The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1

I am neither a Twilight fan or a Twilight detractor. This said, I am indifferent to the franchise. As far as the movies, I still think, coming from someone whose knowledge of the books only comes from my sister being a fan and me reading a chapter of one and putting it down, that the best is Eclipse(not saying much) and New Moon the worst. But that is not a consolation really. Breaking Dawn: Part 1 is not quite among the worst of the year and nowhere near among the worst ever, however it suffers from some major problems that I will get to later in the review.

So what was it that got me seeing Breaking Dawn: Part 1 in the first place? The answer was its director, Bill Condon. I am familiar with his previous films and find him a promising director and writer, finding his films well written, observed and acted. Gods and Monsters is amazing and one of my favourites, Kinsey was interesting and Dreamgirls elevated by the soundtrack and cast was quite decent. Did Condon do a good job directing? For me, I am not sure. I'd say of the four Twilight movies so far Breaking Dawn: Part 1 has the most cinematic feel to it, on the other hand there is not much here that made Condon's previous films so good and I'd go as far to say it is the film of his that engaged me the least.

Are there any redeeming qualities to this instalment? I think so actually. Although there are moments of sloppy editing, I did like the look of the film. At some points it was quite Gothic, and at others it had either an evergreen or autumnal feel to it. The scenery often does look stunning, the effects are okay I guess and the cinematography especially with the close-ups of the back of the wedding dress and the final shot is some of the best of the franchise in my opinion.I also liked Carter Burwell's score. I like Burwell a lot, his music has a hypnotic and quite hauntingly beautiful quality to it. For my tastes though some of the pop tunes are on the insipid side, however the score itself was pleasant with a lot of what I like about Burwell evident.

Much has been said about the sex scene. In all honesty I was expecting it to be of hilariously cheesy quality, but somehow Condon brought a little more subtlety than I was expecting. The last thirty minutes was perhaps the most exciting Breaking Dawn: Part 1 got, as some of does have purpose and intensity, which was something that the first half of the film did not have.There are also two good performances, Billy Burke and Michael Sheen, the latter being another point of interest. Burke as always is amusing with some of the better lines of the film(though is that saying much do you think?), while Sheen, ever the great actor, adopts a menace and magnetism as Aro without overdoing it too much. Ashley Greene is also quite good, if not great.

I have to say I still don't think much of the acting of the central trio. Kristen Stewart is much better than she is in New Moon, with much less of the moping and dead pauses, but some of her line delivery is still awkward and her facial expressions for my tastes are lifeless. It doesn't help though that Bella is a rather dull character.Robert Pattinson has more to do than he did in New Moon and is less hammy than in the first film(the looking into the camera moments brought moments of unintentional laughter when I first went to see Twilight when it came out). As a matter of fact this is perhaps his best performance of the series and he is certainly the best of the central trio, but like Stewart some of the line delivery could've been more inspired.

Taylor Lautner on the other hand is getting worse and worse. He is hunky to be sure, but does that alone make you a good actor? Not to me. I will give credit and say he is better than he was in this year's Abduction, where both the film and performance were awful, but the more dramatic moments from him felt forced and overplayed, and throughout there was a very stilted nature about him. A lot of the problem is to do with the writing. The dialogue in the Twilight franchise never was particularly good, saying this though in terms of written quality this is Twilight at its most banal, its most clunky and its most cheesy. The characters are clichéd and underdeveloped too, and at the end of the day you don't care for anybody. Oh, and the talking wolves were poorly done and unintentionally funny.

The story is very bland and unengaging, not to mention thin structurally and in content. The whole of the first half reads little more than ponderous melodrama. Was the wedding lavish? Yes it was. But it was also plodding and over-extended. The second half fares better, still with the clunky dialogue, uneven acting and cheesy, underdeveloped plot points and characterisations, but as I said the last thirty minutes or so serves as the highlight of the film. But for me what killed the film was the pace. Mind you, I have seen movies with slow pacing, but they are often paced deliberately and with strong meanings, great acting and dialogue and identifiable characters. With little of that here, Breaking Dawn: Part 1 not only is dull and plodding but also uninteresting and without bite.

Overall, despite my admiration for Condon and Sheen, this didn't work. The ending is highly suggestive of a continuation, which I understand is happening. If so, I do hope it will be better than this. 4/10 Bethany Cox

Roger Ebert, one of the most widely beloved film critics once had a quote about the infamous Larry Bishop gangster spoof Mad Dog Time. That quote went "''Mad Dog Time'' is the first movie I have seen that does not improve on the sight of a blank screen viewed for the same length of time." That's how I ultimately feel about The Twilight Saga Breaking Dawn Part 1. It is a terrible film that, despite its best efforts, turns into a big pile of nothingness. What did the filmmakers want to accomplish here? Well, there are a couple thing such as money, cabbage, and oh yeah, dough. This film was made on the assumption that millions of teenage girls are going to throw down their allowance to go see it. As I went to a public theater to see this and not an advanced screening, their assumptions was right. I was the only male in the theater. No boyfriends, husbands, males by themselves, ETC. May I also mention that there was a very limited range of females under 16 in the theater. Seriously, who thinks of this crap? This film can be summed up in a simple, short explanation-it's a soap opera made for young women instead of middle aged women. I'm not trying to sound sexist or derogatory but this is the way the world works..movies are made specifically for teenage girls to throw their allowance down. Unfortunately, this one, like most of them is petrifying to watch.

I like twilight. i wouldn't say i LOVE it, but i found the books to be amusing, warm and a good time waster. The movies seem to be more about capitalising on funds rather than delivering a decent plot.

i've never been a fan of Kristin Stewart (insipid droning teenager that she is in all of the movieS) but she actually appears to present somewhat of a decent acting skill in this movie, whereas cold, boring edward (who in the books was a heart-throb) is just as terribly pathetic as he was in the previous movies. The man that has stolen the show, taylor lautner, since he took his shirt off in the second movie was pushed into the background a little bit in this movie, which i think was the worst thing they could have done. but, in the same token, they had to do as its a love story between edward and bella, not bella and jacob. I'm just a little disappointed by the way they've dragged this on. but i was disappointed by the books towards the end too.

We took our whole office at the penrith professionals and there were mixed reviews. The oldies hated it, the middle agers (who knew the basic plot line of the movie) found it a nice romance but fairly boring and the young girls loved it for the sheer fact it was twilight.

I wouldn't see it again, thats for sure.

No matter what I or any one else say, there will be a lot of people who have already made up their minds on whether they are going to The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1 and the most positive or negative reviews will never change that. Opinions between Twi-hards and Twi-haters are extremely polarised, but it is my duty to give an honest opinion on the latest chapter of the saga.

It has finally happened. Edward (Robert Pattinson) and Bella (Kristen Stewart) have tied the knot and, despite some pre-wedding nerves, it seems like a success. The two lovers spend their honeymoon on a tropical island off the coast of Brazil and we get the moment we have all been waiting for: they finally have sex. But a shock is in store when Bella ends up pregnant (remember kids, always practise safe sex) and the human-vampire foetus is killing her from the inside. As the Cullens try to save Bella, the Quileute tribe set out to kill her and the child, believing it will be a threat and abomination. Jacob (Taylor Lautner) ends up being torn between his loyalty to the tribe, his hatred for Edward, and his love for Bella.

There is a new trend in Hollywood to split book adaptations into two parts. It made sense with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, because that was a long novel with a many elements that were interlinked and it needed to be told in two parts, but "Breaking Dawn Part 1" was trying to stretch the material to fit the allocated time. There are numerous montages, such as the honeymoon, which could have easily been shortened to make a single, stronger movie. The film had very little plot too; it's basically about a complicated pregnancy that just happened to feature vampires and werewolves.

There is a melodramatic tone throughout, amplified by the music, whether it was the piano-heavy soft moments, the epic score (often played over non-epic moments), or the emo rock songs. A little melodrama is fine, but it goes on for most of the movie, and when there is little hook of a story, it just becomes a drag. Even people who are fans to the series will admit that dialogue has never been its strong suit. Bill Condon attempts to make the sex scene and honeymoon to be tender, but it came off more sappy and overbearing.

"Part 1's" strength is that it is the best-acted of the series. Stewart certainly gives it a good go and Lautner gives what is a half-way decent performance. Pattinson was slumming it, but with some of the cheesy dialogue he has to say, even someone like Laurence Olivier would have struggled.

Condon does have a few moments of visual darkness, including the dream sequence in the beginning with its juxtaposition of bright white clothing and blood and Bella and Edward standing on top of a load of corpses. The birth scene was actually intense and gory. But these are counter-balanced with goofy moments, one of the most infamous being a psychic werewolf argument.

The whole wedding sequence and honeymoon plays like a young girl's fantasy, sort of idealistic. This is fine, but hardly dramatic and not likely to have wide appeal.

Previous "Twilight" movies have had some interesting side issues that could and should have been explored. This is not the case with "Part 1." There are no issues of a man resisting his urges and dark side, a young teen forced into being a vampire, an army of powerful new vampires being formed and the idea of there being a vampire council. There is nothing like that. The few themes there are include a look into Edward's past, a brief debate about abortion and the idea of imprinting, which is basically brainwashing. A better idea could be looking at somebody forcing someone else to love them. That would be a dark story.

"Breaking Dawn Part 1" is the weakest movie in the series I have seen so far and I speak as someone who is neutral to the overall experience.

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Victoria is dead, there is no longer any threat to Bella. So she and Edward get married, while on their honeymoon they do the dirty deed and oops, Bella gets pregnant. Vampire pregnant, which means the fetus is growing at 5 times the normal rate and is killing her from within. The wolf clan cannot have this, as it breaks their treaty somehow and they come to kill the baby. Now Jacob must team up with the people he hates, the Cullens, in order to protect Bella.

While this premise does sound interesting, it's a shame that the producers wanted to milk this poorly conceived franchise for every penny they can get. Instead of making one film, they split the story into two and Breaking Dawn Part 1 clearly suffers from over stuffing and filler. Nothing happens until the last twenty minutes of the film. We know they get married, we know they have sex and we know she gets pregnant. It takes way too long to get these plot points across. The wedding, the honeymoon and the pregnancy could have all happened in the first 30 minutes, but it's instead stretched to an obscene length.

Books have more room to breath. The world is created an the writer has hundreds of pages to tell their story. Films don't have this luxury, so when a film comes out based on a book, you need to chop out the stuff that's simply not needed or wouldn't translate well to the screen. Since the people behind this film want to make more money, they split the last film into two. WB did the same for Harry Potter, but I can forgive them because there is actual story to tell in that film, here there is nothing. She doesn't get pregnant until 50 minutes into the film. Which means we are stuck with boring characters either being jealous of what others have (Jacob) or two people having sex over and over (Edward/Bella). The amount of time that was dedicated to the honeymoon is insane. What should have been a ten minute sequence, at most, takes about 30 minutes of screen time.

Once Bella starts dying, the film tries to get into motion, but it's too late. When she goes into labor, that's when something finally interesting happens and the rest of the film makes for some of the most thrilling moments in the entire series. A standoff between the Cullens and the wolves is finally shown here, something that people have been waiting for since the first film. The tension between the two families finally explodes. This is exciting stuff, this is what people have been waiting for, but the film still suffers from bad CGI work when humans interact with the wolves. So the fight sequences, as exciting as they are, never really reach their full potential.

The final frame of the film is so obvious half way through that I actually chuckled to myself when it happened. I still can't shake the feeling that the conflict of the whole series finished with Eclipse and what we have left is an overstretched denouement. Am I excited for the next film? Not really. Half the job of Part 1 is to get you excited for the next, this film fails horribly at that. What's left to happen? An after the credits sequences is shown where we are given a glimpse of what to expect, but I'm too far drawn away from the conflict by that point.

Breaking Dawn is not the worst in the series, but clearly not the best. Had the film been one piece instead of two, then it would have been exciting. The simple fact that it drags on for so long is proof that splitting the film in two was a mistake, creatively. Financially, it's smart. Because young teenage girls will flock to anything, case in point -- this entire series.