Film Review: The Twilight Saga – Breaking Dawn Part 1

There has never really been anything approaching franchise deterioration or diminishing returns in the adaptations of Stephanie Meyers’ flagship series. In fact, the quality of the films seems to follow an inversion of the ‘Star Trek rule’, in which every odd numbered film is the weakest. Here the adequate Twilight was followed by the tiresome New Moon, which was in turn redeemed by the satisfyingly violent Eclipse. Breaking Dawn however fits the ‘even-numbered-equals-bad’ model of The Twilight Saga, with the elimination of Rachelle Lefevre/Bryce Dallas Howard’s Victoria the film has no core antagonist beyond a morally ambivalent werewolf clan. Bella Swan’s much hyped pregnancy renders the film as a pro-life/anti-abortion allegory that could only be described as ‘thinly-veiled’ if the veil in question barely registered on a subatomic level.

Beyond the standard gripes regarding Meyers’ rendition of vampires as walking icicles, the film is not without its sweet moments. The wedding reception speeches will incite giggles and the use of Iron & Wine’s ‘Flightless Bird, American Mouth’ at the altar (echoing Bella and Edward’s dance at the prom) will have Twi-hards weeping into their Team Edward/Jacob apparel. Other than momentary sparkles there is little to be excited about, even for devoted fans as the film plunges headlong into the moralistic soap we all feared from the beginning, so much so that the supernatural elements appear to disappear entirely. Stranger still, for a film in which a vamp and his newly shackled ball and chain honeymoon in Rio, Eddy (we can call him Eddy can’t we?) never sparkles once. Elsewhere we get an arbitrary anecdote from Edward that he used to feed on human men (the gay metaphor here seems to descend into self-parody, given Meyers’ staunch conservative stance) and what appears to be stock footage from The Fellowship of the Ring spliced into the opening montage.

The potential pregger-body horror of the proceedings is derailed efficiently by all the political posturing, Meyers’ could have melded symbolism with the monstrous but instead we are bludgeoned with sentiment without the integrity of storytelling. The story is troubling in that a foetus that is brutally killing our heroine is extolled, the bipolar ethics blurred more so by Bella’s bizarre choice to sacrifice herself whilst the surrounding characters debate abortion incessantly. Meyers’ problematic notions of unwanted childbearing won’t go rest well with rationalist thinkers, sentimentality may yet see baby ‘Renesme’ embraced as a miracle by the converted pro-lifers the film may yet convert.

The first Twilight now looks like an edgy, handheld, bleach-bypassed indie-shocker in comparison to its locked-off, neutral hued soap sequels. Any genre credibility will hopefully return in the odd-numbered final instalment, but given that the last shot of this film (regardless of its shameless pinching of an all too similar shot that closed Avatar) acts as more of a genuine climax than a cliff-hanger, you will begin to wonder if there is any more story to tell.