Twilight: Breaking Dawn (Part 1) (Spoilers. And language.)
21st November 2011. Location: Cinema
Hello. Atrociously late in reviewing this one (but let's face it, it's not like my review was going to be your deciding factor in going to see this) for which I apologise profusely. Ramping up for the Christmas Season at Blackout Towers, and very little time on the internets. But I digress.
So. The fourth Twilight movie, and the third of which I've seen in the cinema. A good strategy seems to be Monday nights. It's not the weekend, it's not cheap-Tuesday or Orange Wednesday, so you actually get a fairly quiet crowd, as opposed to the sold-out auditorium of 14yr old girls who can't leave their phones alone for two hours*1 (which was what I was expecting).
Skip to the End…
I'm not kidding, there is nothing (no.thing.) in the first hour of this movie that couldn't be summed up in a 3-to-5 minute montage. They get married, those two mopey arseholes square up to each other, they drive down to Rio, they get on a boat, they have the kind of sex-scene that gets more embarrassing to watch the older you are, they both fucking mope about for an hour, and then they realise Bella's pregnant and that's not a good thing (because it was always going to be, wasn't it? Mating a human with a non-human, and just blithely assuming that everything would go swimmingly).
Apparently 'the honeymoon' covers a two period. I'll be honest, it felt much longer.
Once they get back to Edward's gaff, the passage-of-time is similarly skewed (oh, they've been back for a month, but you could show that in five minutes), but at least we start getting meaningful interaction*2 from other members of the cast. Considering there's slightly less than usual of Bella fucking sighing around the house even though it still happens, the second hour is good. It almost makes up for the first one.
Soundtrack Overload:
What the fuck is with the constant soundtracking? It's almost as if there was no score written for the film at all. The only time I want to hear that many songs-with-lyrics in a film is when I'm watching a fucking musical.
Subtitling of the wolves:
Or lack thereof. I understand why we need the human voiceovers when the wolves are talking to each other in full dog-mode; to carry over the inflections that are limited when your animated wolves are… well, wolves. But I'll be honest, it just comes off as silly. Which is a shame, because I'm really liking the rest of the wolf-concept*3.
Slowly Slowly, Catchee Vampee:
Home come Meyer's vampires can move faster-than-sight when it comes to packing bags in a hurry (no, seriously), but the minute they're being chased through heavy woodland by a 300-pound wolf, they fucking dawdle enough to be caught? Or were they just weighed down by the feeding they'd just done? And while I'm on there's a scene where Rosalie*4 comes into the room and walks past a mirror, and she's got a reflection. That shouldn't even be worth mentioning at this stage, but it still irks me:
Q: Do you need human blood to survive?
A: Well, I can manage without it, although I do get a bit sulky.
Q: Do you burst into flames in day/sunlight?
A: No. Cloudy days are fine, and in the sun I go a bit 'sparkly', I suppose.
Q: Do you have a reflection in a mirror?
A: Yes. Yes, I do.
You're not a fucking vampire. You're a goth.
Summed Up:
The first hour? Fucking awful. The second hour? I enjoyed it very much, although I can understand how other people might also think it's fucking awful. If you've liked any of the Twlight films, you'll like (some of) this. But let's be honest, you knew that anyway, didn't you?
Yeah, a four. Oh, it was alright. Eventually.
*1 I know it's a pet peeve on mine, but during the first hour of this, I was tempted to start texting people, if only to warn them away from the cinema…
*2 Okay, as meaningful as you're going to get in a Twilight movie. I know, alright?
*3 That said, full props to David Reed of Film Fandango Podcast when he pointed out that although they pull their shirts off before changing, their trousers just seem to turn into a dog.
*4 Oh, look at me. Knowing the characters' names...
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
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