In just a couple weeks Twilight will once again be streaming across the web with reviews, blog posts, spoilers, and over all social media tweets and status updates on how great or how horrible the first part of the last book of the series was portrayed on the big screen. With part one so close at hand, the biggest questions are “how close to the book is the movie” and “does it do the book justice?” Since the movie is yet to be released, I can only speculate how the movie will turn out.
Breaking Dawn Part 1
With part one of Breaking Dawn almost within our reach, fans are anxious to see how some of the most iconic scenes are going to play out on screen. Expectations are high that the movie was portrayed as closely as possible to the descriptions in the book. We've seen the previous three movies doing a pretty good job at keeping true to the books so hopes are high that the same care was given to this next installment in the series.
The wedding is one of the most anticipated scenes for Twilight fans where they will finally get to see Bella’s wedding dress and the elaborate decorations that will surely make girls say “that’s what I want my wedding to look like.”
But probably the most anticipated scene in the whole book, aside from seeing the birth of Renesemee and the new "vampire" Bella, (I have no knowledge of what will be in Part 1) is the infamous “wedding night.” From its teen-appropriate detail of bitten pillows, feathers everywhere, and broken headboards (which is plenty to get my imagination going), the love scenes seem to be an area that the motion picture team could creatively fill in the blanks. According to Breaking Dawn’s director, Bill Condon, in an interview with MTV, the love scene had to be “recut” to make the movie PG-13 rather than the R-rating it was going to receive for the scene being too racy.
Bill Condon remarked, “…it was so much more about romance than it was about hot-and-heavy action, so it was a very kind of simple adjustment to make."
That being said, I am sure there will be plenty to see to get the heart racing and the cheeks flushing. But keeping it appropriate for the younger crowd is what I would have pushed if I were Stephenie Meyers, considering the audience she was focusing her series on, which were teens. There is probably not a mother alive who would want to tell their teenage daughters that they couldn’t see the last two movies due to inappropriateness. So good move, in my opinion, on the studio’s part to bring it down a notch.
One of the most interesting details about the book that I am personally excited to see on screen is Bella’s drastic transformation as she progresses in pregnancy faster than humanly possible. Portraying a flawlessly accurate “pregnant woman” (not the belly or over-exaggerated wide-stance walk) with her all-over-the-place emotions, brought on by her bodies extreme change and the fear of becoming a mother, could be what really sells her performance. For someone who has never had the privilege of going through a pregnancy, it may be hard to emulate. But Kristen Stewart might pull it off without a hitch.
How the movie changes from Bella’s prospective to Jacob’s is another part I am looking forward to seeing. With the book, it was great to step into Jacob’s mind and really feel his pain, anger, and frustration over losing Bella to Edward and watching her go through the pregnancy that was clearly killing her. Then to watch Jacob change from “angry little boy” to “leader of the pack,” a momentous part of Jacob’s book, will be great to see on screen. Taylor Lautner gets to step up his game and prove he really is a serious actor with the amount of emotion that is clearly going to be needed to pull this all off and make it believable. Not to mention how much anger Robert Pattinson will have to show at this time, too.
Lastly, there is plenty of speculation about where the film will end for the first part compared to the layout of the book’s Bella, Jacob, Bella points of view. Queen B gives a fantastic scenario of how the first movie should end in her August 2010 post on TwilightersAnonymous.com, Breaking Up Is Hard To Do: Where Will Breaking Dawn Movie Split?, where as a Twi-fanatic, the ideal ending is after the birth of Renesmee and you see the suddenly opened red eyes of the newly “reborn” Bella, then the screen goes black. Still there are others, mainly expressing on comment posts, that it should end before Bella gives birth and before she is turned into a vampire. Personally, Queen B’s take nearly gave me chills and seems a perfect way to end it.
Twilight Era Coming To An End
So as the days tick down to the premier, fans are reading up on the books one last time, re-watching the previous three movies in succession, and washing and ironing their Team Edward/Team Jacob shirts to keep each day rolling by faster. There is, perhaps, a sad excitement (that could almost rival that felt for the last two movie installments in the Harry Potter series) as realization sets in that an era is coming to an end. All stories must come to an end eventually and you know a story is great when your heart breaks as you turn the last page and when the credits start to roll and the lights go up.
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