to all but ignore the sparkling vampire detail, which was interesting in the book but done so terribly in the movies even some Twi-hards apologized. Then we start to see Edward and Bella settle into marital life, and we finally see them squabbling and showing their eccentricities and being human. Then we finally get to the point of the story--Bella is pregnant with a half vampire child. It is sucking the life out of her and could very well be an antichrist. The werewolves (if you were't aware, there are werewolves in this series) want to destroy it and Edward wants Bella to get an abortion. She refuses. It is her baby and she is willing to die for it. Even Edward's threats to kill himself are useless.
Here we finally see a more realistic look at love. At what a marriage should be about, and what sacrifices couples need to make. This is what fantasy should be used to show--real life issues that we can all relate to.
The director is Bill Condon, who got an Oscar for writing (but not directing) Chicago. Oddly, the only credited writer (not counting the fact it is based on a book by The Host author Stephanie Meyers) is Melissa Rosenberg, who has written every Twilight movie. It is interesting to see them hire Condon but not have him edit the script to fit his own vision seeing as he is primarily a writer, but it totally works (he did direct a few films including Dreamgirls). The movie has a unique visual style that still fits with the first three's, and the camera lingers on every detail and entraps the viewers in the story. The team behind Eclipse did a better job with the battle sequences, but the fight scenes in this, while shorter and choppier, are still above average. Cinematographer Guillermo Navarro, who did a bunch of Guillermo Del Toro's films including Pan's Labyrinth, is great, as usual. I completely agree with the Art Director's Guild to nominate this film for their annual award. It might even get an Oscar nod in this category.
Kristin Stewart does her weird mouth-breathing thing, but is still good (she has never been the problem in the series). Taylor Lautner (as Jacob, the werewolf who loves Bella), seems a little over his head in this darker installment--he isn't serious enough. As for Robert Pattinson (who plays Edward), after his decent job in Remember Me I am not yet going to say he is a bad actor, but I will say he is awful in this (as he has been in every Twilight movie). His emotions are depressed, petulant, and comatose. Maybe it is his attempts to hide his British accent. At least the make-up job is better than before. The worst acting, though, comes from a thirty second clip halfway through the end credits featuring the Volturi (vampire royalty), all of whom are so laughably awful it is hard to believe they aren't trying to be bad. They have got to have given the worst performance of the year, and they are in the movie for literally thirty seconds! This atrociousness is balanced out by Billy Burke as Bella's father, who nearly brought me to tears. Some day someone should give him a good role.
In the beginning of this review I called this movie "decent." In fact, loathe as I am to admit it, I think it's really pretty awesome!
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