Twilight 4 - Breaking Dawn: Part 1 (2011)

Twilight 4 - Breaking Dawn: Part 1 (2011)

[Rated PG-13: for disturbing images, violence, sexuality/partial nudity and some thematic elements.]

The film starts off with Jacob walking out the door into the rain, his race riddled with emotional pain as usual, before he tears off his shirt (again?!) to show his ripped bod and starts to jog. I really should have expected that.

We first get a glimpse of the White Wedding as Bella walks down the isle towards Edward, only for things to become surreal and uneasy once they kiss. She looks down to notice that they're now both covered in blood, and as the camera very, very slowly pans out, both are standing over the pile of all the guest's dead bodies. Nice! Once the real wedding begins, Bella stands there holding her father's hand nervously and asks him, "Just don't let me fall down." This is important to note as it is a recurring theme for Bella, and to remind audiences that she is indeed, on rather clumsy ass, dumb bitch.

It's a very, I guess pretty would be the word, wedding scene and up until this point nearly every character from the previous films has had at least one scene. As Bella is walking down the isle there's a slow, minute-long scene of the camera's transition down the back of her dress. It sure is one detailed and cool looking dress, admittedly. [I wondered why the shot took so long, (not that I minded, it was interesting I thought and added to the real time factor of an event like this) so I looked it up and found out that Stephenie Meyer had written some six pages detailing nothing but the back of that dress. Weirdly obsessive much?] There's some humorous bits thrown in with the toasts, and while it's all about true love forever and all that gushy business it doesn't go completely sappy as before. And so, they get married and tongue kiss for about five minutes straight while all the tween girls in the audience get wet.

Jacob shows up (with clothes on for once!) after the ceremony, standing in the woods, and seemingly unbitchier than usual. He seems to be finally coming into his own as a rightfully pissed off dude, and less of a crying, whimpering, shirtless and running, buff, teen-angst boy (Well except for that first scene, but I heard should have been towards the end of the third film actually). Anyways, he's manning up a bit. Even though, he's still majorly in love with this chick who keeps leading him on slightly, even though she just fucking got married! The two share a dance and some words together while everyone is still back at the party. When the honeymoon and subsequential turning get brought up, Bella tells Jacob that she will indeed be fucking Edward that night... but not as a Vamp, just as a mere, fragile human girl. Jacob naturally flips the fuck out, then storms off into the woods again crying like a little bitch.

Edward whisks Bella away to the mysterious vacation area of Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, where the two dance in the street for a short while amongst the local Asado-Grilling Muchachos and Gordita Putas. They share a few more kisses before taking a small motorboat out to a secluded island with an incredibly gorgeous and absolutely stunning looking summer home. Here we go, Edward and Bella finally get their fuck on! It's about time too. Bella's all nervous, brushing her teeth, shaving her legs and pumping herself up in the mirror while Edward decides to take a nude stroll out into the ocean. After coming to terms with the fact that she will indeed soon have Edwards wooden stake inside of her, she strips down and joins him in the water where they kiss for another fifteen minutes. There is a lot of goddamn kissing in this movie.

(This whole scene had to be shot just above nipples, so there's a whole lot of negative space with the sky in the background, and it looks just plain weird. The camera was too far out about half the time and it was distracting and downright infuriating to not see her boobs. It was far too lingering as well and the fact that I had to look at Edwards nipples didn't really help matters either!) It's actually pretty romantic this time around though, and a lot less (glaringly) cliche than the previous films. There still are some cheesy ass lines for those of us who so desire them, because come on, who doesn't love Meyer's groan inducing writing? I sure as fuck do! When Edward carried Bella to the bedroom to their honeymoon she gives him some shit, and he says "I'm nothing if not traditional." A major theme for Edward by the way who's a total old-school nerd of a virgin vampire. That line doesn't seem so bad written down, but in addition to his previous lines and delivery it's delightfully tacky.

Where was I? Oh right, the sex scene. It's a fairly quick scene (after all they are virgins), but it appears as if they go at it twice, with Bella mounting Edward the second time around. When Edward first slips inside of her sweet, pink little twitcher, he grabs the headboard, crushing it with his bare hands as he shoots his vampyric load prematurely inside of her. Smooth move. Bella later awakens with pillow feathers all over the place, the bed has been torn to shreds and the frame is busted all to fuck. There was a fun little scene later with the Spanish housekeepers, particularly the superstitious wife, when they walk through the house and that bed (whole room actually) is utterly thrashed! That next morning Bella stares at herself in the mirror for about five minutes and touches her face and lips for a while. Edward comes in and asks her how badly she's hurt. Yes, I grinned. He then opens parts of her robe to expose dark bruises all over her body.

Edward of course refuses to touch her shortly after that because he's so insistent on not ever hurting her. All the while she's pretty much screaming out "Fuck me! You idiot." He of course resists all of her temptations with the lingerie and blatantly rubbing her curvy ass in his face, instead opting to make her breakfast each morning and obliterate her at every chess game. She starts having bad dreams about never getting fucked again, one in which she finally wins a game of chess and then as compensation mounts him. Only to wake up and start crying as the dream was not real. How unfortunate! A few hours later Bella eats some slightly undercooked chicken and begins vomiting. When she notices that she missed her period, she checks herself out in the mirror and feels a violent trembling of a demon child. Edward naturally shits himself, panics and says they've got to get "that thing" out of her. Ouch!

Yeah, that's the look! Pants shat.

Talk about romantic, huh? The next half of the film deals with Bella's incredibly short and downright sickeningly-grim pregnancy. Arguments over "fetus" vs "baby" are had, and many of the family (including Jacob) want that fuckin' monstrosity out of her belly before it kills her. Bella insists that she's strong enough and Edward scoffs at the dumb girl's words. You, strong!? Que laughter. Nobody can sense the baby, or what it's like or what it wants until Edward reads Jacob's sarcastic mind that "it probably wants to come out so it can rip out someone's throat." Carlisle and the rest of them decide that the malnourished (and not to mention pretty fuckin' gross looking) young lass needs to Drink Blood(!) to feed the baby. Over the course of a few days, Bella goes through the family's lingering supply of Type O Positive blood pouches (drinking them with a straw out of Styrofoam cups). Soon enough, Edward discovers the error of his ways and comes to comfort his wife, telling her that he can now hear the baby's thoughts, that he loves the baby, and that the baby loves its mother. Aww.

With all well again in the Cullen family, Bella stands up and accidentally drops her cup, only to lean down and furiously Snap her spine in half! Dark lord. She screams in agonizing pain and goes into labor. As Dr. Carlisle, his wife and Emmett have gone out for more blood pouches (to accommodate the birth, nice timing), Rosalie, Jacob and Edward are forced to deliver the baby. After Edward slits Bella's stomach open with a scalpel, Rosalie's bloodlust takes control and Alice has to get her and Jasper the hell out of there before they eat her alive. The three of them go out to fight off the wolf pack, who are now focused on killing this baby as it is "too much of a threat to the world." Leaving Jacob and Edward both together once again in this dire situation. The fetus lining is too strong that the scalpel won't penetrate it, so Edward must bury his face into Bella's other slit and rip that fuckin' baby out with his own teeth! It's all pretty bloody disgusting actually.

Then she dies.

Yep. She's pregnant! I mean, It's totally obvious...

This film nearly got an R-Rating and had to be edited in two major spots. Personally this saddens the hell out of me and I hope that the home release will feature unaltered editing (though I highly fucking doubt it)! There were some strange cuts during the sex scene and also the birthing scene (far too many red lens and fades and shadows and disguise - I really wish they would have just shown more of the eventful gore). It was still nasty, and blood was all over the place, however. That being said, this film shows far more skin and blood than all the three previous combined. Not that that's really saying too much.

One of the main things I like about the film was how beautifully shot and composed everything is. All of the framing, set pieces, costumes, cinematography and timing are expertly handled. The music was distracting in only a few parts as it would start out of nowhere in the middle of dialogue, and I did notice one strange jump-cut between Carlisle and Edward's faces while in the doctor's office. But otherwise things flowed rather smoothly and scene transitions were often to some other spectacular looking location with some eventful bullshit building up. The whole first half of the film is so inviting and gorgeous. The last third of the film gets pretty damn ugly, especially in the case of Bella's walking corpse look.

Nearly all of the characters from the previous films all share moments together before Bella and her future sisters prepare for the wedding. The film takes its time to slow down and focus on a lot of the less dramatic scenes, where not much goes on aside from some dialogue and humorous, warm moments. It's nice that a lot of the smaller character development reminder-scenes were included in this split end-film, as not to compact and lose the  important stuff (Alright, let's get another shot of Jacob shirtless standing in the rain!). Bella's mom makes more of an appearance, her school friends aren't all dead after all, and the two least annoying siblings of the wolf clan (Seth and Leah Clearwater) get the most screen time from that bunch (which is good because I found all of the others particularly annoying!).

The werewolves actually speaking to each other was otherworldly and just plain weird. I know they communicate telepathically, but I just didn't see this coming at all. In the previous films it was merely suggested with eyes and understood looks, but here you flat out hear what they're saying. It was like a cartoon. The CGI of the broken spine and envenoming blood traveling through the body looked pretty cool, as did the self-stitching skin. There were some quick flashback sequences (and man do I utterly hate flashbacks), but they were mostly done in quick fashion and didn't end up bothering me too much.

It's hard for me to rate this one in comparison to the other films in the series based on two factors. One of the reasons I watch these are for Kristen Stewart. If I could dream at all, it would be about her! Unfortunately she looks pretty disgusting for a good part of this movie (and while relevant to the film, I gotta shake my head no). Then there's the lameness and cheese factor. The last two Twilight films have been stepped it up a notch on the serious meter, and this time it didn't come off a total giggle-fest. Luckily there was still just enough awfulness that I went away fulfilled. Did I mention that Jacob falls in love with and "imprints" on their baby at the end of this? Motherfucker's now a babyfucker!