Bill Condon’s The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1 has a wedding, a honeymoon on an island off the coast of Rio de Janeiro, a pregnancy that shouldn’t be possible, and a pack of werewolves deciding whether to kill a pregnant woman. It runs 117 minutes. Almost none of it moves.
The film is the fourth installment in The Twilight Saga, adapted from Stephenie Meyer’s 2008 novel Breaking Dawn and split into two parts by Summit Entertainment, which announced the two-film plan on June 10, 2010. Melissa Rosenberg wrote the screenplay. Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner return as Bella Swan, Edward Cullen and Jacob Black.
Trailer, via The Twilight Saga.
A Wedding in Forks, Then a Very Long Honeymoon
The first act is the wedding. Bella and Edward marry, and Jacob — who left town when the invitation arrived — comes back for the reception, to Bella’s delight. They dance in the woods. Bella tells him she and Edward plan to consummate the marriage while she is still human. Jacob is furious, fearing the act could kill her.
That fear is the only real tension the film generates, and it is spent within minutes. Bella and Edward fly to the island, make love for the first time, and the movie has nothing left to withhold.
Two weeks later Bella vomits after waking and realizes her period is late. She tells Carlisle Cullen, a medical doctor and Edward’s adoptive father, that she believes she is pregnant. Edward is distraught. He pushes her to get an abortion from Carlisle. She refuses.
Bella’s Body Becomes the Entire Plot
From there the film is a woman lying in a house while her health fails. Bella grows pale and underweight and visibly pregnant. Jacob rushes to the Cullens’ house in Forks, begs her to end the pregnancy, and she refuses again.
Jacob storms out and meets his packmates in the woods, including their leader Sam, who soon decides they should kill Bella so her half-vampire child cannot harm anyone. Jacob refuses, and he and several other werewolves split from the pack.
This is the film’s one genuinely interesting turn, and Condon buries it under reaction shots. A pack splitting over whether to murder a pregnant woman should be a crisis. Here it plays like a scheduling conflict.
Carlisle’s Hospital Blood and a Fetus That Wants It
As the pregnancy advances, Bella deteriorates, then realizes the fetus is craving blood. She starts drinking human blood Carlisle obtains from the hospital, and her health improves.
That is the mechanic. That is the entire second half. A pregnant woman drinks hospital blood to feed the thing inside her, and the movie treats this as a medical subplot rather than the body horror it plainly is.
Peter Facinelli plays Carlisle. Elizabeth Reaser, Kellan Lutz, Nikki Reed, Jackson Rathbone and Ashley Greene fill out the Cullen house. Michael Sheen appears as Aro. Anna Kendrick returns as Jessica. Billy Burke is Charlie Swan. None of them get enough to do.
Three Countries, Eighteen Months, Two Films
Principal photography for both parts began November 1, 2010, and wrapped April 22, 2011. The first part shot in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Baton Rouge, Louisiana; and Vancouver, Canada. Here is how the production and release ran:
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| June 10, 2010 | Summit Entertainment announces a two-part adaptation |
| November 1, 2010 | Principal photography begins on both parts |
| April 22, 2011 | Principal photography wraps |
| October 30, 2011 | Premieres at the Rome Film Festival |
| November 18, 2011 | Theatrical release in the United States |
| 2012 | Breaking Dawn – Part 2 released |
Three locations, eighteen months, two films shot back to back. The scale is real. The problem is what got pointed at the camera.
The Middle Hour Has No Third Act
Criticism of this film has centered on pacing, screenplay and performances, and that is the correct list. But pacing is not the disease here. It is the symptom.
The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1 grossed $732 million worldwide and finished as the fourth-highest-grossing film of 2011. That number is the most interesting fact about it, because it tells you the audience showed up for a movie that spends its middle hour watching a woman decline in a bedroom.
Splitting the book was a business decision made in June 2010, before a frame was shot. It shows. The film has a beginning and a middle and no end. It stops.
Ranking the series’ structural choices by how much damage they do to this installment:
- Splitting Breaking Dawn into two films, which leaves Part 1 without a third act
- Spending the first act on a wedding the audience already knew was coming
- Reducing the Wolf Pack’s split to a handful of scenes in the woods
- Making Bella’s pregnancy a medical problem instead of a horror one
- Keeping the Cullen family in the background of their own story
The fifth one hurts most. This is the Cullen house at its fullest. Carlisle, Esme, Emmett, Rosalie, Jasper, Alice — all present, all furniture.
Stewart Carries a Film That Won’t Carry Her
Stewart is the reason to watch. She plays Bella’s decline without vanity: pale, thin, drinking blood from a cup, refusing every exit offered to her. It is a committed performance inside a film that does not know what to do with it.
Pattinson gets less. Edward spends most of the runtime reacting — distraught, then resigned, then distraught again. Lautner’s Jacob has the clearest arc in the film and the least screen time to carry it.
The tagline is “Forever is just the beginning.” It is a promise the movie cannot keep, because it is half a movie.
4.5 of 10
The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1 is 117 minutes of setup. The wedding is fine. The island is fine. Bella’s pregnancy is the only material with any charge to it, and Condon films it like a hospital drama, all blood bags and bedside conversations, when it should feel like something is eating her from inside.
The $732 million gross proves the fanbase was never the question. The question was whether the material justified two films. It did not. Breaking Dawn – Part 2 arrived in 2012 and got the payoff. Part 1 got the waiting room.
What actually matters here is smaller than the box office: Stewart’s performance, and the Wolf Pack split, which is the one thread with real stakes. Everything else is a hallway between two better movies.
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