TWILIGHT: BREAKING DAWN PT. 1 (WITH SOME SPOILERS BUT IT DOESN’T SPOIL MUCH OF ANYTHING)

The movie opens on the wedding eve of the totally drippy Bella and her creaaapy vampire boyfriend–he appears, magically, as always, in her bedroom, unannounced. Because he is essentially her stalker, which is framed as romantic, naturally, because Twilight reads/plays, as ever, like it was written by a 13 year old who has never actually hung out with a boy and spends most of her time reading the really scary chapters of the Bible–you know, that other book with 900 year old people having babies in it.

Anyhow, so this wedding is basically a result of B&E reaching a detente–Bella is sick of being both mortal (drag) and a virgin (ditto), and Edward is so “old fashioned”/proper/chivalrous/(or controlling) that he won’t go past second base unless they are hitched and even though once she is a vampire they could potentially be together for all eternity, he would, for some weird reason, like it be legal. Even though he is magic and kills people and animals and why the fuck does one law matter to him and not the rest of them? ANYHOW.

She gives into marriage as a compromise for sex and the promise of immortality— but as she makes clear in the very firstest scene, not because she wants to be with Edward forever so much as she wants to be like him. Because she wants to be courageous like him! She is weak, and he, he is a strong man. Super good reason to get married. Idolizing the manly qualities of your man and hoping to absorb them in your bloodsucking lifetime together? QUEL ROMANTIC. Blah Blah blah they get married and it is all kinds of magic and fantastic and enchanted and he whisks her away to Brazil, where they kiss in the street while all types of exotic brown people Lambada in the street. I got really scared, right then, that they were going to start dancing, but they don’t. They drive a boat through the night to a private condo on the beach! WEEE. If I was a vampire, I would really love the beach and swimming too b/c they don’t breathe so they can just paddle at super speed for as long as they want.

So, THE BIG NIGHT OF DOING IT IS HERE AT LONG LAST. Edward, and other people including her shirtless wolfboy BFF, have warned her, in this movie alone–not even counting the prequels–that THE SEXING COULD TOTES KILL HER. Because Edward’s super strength could get out of his control while he is throwing her the bone and he could accidentally kill her, more or less. There may be a more nuanced reason, but that’s the only part that is illustrated. AGAIN, FYI, JUST SO EVERYONE KNOWS, THE SEX COULD KILL HER. But she’s a freak, and so she throws caution to the wind, shaves her legs and it’s on.

Craziness ensues. Mid-missionary coitus-a-thon, Edward has already broken PART OF THE HOUSE OFF, torn up the bed and the frame and the down comforter that is inexplicably on the bed in the tropical isle they are vay-kaying on. The sex scene is super tepid, mostly just like, panting and motion and everyone moving their eyebrows at each other, but it lasts for really, really long time; a stream of young girls, like 9, 10, 11 all excused themselves to the bathroom after a bit, like not together, but all over the theatre. At the screening, before the movie started, there were girls showing off their gymnastics skill in the aisle. I felt their embarrassment. I cannot imagine watching that sex scene with my mom or dad in the room at that age. All that thrusting and fingernails on the back and Edward being so overtaken by the consummation he is breaking the bed in half? LORD. The horror!

The next morning, she begs for more of that sex she enjoyed, without ever saying thats what she is asking for, which he refuses, even after they’ve done it—-which he insists is for her own good, though he shows us he wants her too by chastely grazing her butt with his hand after staring at it longingly, later on. Edward is steadfast–she is bruised from the LOVEMAKING and he’s apoplectic with apologies (again: classic abuser behavior framed as HIGH ROMANCE). He will not risk it! AND PLUS THERE IS THE SAKE OF THE MANY RATTAN COUCHES AND SUCH TO BE CONSIDERED! So they play chess like 4 times! And get all Blue Lagoon around the island. And then play chess some more and he “captures her queen”, and then they engage in other hackneyed visual metaphors. FOR FUN.

So, Bella has finally gotten what she wants, sort of, and even within the sanctity of her holy-yet-unholy matrimony, well, that’s when she really gets whats coming to her! REMEMBER THE PART WHEN THEY TOLD HER SHE MIGHT DIE AND THEN THE SCORE FORESHADOWED HOW SERIOUS THE WARNING WAS AND THEN SHE WAS TOTALLY LIKE “SO BE IT” OH SO THOUGHTLESSLY RISKING HER LIFE FOR HER OWN INSIPID NON-PROCREATING PLEASURE? The wages of her sin are going to be paid in full, you guys! DUH-dum! GUESS THE FUCK HOW?! In exchange for enjoying sex she gets shamed by her husband and impregnated, a Rosemary’s Baby style plot RUINING her entire honeymoon. The mystical brown people housekeepers feel her belly, where she is all of 6? 8? days preggo and her baby is kicking, the lady feels her fundus and turns to Edward and proclaims ‘DEATH!. THANK GOD BELLA DOESN’T KNOW SPANISH OR PORTUGUESE!

Fortunately, misbegotten demon fetus grow SUPER FAST, roughly 9-10x the speed of a normal gestation, so she’s major league preggo within 2 weeks. Everyone knows it’s going to kill her, but she is gleeful and in denial and even the coven-leader doctor played by Peter Facinelli cannot see it in XRAYS–not even fucking sonograms–XRAYS! that he does on her in his home operating theatre/medical lab/Xray machine station (which also features a long table from Ikea and a wall full of tasteful art books, because he is refined).

They cannot see if the creature-babe is human or hooved. Edward is super scared because he Google image searched what kind of baby happens when a vampire deposits century old DNA in a human with their dusty old weiners. He is sweating that his ONE TRUE LOVE FOR ALL TIME is gonna die cos a toothy wee goblin monkey is gonna eat it’s way out her vagina.

Which Bella is virtually ecstatic about. All the vampires, who are done up in a manner that suggests they are hosting the nightly news cast or competing in drag balls, beg her to abort, but none of them say abortion or anything like that. This is where the whole SEX KILLS theme gets blunted by a DEMONLIFE BEGINS AT CONCEPTION metatext. The arc of her pregnancy is swiped straight from Lars Von Triers trashcan—Bella suffers unremittingly, confident and joyous despite that she is wasting away to Karen Carpenter like anoerexia ghoul and her demonfetus won’t let her eat/drink anything except human blood (“mmm, tastes good” she replies after a long slurp through a straw). She is super psyched to die and give Edward a baby he doesn’t want, as, like, a present. This is the primary plotline of the movie and it is the part that makes the least amount of sense. But, you know, early marriage is tough! Especially when your first month of domestic bliss is being trapped inside a multi-million dollar coven/ski lodge waiting for your baby to kill you, and your bride is eager to die but maybe not in the cool undead way she was hoping, and being surrounded by wolves that wanna eat you and your baby in order to protect “the town”? I won’t even get into that other than the CGI for the wolves is way better this time around.

Then! Then! The baby is coming. AND IT IS FUCKING GRODY. Like, nothing grodier. Supposedly, in the book, the baby eats it way out, which doesn’t happen. Something EVEN FUCKING GROSSER DOES. And for about 2 seconds your are left wondering if the hungry, hungry vampires are going to eat the baby and/or the afterbirth blood pools. That part is a real WTF given that this is essentially a movie for pre-teens.

Then, then baby is not only saved by dog, but like every other woman in the movie, by the man who is romantically in love with her, her absolute one. The shirtless dogboy crumbles to the ground, perhaps upset that he just figured out he is fated to be in love with AN INFANT and secondly, he is going to have to wait a super long time before romancing her, and he has already wanted to do it with her mom for ages… and it’s just fucked up. It’s half played like uncle-y kind of protector love, but we see the frothy sexual twinkle of the b-roll dream sequence and it’s like… oh, shit that is this girls fate. OLD AZZ DOG MAN IS HER ONE TRUE LOVE. Mom’s seconds. Totally grody.

AND THEN THERE IS LIKE TWO MORE MINUTES AND A GOTCHA CLIFFHANGER AND… it’s all “too be continued”!

This one, I have to say, is the best one. It’s the most “mondo” as my friend put it. It’s so surreal and campy and stupid and unintentionally funny and revolting and mysogynist and over the fucking top and filled with telepathic dogs, it’s going to be really amazing when 10-20-30 years from now we are seeing it’s influence play out in the art of children who were totally warped by it. GO SEE IT, BY ALL MEANS! It’ll bloe yr mind, promise!