S01E10 — Breaking Dawn
SPOILER ALERT: This episode and transcript below contains major spoilers for Twilight: Breaking Dawn and for the entire Twilight series.
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Featuring hosts Timothy Haynes, Donna Haynes, Rebekah Edwards, and T. Josiah Haynes.
We’re sad — or are we?! — to see this series end. Remember this: No matter how many times we hate-watch the entire Twilight saga, we will never not cry during those end credits. 😭
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Final Verdicts
If you haven’t listened to the episode yet, we recommend waiting to read our verdicts. (But you’re probably grown, so do what you want!)
Rebekah really, really hated the pretend battle scene at the end. Still, she managed to convince (most of) the family that the books were… obviously… superior.
Tim: The books were better
Donna: The books were better
Rebekah: The books were better
Josiah: The book was better for Breaking Dawn: Part One, but the film is better for Part Two
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Full Episode Transcript
Prefer reading? Check out the full episode transcript below. It’s AI-generated from our audio, and if we’re being honest… no one sat to read the entire thing for accuracy. (After all, we were there the whole time.) 😉 We’re sorry in advance for any typos or transcription errors.
[00: 00:00] Rebekah: Hey, welcome to the book is better podcast. We are a clean podcast of a family of four comparing book to film adaptations. Now I will say clean podcast still talk about adult topics sometimes. And, uh, let’s just say those are going to come up. Some of them are definitely going to come up in this episode.
Uh, so let me give a full spoiler alert. We are going to spoil all. Of Twilight. Today we are specifically talking about Breaking Dawn, which is a book and, uh, Breaking Dawn Part One and Breaking Dawn Part Two, which was, uh, which were the two movies it was broken into. And so we will be spoiling things from every single part of the Twilight, uh, franchise.
Including Breaking Dawn in particular. So if you haven’t read or listened to it, then what have you been doing for the last 11 years? Mm-Hmm, . And I don’t really feel that bad for you ’cause you clicked on this episode seeing the name of it. So,
[00: 00:54] Josiah: um, and also Drew, are we really recommending these books? ?
[00: 00:58] Rebekah: Um, okay, that’s really fair.
I don’t know that we are, I think they’re fine. What do you think, mom? They’re like, fine. I don’t the
[00: 01:07] Donna: books. I’m okay with the book. I, I’m okay with the books because I know I’m reading. This crazy thing and, and the books flesh out so much stuff that make more sense in this weird, weird world. So, you know, not to give my final, now, now that I’ve read the
[00: 01:24] Josiah: entire series, I, I think I, I was trying to give it a pass, but now that I’ve read the final book, I think it’s fair to say the series is bad.
[00: 01:38] Rebekah: Well now you know how this episode is gonna go. No, no. They’re still things Minute, minute is that things
[00: 01:43] Josiah: I like about it.
[00: 01:45] Donna: Yeah,
[00: 01:45] Rebekah: there’s still, there were still redeeming. We are done recording this episode. Yeah, there’s still redeeming things in it. No, there’s still things I like about it. Okay, well, before we get into that, let’s do our fun facts today.
Okay, so, we’re gonna introduce ourselves to you. And we like to share fun facts about ourselves. Cause why not? So, here’s today’s prompt. Considering that the vampire’s special abilities in Twilight were somehow connected to their human personalities and traits, what do you think your vampire ability would be?
Uh, so I’m gonna go first. My name is Rebecca. I am the daughter slash sister of this vampire. group and I think that my vampire ability would be Helping people see a middle ground in ways that they didn’t think one existed because I think that that’s a good skill I have. I like hearing a conflict or Like a struggle that people are having and helping them realize that there’s actually a compromise Even though they didn’t believe there would be one.
So mine would be like a
[00: 02:43] Josiah: Super power? A little more
[00: 02:44] Rebekah: nebulous. Well, like Siobhan in the Breaking Dawn book, like, she has a power that she doesn’t even think is a power. Of course, I’m willing to hear you out if you think I would have another one, but I’d actually like to hear your power. I am a very
[00: 02:58] Josiah: theatrical person and, uh, the best I could come up with on short notice That I like would be dazzling lights.
I’m thinking of the X Men, X Men Jubilee, kind of flashing all sorts of lights around. I like the idea that you can maybe you can focus it in the eyes of your enemy, or you can make it something that multiple people can see. Yeah, that would be interesting.
[00: 03:28] Rebekah: I’m a fan nameless, nameless podcast host.
[00: 03:32] Josiah: I am Josiah, and I am the brother slash son of the podcast group.
You can call me Josiah the Dazzling.
[00: 03:44] Rebekah: Ooh. Wait, now I must have a special nickname. I didn’t know we were gonna do that. No,
[00: 03:49] Josiah: no, no, you’re Rebecca the Conciliatator.
[00: 03:53] Donna: Uh, so, alright. Conciliatator.
[00: 03:57] Josiah: Is a potato. I don’t think it’s conciliatory, but. Okay.
[00: 04:01] Donna: Okay. That mediates
[00: 04:03] Josiah: divorces.
[00: 04:05] Donna: Just a slight second here. Oh my gosh.
The queen potato was talking to her daughter. Princess potato. Oh. Who said, Mom, I’ve fallen in love. And her mother said, Oh, you’re so young. Who is the man? And he’s, the princess says, Oh, it’s Dan Rather, who now just aged myself. It’s Dan Rather. And her mom says, Oh, princess, you can’t be with him. He’s just a commentator.
So, so I am Donna, the wife slash mom and my superpower. I think I could talk people into a state of delusion and they would just be so lost in my words. They would just faint over
[00: 04:50] Rebekah: me. Oh my gosh. You would be like a shield, like Renata that like gets people to walk away from Aro, except yours would just be, like you would talk them into oblivion.
I would
[00: 05:00] Donna: just be rambling on talking and I’d look at them, they’d glaze over and fall down.
[00: 05:05] Josiah: Maybe she’s more like Jasper, but only Jasper able to make people feel confused. That’s the only emotion that he can control. That’s all.
[00: 05:15] Tim: My name is Tim, and I am the husband and father of this wonderful group of loony bin people.
Yee
[00: 05:25] Donna (2): haw!
[00: 05:25] Tim: Um. Uh oh. And my special ability, I’m gonna steal mine. I think it’s completely wasted on Bella. I, I think I could be the shield, I could protect my family.
[00: 05:41] Donna (2): Oh, that’s so sweet. And funny at the same time. That’s right, dad. You get it. He does
[00: 05:47] Rebekah: protect us. You’re just the sweetest and funniest. Yeah. I
[00: 05:49] Tim: like that.
I want to take care of my family.
[00: 05:52] Rebekah: I love that. Do you want to give us a summary of what happens in these movies slash book?
[00: 05:57] Donna: For sure. In Breaking Dawn 1, at last, Bella and Edward. Are getting married when Jacob finds out that Bella wants to spend her honeymoon as a human. He is horrified For Edward’s passion could accidentally kill her.
Bella does indeed survive her honeymoon, however.
[00: 06:19] Josiah: Oh, okay. That’s good.
[00: 06:20] Donna: Then a new complication arises when she discovers, dun, dun, dun, she’s pregnant and the child is growing at an alarming rate. The pregnancy sets the wolves against Bella and Edward. But Jacob, the head wolf, vows to protect his friend. So we end the film with Rebecca having being just beat to death from the inside out by this new baby Me?
[00: 06:47] Donna (2): What? You just said Rebecca No, what?
[00: 06:55] Josiah: Wishful thinking Okay
[00: 06:58] Donna (2): Me? Oh my gosh
[00: 07:03] Josiah: Okay, wait
[00: 07:04] Donna (2): Cause
[00: 07:05] Josiah: we were unsure for a second if you were joking
[00: 07:08] Rebekah: Woo
[00: 07:10] Donna: What? Yeah, you were making fun of me. And I didn’t even hear it. I didn’t hear it. We end the movie with Bella, who has carried this child, growing at this alarming rate, tearing her up from the inside out, being born, and Bella, at the last moment, dies.
[00: 07:30] Tim: The end. Or is it? End of series.
[00: 07:35] Donna: And just when they think it’s over, she opens her eyes.
[00: 07:39] Donna (2): Oh!
[00: 07:41] Donna: Breaking Dawn 2. Oh! We wait a year with that picture of Bella’s eyes. Ha! Red and glaring. She awakes as a vampire from her life threatening labor and her newborn daughter, Renesmee, proves to be very special indeed.
While Bella adjusts to her new state of being, Renesmee experiences accelerated growth. When the Volturi learn of the baby’s existence, they declare her to be an abomination and sentence the Cullens to certain death. Bella, Edward, and the rest of the clan seek help from allies around the world. to protect their precious family.
[00: 08:25] Tim: Oh, no. There are
[00: 08:26] Rebekah: vampires all over the world. And the Volturi kill all of them. And it’s very sad. Oh, it was shorter
[00: 08:32] Tim: than the first
[00: 08:33] Rebekah: one. They do win. They they will win. They don’t fight, I guess. Or they don’t die. No one dies. There’s a trivia about that. Essentially, it’s a net zero. Oh, yes. Let’s talk differences.
We’ve got a lot of fun stuff to talk about. So we’re kind of doing this movie By movie, since the book was broken into two movies. I will say, breaking down the book was broken up into three sections. First section is Bella, second section is the only, well, I guess we’ll save a little bit at the end of Eclipse.
It’s the only part of the series that is narrated by Jacob, and then the third part of Breaking Dawn was narrated by Bella again.
[00: 09:09] Tim: I appreciated the different POVs. Yeah.
[00: 09:12] Rebekah: Oh gosh. Yes. I would have hated that middle part.
[00: 09:15] Donna: What could the whole thing have been had they done that? Shorter.
[00: 09:19] Rebekah: I know, it would have been interesting for sure.
Okay, you can’t be poo poo poo on all of this. I like
[00: 09:28] Josiah: the beginning of Jacob’s POV too. Yeah.
[00: 09:32] Rebekah: So, we’re kind of just talking about a few things in Breaking Dawn Part 1, which covers the first and second sections of the book, Bella’s perspective and then Jacob’s. So, a couple of little things. The beginning of the film, like, omits or changes several things.
First of all, because we’re outside of Bella’s POV, we see the Volturi. who are getting a wedding announcement. They don’t show up until they’re mentioned in the second half of the book, but in the film we see them a couple times. Jacob, in the book, sees the wedding announcement and runs away, while as in the film, sorry that’s in the film, in the book Bella has like kind of recounted the fact that he had run away.
It’s a little unclear as to why, and like, Charlie has been trying to put on a search for him and is upset with Billy who did not want to help search for him because he thought Billy was being ridiculous. We then see in the movie Bella breaking in her wedding shoes, but that’s at the Cullens house. In the book, there’s a fitting scene that Bella does with Alice, but it’s when Bella walks in her home and Charlie is like finishing his tux fitting.
So again, we talked about this in the last episode, but Charlie’s relationship with Alice, was all but cut from the films like where he was really close to Alice, which was kind of a bummer. Also, we do not make mention of the before car. The book talks about how her truck mysteriously broke down after she agreed to let Edward give her a before car and an after car.
[00: 10:53] Josiah: I think that that really feels like a scene that E. L. James Plucked out and said that’s definitely gonna be part of Fifty Shades of Grey. Yeah,
[00: 11:03] Rebekah: I have no idea because I’ve never seen Fifty Shades, but, uh, somehow that doesn’t shock me.
[00: 11:08] Josiah: Her boyfriend is a billionaire or whatever.
[00: 11:10] Rebekah: Oh, gotcha. We find out in the books that the Mercedes Guardian is the car that was the before car which is seen in in the film, I guess, but it’s not clear.
It’s kind of like a nod to the book. She’s
[00: 11:25] Donna: just driving the cars. They never really make note of them, but she happens to be in a car in each movie. Yeah.
[00: 11:33] Rebekah: Gotcha. So it’s like a, it’s like a tank proof car and it’s like this whole joke that Edward thought she was in need of that. And then her after car is the Ferrari, which we also see in the movies, but it’s again, not mentioned.
There’s like a pre wedding night, big change to the pre wedding night thing, which again, this is all at the very beginning of the movie. Basically, Edward tells her about how he had killed people when he had left Carlisle temporarily early on in his vampire life, and he’s trying to see if she wants to give up on him.
Which, by the way, he does discuss with her, but it’s in the first Twilight book. Um, and they wait until this, movie to discuss it. Instead of that in the book, they actually talk about the Immortal Children stuff, which we’ll talk about a little bit later. And they go through this whole thing. And then Bella has a nightmare in the book that’s way different that has to do with the Immortal Children.
Um, they really introduce and push that in the book a lot more than they do in the movie. And then in the book, Bella’s also registered to go to Dartmouth in the fall as part of their like cover story. Very big changes just to kind of. set us off and show that it’s going to be quite different. I hadn’t read the books in a really long time so then when I went back and had just read it again and then watched the movie I was surprised like how much different the beginning was.
[00: 12:45] Donna: I thought that Jacob seeing the announcement was powerful. Most of what you read here I was okay with. There is a pretty cool scene in the book with the cars where she stops. And these guys are like all over the car. You think they’re going to be looking at her, but they’re really, it’s all the car. And isn’t that a Mercedes Guardian?
And they, which it was kind of a fun scene to read, but I get for the purpose of time, you want to, you couldn’t put it in. But
[00: 13:10] Rebekah: I was fine with most of the changes. I think I just didn’t like the whole like Edward sharing. Yeah. That he killed people, like that just seems so dumb. At this point,
[00: 13:21] Donna: she’s,
[00: 13:21] Rebekah: she’s so far.
He was like trying to talk her out of getting married and I’m like, why?
[00: 13:24] Josiah: And I think it makes a lot more sense and it’s less manipulative and toxic for him to have talked about it in the first Twilight book as opposed to the night before they get married.
[00: 13:35] Tim: Hey, by the way, we’re getting ready to get married.
I should tell you about my serial killer time.
[00: 13:41] Donna: Yeah, just so, just in case I hadn’t mentioned it to you before. Oh my
[00: 13:44] Tim: goodness.
[00: 13:45] Donna: And you’ve put up with all the other stuff I’ve done, so. And she’s like, oh yeah,
[00: 13:48] Josiah: kill anyone, I love you.
[00: 13:51] Donna: But Edward, they were all bad people. That’s tough, fine with me.
[00: 13:55] Josiah: Oh my goodness, Stephanie Meyer, I get it.
There’s no nuance at all. He’s only ever killed bad people. I get it. Yeah, that’s it.
[00: 14:04] Rebekah: I also feel like the whole cutting the immortal children nightmare and like that introduction, I think that was just because they really wanted to save that for the second movie and because they decided to split it up.
Like I understand why they got rid of it. So and I
[00: 14:18] Josiah: do think they replaced it because in the book it serves as yes, world building, but it serves as set up. to the problem the Volturi is going to have with the Renesmee and I think they replace it with the two Volturi scenes in the movie. So you still have that set up for the ultimate conflict.
[00: 14:36] Donna: The wedding, it takes place outside, wedding and reception. Of course, in the book, the ceremony was inside the house and then once the actual, you know, once the direct sunlight was gone, they, uh, they take them outside for, for reception. You get more interactions at the wedding on the movie. Like the school friends talking to Alice and Jasper, they did some, a little bit of that, the dancing they had, showed some dancing and you see a little bit of Billy and Charlie and Sue.
Billy jabs Charlie with his wheelchair when he’s trying to get something and you know, they’re kind of fighting over Sue a little bit.
[00: 15:12] Rebekah: Yeah, I, by the way, did not catch that in the book until this last time I read it. I was like, Oh my gosh, there’s this like whole little thing that she keeps mentioning, which by the way has zero payoff because of the end.
The book is basically like, Bella’s like, Oh, I’ve ignored my dad. I should talk to him. I’m sure he’s okay. There’s no resolution.
[00: 15:30] Donna: Yeah.
[00: 15:31] Rebekah: I’m sure it’s fine.
[00: 15:32] Donna: Yeah. You’ve got the, the crazy wedding speeches and you had Emmett making awkward sex joke and Jessica saying, Oh, you know, Edward liked Bella and Bella loved Edward.
Uh, he didn’t go for the head cheerleader and then Charlie threatens him. Alice talks about her fashion issues, Renee sings. So awkward. And an Esme thanks parents and all that. But I will say that the interactions with the friends. And the, this part that they went through with the reception, I liked that.
It seemed normal, natural stuff. Now, maybe, maybe most wedding speeches aren’t so goofy as like Emmett’s and Jessica’s, but I liked it because they would show the person talking and then they would show different people in the audience and they look natural. It looked like it was just a natural exchange and it’s funny.
They’re married now and you can make these little jokes. So I really thought those were pretty cool additions.
[00: 16:36] Josiah: Have you ever read Save the Cat?
[00: 16:38] Donna: Uh, no. It’s a
[00: 16:41] Josiah: flawed book, but it’s a good thing to know if you’re writing stories as a, not as your only tool, but as a tool, a tool in your tool belt. He talks about what he sees as what every movie’s outline should be.
And part of that outline is fun and games. And that’s really stuck with me. As a, uh, as a piece of a plot, whenever you, you promise the audience a premise, and the fun and games is the section or sections, Where you deliver on that promise, even if it’s not necessarily directly related to the plot. You, usually it’s taking something that is related to the plot and expounding upon it, because this was your primary promise to the audience, and the audience wants more.
So I think that the people who are watching Twilight, the, the true fans are gonna be invested in Edward and Bella. And, you know, Yeah, their wedding is a huge deal. So I think that it’s more than justified to spend time on this wedding I mean, I think some of the best Twilight scenes are when it is just real life Anna Kendrick, you know Charlie yeah talking like normal humans and I think it does speak to the theme in the plot of the movie anyway It gives you this, uh, picture of Bella, Bella’s human life, and it’s kind of a farewell.
I think it is literally a farewell to most of the high school characters, right? It is. And so it’s this Yes,
[00: 18:13] Rebekah: it’s like the last time that they’re gonna do that.
[00: 18:16] Josiah: Yeah, so even if everyone doesn’t fully know that Bella’s gonna get bit, then it is a farewell to them in multiple ways.
[00: 18:24] Rebekah: The speeches were one of my favorite additions to the movie.
I thought it was like, charming. I actually laughed, like, going back and seeing them. I thought you got to see characterization that you get in the book, like, Books spread out over the four books, but it was just really cool to see it all come together So I was a big fan of that edition
[00: 18:43] Donna: cuz I love when she looks at her and says go to sleep my love They’re like, oh my god It’s
[00: 18:51] Rebekah: like so cringy, but the best kind of cringy best
[00: 18:55] Josiah: cringy one thing about another thing about the wedding is that Irina?
Irina does not come to the wedding in the book, but she does show up at the wedding in the movie. Promises to behave until getting agitated seeing werewolves at the wedding. And I think this is a good change for the movie because it’s a visual medium. You get to see her at the wedding and it makes more sense when you see her later.
Whereas in the book, I don’t think it was horrible that she wasn’t at the wedding because you see her name on the page. You know, you see Irina. People are talking about Irina. This is Irina’s backstory. This is why So you get that in the book, but in the movie, I think it was necessary for her to show up at the wedding in person.
Agreed.
[00: 19:39] Rebekah: I agree, because it’s been two books at this point, or two movies as well, since the werewolves killed Laurent, which is what caused her to be so upset with him, so I thought it was a good addition. I agree with that.
[00: 19:49] Josiah: We want to get, get past the wedding into the honeymoon? Um, okay.
[00: 19:54] Rebekah: Yeah! Let’s talk about sex babies.
Okay, so after in the movie, uh, Bella and Edward in the movie go through downtown Rio that does not occur in the book at all um, and they arrive at Esmé’s Island and there is a little bit more of the sex scene in the movie than there is in the book because the book it like basically goes to her going out in the water with him after her minor freakout and then The next morning, I think
[00: 20:26] Tim: this is the payoff for all of those 12 to 13 year old girls that were Waiting for this romance to really blossom into this beautiful time
[00: 20:35] Rebekah: well I think it did pay off because honestly, I don’t know if this is like just me or what you guys think about this I thought the scene on like honestly everything on the island Was some of my favorite part of like the entire movie honestly both breaking dawn movies.
I would say You The whole, like, island section was one of my favorites. I watched Kristen Stewart play out this character that I’d read on the page, and she absolutely brought it to life. I honestly feel better than she had in some of the other movies. I believed her, I believed what her struggle was, and, like, that she was, you know, You know nervous and then realized I love the line in the book where it’s like I realized that I don’t know how anyone ever Does this without someone making a commitment like the one Edward made to me?
I thought it was like this really sweet nod to like the fact that they waited and there was payoff for her in that But just the whole thing. And then afterwards, when she’s like upset, when Edward sees the bruises, he’s so mad, but she actually enjoyed it and then wants to do it again. And all and then going into her dream, literally everything about the island stuff, I thought was really well done.
[00: 21:42] Donna: He goes out to get in the ocean at the beginning and that whole part where she’s so nervous and doesn’t know what she’s doing. And she finally just sits down beside the bed at the end of the bed. And she’s like, Get a grip, get a grip on yourself. And, you know, she’s aggravated with Alice because she’s packed a bunch of.
Yes. Sleazy clothes. Yeah. A bunch of lace and a bag.
[00: 22:06] Rebekah: I think her actual line was, don’t be a coward. Right. Don’t be a
[00: 22:10] Donna: coward. It was the dream of any girl to think that, that he would do all this and take me out to a deserted island paradigm. Oh yeah. I think you’re right on the marker, Becca. It’s, it just, it gets every girl at that, at the heart of this fairy tale.
Now, would I have ever wanted your dad to go to all that? expense and all the, you know, whatever. No, I would never expect that. He loves me and I don’t need all that extra fluff.
[00: 22:42] Rebekah: Josh, if you’re listening to this. You can go ahead and buy me a private island,
[00: 22:46] Tim: okay? I think, I think this whole section also speaks to, uh, Meyer’s morality.
She, she makes it very clear that in the bounds of marriage, this is a beautiful thing and sharing yourself with someone and all of those kinds of things are all in the right context. And I think she makes it something beautiful.
[00: 23:08] Donna: You know, at the time, supposedly Kristen and Robert were dating, you know, through all that time of filming and they had a real life romance, which I’m sure just completely blew the money that made this thing made off the chart.
Every trivia part or fun fact I read, all of them included a section that was like the sex scenes that they filmed. They had to cut and back off so much. They were totally rated R. At least one part of one scene got an R rating and they had to go back to the editing and edited out some stuff.
[00: 23:41] Rebekah: We go to the scenes where essentially we switch over to Jacob’s When he learns that Bella has come home, I think that it’s fascinating that they did not include anything in the film where Edward told Jacob to offer Bella that she could have puppies if she wanted to, which is like super creepy and awful in the book, but it goes to speak to like Edward’s desperation.
And honestly, like the whole, I’ll just like briefly cover this, because I thought this was really interesting. Honestly, the whole section. about her growth and like Bella getting sicker and sicker. Edward is way meaner in the movie. Like in the book, he’s so overly nice to her. He tries not to guilt her about anything.
But like there’s a scene in the movie where like Edward basically forces Carlisle to give Bella a guilt trip because the fetus is incompatible with her, with her body. And like he they have this whole thing where he like yells at her. How she’s decided to leave him, you know, and he didn’t have, it wasn’t part of his choice and all this stuff.
And like, honestly, I don’t hate it. I think he’s absolutely like, right. If I’m just looking at it from the perspective of like, if this was real, um, but even him offering like to let her have a baby with Jacob and stuff, he’s so desperate. He’s so distraught. And I guess. The changes in the movie maybe were there to show that that was going on but it definitely feels more in the movie like he was more mean than Sad
[00: 25:19] Josiah: the pregnancy plot line is when it really clicked for me I was totally sold in this part of the book when I realized that stephanie meyer Wrote bella to be selfless to her own detriment on purpose instead of accidentally writing it as her own fantasy or something like that.
I, um, cause I, I’ve heard people make fun of the character of Bella quite callously, um, about wanting to keep her baby alive, even though it is literally killing her, which yes, if it’s, if it’s going to kill you, I think that’s a serious conversation, but she obviously had an out. that she wanted to take in becoming a vampire.
But, even though it was killing her, it was causing her all this pain, in the meantime, I was, I was reading, I guess you kind of get this in the movie, I was reading the book and I realized, Oh, everything that annoyed us about Bella in the first three books, this is the same character.
[00: 26:25] Donna (2): She would,
[00: 26:27] Josiah: she would absolutely kill herself to bring her baby into the world.
knowing everything we know about her from previous books, she absolutely would do that. And I also think in a very macabre way, probably not a purposeful way on Stephanie Iyer’s behalf, but in a very macabre way, I think that Bella going through horrible torment through her pregnancy, very quick pregnancy, but is almost a way to say to all the boyfriends in the audience, Hey, isn’t it kind of funny to watch this person you hate go through terrible pain and suffering?
I think it has that unintended effect of every, every frustration that you’ve had with Bella, suddenly she is paying for her irrational selflessness, quote unquote. Um, so I think Especially reading the book, and I guess it was there in the movie, but especially reading the book, it opened my eyes to Bella as a character and the themes surrounding that, her, the consequences of her choices actually having consequences.
Um, so I, I think that one of my favorite plot lines is the surprise, is the twist that she, uh, gets pregnant with a half vampire that is killing her from the inside out.
[00: 27:52] Donna: At the end of the third movie. She so desperately wanted to help them in that fight and I kept thinking Bella. You’re the human in this Everybody else involved has power.
You don’t have Give it a rest But then I kind of like you just described with seeing this from a selfless person point of view It dawned on me. Oh Everything she loves her best friend the love of her life her this new family You They’re all putting themselves in peril, and literally she can do nothing.
So then, the scene where she cuts herself to give that distraction, she’s the third wife in the story and all that, I saw that same thing. It was like, oh. And so I would agree. You get glimpses there that are really good, and I wish I had felt that from the beginning of the series.
[00: 28:50] Josiah: Yeah. One thing I wanted to talk about is the fact that A third of, of the Breaking Dawn book is told from Jacob’s point of view, which is absolutely insane to me.
When I, I heard it right, right before I started reading the book, I heard that, that he had a whole section of the book, a whole third of the book, and I had no idea what to expect. What I was expecting, I’ll try and keep this brief, but What I was expecting going in was Him to be mad about Bella being all killed up by the baby And nothing else And at first I was pleased because his point of view opens up with, um, him taking over the pack, well, him overcoming his alpha and forming his own pack with the Clearwater siblings.
And so that was kind of action packed and it was character driven through his love of Bella, maybe his future love of Renesmee that he doesn’t even know yet, but it’s driven by his character. It’s a big action packed character moment that starts off his POV in a surprising way, in an in an exciting way that I was surprised by.
And then, you know, he spends about 10 chapters lamenting how Bella looks, and then I was like, okay, this is more of what I expected to be bored by Jacob’s POV. The plot picks up a little. when Bella has to drink blood, which I think was a fun little plot point, but on the whole, I do think Jacob’s point of view in the book is like 75 percent filler that I hate.
Other than the, the opening, his relationship with Rosalie is fun, and it’s fun to suss out Like, what is Rosalie getting out of this? Yeah,
[00: 30:47] Tim: like the scene in the book where, where he throws his dog bowl that she gave him. Oh, yeah. Was that in the movie? Oh, it’s in the extended
[00: 30:55] Josiah: version of the movie. Although Jacob’s POV was how you experience the pregnancy, and I didn’t really like Jacob’s POV on the whole, I think the pregnancy plotline was great.
It revealed so much about everyone’s characters. It’s, it’s, uh, there’s an age, there’s an age old saying that If, uh, if you don’t know what to do as a writer in your, in your story, break your character’s legs and see how everyone reacts to that and, uh, take away their ability, make it, make life harder for them to see their character through the reactions to that.
And so Bella’s pregnancy, I think works, especially in the book when you get more characterization, but it makes me think like, Oh, Rosalie! Why is she so for this and it makes, I assume, what I get out of it is that she is the one who wanted most to be human out of all the vampires and so, uh, she desperately wanted to have a child and now there’s a chance and Um, that’s part of it.
They’re pretty complex characters, honestly. The movie did a good job of cutting down Jacob’s point of view. Cutting down on the Seth and Leah stuff. Honestly, Seth and Leah, it was nice that they joined Jacob’s pack. And so I liked them when they did that. But then after a chapter or two, I just hated every time we went to Seth or Leah.
I was like, it does not affect the plot. This does not affect the plot, and so it grated on my nerves, and I think the movie kind of improved on that aspect.
[00: 32:32] Rebekah: That’s so interesting. I don’t know that I agree with that.
[00: 32:35] Donna: I like the actor that played Seth, too.
[00: 32:37] Josiah: Mm. I care less about introspection in books going on, prattling on and on about in your head.
Inner monologue if it, if it’s like repetitive. I felt like it was very repetitive. But also I will say that Taylor Latner, his acting improved in the third movie and it went back to being bad for these two movies. So , that’s a negative really, I think. I think he was given bad. I think he is a bad actor and he was also given bad material.
[00: 33:06] Rebekah: That’s so interesting. I thought that he did a pretty decent job. Like, well, and obviously all of that is. of like how I feel like he did in the previous movies.
Like all of the Jacob, Leah, Seth stuff with the other pack and like I was like kind of bummed that they took all the stuff out about Them patrolling and like Leah talking to him about Understanding Bella feeling like a you know genetic dead end and like I did or understanding Rosalie I should say I don’t know.
I thought that was all really interesting. But
[00: 33:41] Josiah: yeah, how did you feel about the one big wolf scene? That was In the movie.
[00: 33:47] Rebekah: It was the tackiest or it was so bad. I mean, like everything about it was terrible. It’s hard to hear what they’re saying. I felt like the dialogue felt really forced, like the acting was really bad in that scene.
So I’m not a fan of that in the movie. And I was not a fan of like him talking to the wolves later on after the packs are split. And they like, I don’t know, it was just all of that was not great in the movie to me. I agree.
[00: 34:12] Donna: So we’re saying a scene. Where no humans appear on the screen, and it’s CG CG wolves.
That That was bad, and I agree with I agree by the way. I just think it’s funny though. Yeah, our our super hot change. Even that was bad.
[00: 34:32] Tim: The s the CG acting was bad. Yeah,
[00: 34:36] Donna: the CG acting was really bad.
[00: 34:38] Rebekah: Well, I, I think though that that, I think that speaks to a good point in talking about, like, book to movie changes.
Because one of the things that they did was, you don’t see the wolves in their wolf form nearly as much. You see them in their human forms talking as humans. And I think that when you translate that to the screen, especially, we’re talking about over a decade ago at this point, point CGI wise, especially where the technology was not super convincing.
Like as much as some of that felt inconsistent, I got it. Like I understood the changes and it made sense. And I, I was like more able to engage with it. Yeah. Just a couple of quick other little things that happened during that period of time. We don’t have to talk about these in depth. I just thought they were interesting in the book.
For those of you who have only seen the movie, um, there’s like several discussions between Uh, Carlisle and Edward and Alice at one point about how Jacob and Renesmee are very similar. Uh, like, the vampires have 25 chromosome pairs, humans have 23. They point out that Jacob has 24 chromosome pairs genetically.
And they guess that Renesmee does. Um, they also point out, you know, Alice can’t see their future, but Edward is able to see their thoughts. So the movie doesn’t include any of those discussions. So there’s a scene in the movie where Edward first hears her thinking. Um, in the book that when this happens Jacob was like sitting in the room with them and Edward like puts his ear up to Bella’s belly and it was like this really crazy thing because Edward had been so distressed about the baby at that point.
But Jacob, like, feels like he’s losing his mind at that point in the mo er, in the book. And in the movie, he, like, gets upset, and nothing really happens, and then they go into Carlisle, like, asking him, like, to help them go hunt. Cause they really need to go. They’re very thirsty, whatever. And in the book there’s this whole scene where Jacob feels like he’s losing his mind.
Edward throws him a set of car keys and he like drives their Aston Martin vanquish to a nearby mall and like has this like interaction with a girl and he’s like desperately trying to imprint. And again, you’re taking out, I understand why you take it out. Don’t think it should have been left in, but as the same way as you took out, uh, Edward’s desperation, I feel like they took out Jacob’s desperation as.
Like to shorten the film and it again, it feels like it gives the character so much less depth. Yes Yeah,
[00: 37:00] Donna: I thought the whole section of Bella on the table. She’s conscious for most of it until The baby starts coming and well even through that there’s consciousness and she kind of goes in and out But you know a lot of stuff goes on so In the book, you know, Edward is all about her.
They’ve got the, the thing about him biting her major arteries and giving the morphine and things like that. In the film, you know, he cares for Renesmee after he After he’s been able to deliver her. And I think the pace of that is okay. They also had to scale back on this part.
[00: 37:40] Josiah: Oh, like how gruesome they were.
It got to,
[00: 37:42] Donna: it got to grow gruesome for PG 13. I do appreciate that. They didn’t go a lot farther, you know, in the film, Jacob doesn’t give her CPR. He does this in the book. They just kind of retooled how each of the people that could be in the room, what they could do. I thought that was handled pretty well.
That is a super. Intense scene him injecting the venom, you know, it brings out that cool long vial of the silvery liquid and. and injects his venom and they had that ready and
[00: 38:12] Rebekah: I actually did have a huge problem with the pacing. I felt like it wasn’t frantic enough for what was going on. Like the book communicated so well that Edward was like flitting around doing everything he could possibly do.
And the movie was just like, well, I guess we’ll inject this and stare at her. Like it just didn’t feel urgent enough. I agree. Like, I agree. I don’t want it to have been R rated. I honestly felt like the grossness of like her breaking her knees when she fell and then like her back breaking and all that stuff was very intense.
In my opinion, like it grosses me out. So I don’t have a problem with toning down the, Severity, but boy, did I just, I did not understand. And that whole thing, by the way, like Jacob absolutely sees Renesmee during that scene and smiles at Bella holding her, which is also inconsistent, which is a problem because he imprints the first time he sees her.
Like you imprint on them when you see them. The whole thing just feels so. It’s slower than it should have been, and it like breaks some of the world building that they had already built in. Interesting. It just, it bothered, it honestly, like I was very annoyed watching it back.
[00: 39:28] Josiah: I think that it’s valiant that they tried to add in the action scene of the wolves attacking.
I don’t think it was perfect because the Eclipse movie and book sets up, in my view, The vampires and wolves working together and for it to be so easily tossed aside And I know that there’s a little bit of conflict with the wolves, but I didn’t love that Oh, yeah, we were a team last movie and now we’re not a next movie We are going to be so it was a little back and forth for me But I think it was valiant that they tried to add a little a visual action that wasn’t necessarily needed in the book But in the movie made for a better climax.
It wasn’t perfect, but I think that was a pretty good change
[00: 40:12] Rebekah: I like the conflict between the Wolves and the Cullens Because there was this whole thing where, or sorry, Jacob just was unsure of like what to feel He loved her but he wanted to be able to hate her when she turned to be a vampire and then the Baby thing creates this whole other complication and then Sam and like I thought it was interesting Um, I don’t know Yeah, I thought it, I thought the movie actually did a decent job at altering what was going on to make it feel believable, but I do see what you mean.
It’s like you kind of set something up and then reverse it and then reverse it again and it’s like, it feels like a lot of back and forth that ends up being, like the end result is the exact same, yes. Does anybody else feel like the movies just seemed creepy in terms of the whole Jacob Ernesme thing?
[00: 41:01] Josiah: Yeah, well in the book isn’t, doesn’t some other wolf imprint on a kid?
[00: 41:06] Tim: Yes, that was, that was something that my understanding is. It’s a tiny tidbit that flashes across the screen. You only notice it if you are looking for it. And that’s the only mention. Otherwise, I watched the movie at least twice. I didn’t even catch it.
Rebecca told me it was there.
[00: 41:27] Donna: Yeah, he does, they do get a little farther into the book.
[00: 41:30] Tim: Yeah.
[00: 41:31] Donna: To just describe. If it’s a child, your only concern is their protection and that they’re happy.
[00: 41:38] Rebekah: I think they talk about that in Eclipse when Jacob is explaining. That’s true. When
[00: 41:43] Donna: they talk about Emily and He’s
[00: 41:45] Rebekah: like explaining it to Quil or to Bella because Bella hears that Quil imprinted on Claire and was like, Oh, that’s really creepy.
And then he’s like, it’s not. I’m in his head. Like, and he explains that he can hear Quill’s thoughts.
[00: 41:59] Tim: In the book, the Volturi don’t actually show up until, till the end, but there’s an intro scene in the mid credits scene where they appear, we see a human sharing Bella and Edward’s wedding invite with Oro and the other Volturi.
The wedding announcement is mentioned as Alice saw. In the mid credits, there’s a scene where they receive a message from Carlisle. Uh, to say a new member has been added to the coven. Uh, Marcus makes a comment that it’s a good thing the feud with the Cullens is over. At which point, Aro says that of course it isn’t.
They have something he wants. So they, they, They do a little more foreshadowing of, of what in the book is just toward the end you, Oh, that’s right. The Volturi are part of this story as well.
[00: 42:46] Rebekah: I think it was absolutely to set up the second film. Sure. Cause you had to
[00: 42:50] Donna: break somewhere.
[00: 42:51] Josiah: Yeah. And I think the immortal children in the book helps set stuff up, but I think, I think it’s better in the movie.
To set it up as the Valkyrie being, because they are the villains at the end of the story. So.
[00: 43:07] Rebekah: All right. Let’s talk about differences in Breaking Dawn part two. Yeah. So what did you guys notice? That were the most major changes from book to movie. I mean a lot less happens true
[00: 43:16] Donna: You know Bella it opens up on her red eyes She sees everything and you see the flecks of dust in the air and she hugs Edward in the movie It shows her is like already controlled but in the book she has a little bit some mood swings and she’s like Yeah, things are a little less solid.
I totally get why they started out the movie with her being a little farther along. A lot has to happen in this movie. You know, I can see they add in so many people. that you need to try to sort out. I can see why they start out here.
[00: 43:51] Josiah: Does a lot actually happen in this film or is it just a bunch of new characters and do they really need to all be here?
[00: 44:00] Rebekah: True. Yeah, so they actually cut out some of the characters that appear in the book. In the film, there’s like several characters that don’t even appear, you know, at all. I would say there’s probably not a whole lot that happens. I do understand where you’re going with that. I did not particularly like That they jumped right into Bella being fine.
Because the fact that she adjusted so quickly was a huge deal. Like they had been leading up to her crazed newborn thing. Yeah, it was a bigger
[00: 44:25] Josiah: deal in the book.
[00: 44:26] Donna: Yes. But she’s super Bella Yeah And I did agree that not a lot happens in the movie by the way It’s the people
[00: 44:39] Josiah: you have to get there’s so many people but I do think the book does a better job of With, for the first half of the book, and then the latter half, uh, is the payoff of, Oh, we’re so worried about Bella, won’t be able to see Charlie for a year.
We’re gonna have to go around the world. We have so much blood in storage and stuff like that. And, in the book, it takes too long, in my opinion, to get to the Volturi. Um, it takes like ten chapters before Alice has a vision of the Volturi, which is very annoying to me. But, there is a payoff of, oh, Bella’s really good at this, and it’s surprising.
Instead of, we just need to wrap this up right away. I was, I was going to mention that, uh, the iconic meme scene. of Bella discovering Jacob imprinting on Renesmee. Uh, there are, there’s a, it’s a little different from book to movie. Essentially, the, the feeling is the same. I was surprised at how much of the cringey dialogue was taken from the book.
Bella in the book literally says, You named my b Maybe after the Loch Ness Monster or something like that. I was surprised that was in the book. It does not Translate well
[00: 45:52] Rebekah: at all. It was not a good line to begin with but it did not translate well at all to the
[00: 45:56] Josiah: screen No, so like the thought about it stuff with Jacob and Renesmee Now correct me if I’m wrong, but by the end without mentioning it does Bella start calling her Nessie in her own internal monologue.
[00: 46:12] Rebekah: Are you talking about the book or the film?
[00: 46:14] Josiah: I think, I think by the epilogue of the book she might refer to her as Nessie. That is correct. And I, I do think that that’s kind of a cute character moment where she’s so opposed to it. But, uh, she’s coming around.
[00: 46:28] Rebekah: I also thought it was weird that when Bella meets Renesmee, for the first time after she’s had her first taste of human blood, all the family members in the book, like, restrain her.
They’re holding her back. The film just shows her holding the baby and seeing her thoughts. And while it’s great that Bella has this self control, it’s The same thing happens when Charlie is at their house later. A couple of days later, they like let her hang out alone with Charlie in the movie, which would never have happened.
They were really, really, really cautious about all of that. She doesn’t change that much visually because they didn’t. Honestly, in my opinion, do a good job with that. They weren’t pale enough. There’s not notes of them being cold a lot. None of her vampire changes seem to be particularly impressive in terms of like, well, I guess it’s fine if Charlie sees me.
[00: 47:13] Josiah: Like, why does it matter? What we talked about with Hunger Games, actors in movies are already attractive, so it’s hard to make them more attractive necessarily. But I speaking of Charlie, speaking of throwing caution to the wind, Uh, I love that they showed the scene of Jacob revealing himself to Charlie.
I love it, not in a genuine way, but in an ironic way, of wow, this is so bad that it’s good, sort of way. I just feel like in a five movie series, where only in books, only in movies two and three, Is there really an inkling of a question of Jacob or Edward? To have that love triangle that only applies to two out of five films.
It felt like Jacob was just being given things to do. That, where he could take his shirt off, especially. Twelve year old girls. I do like the moment of, the character moment of Jacob telling Charlie behind everyone’s backs. I think that gives him a unique, uh, character moment where everyone was trying to protect Charlie from the Volturi.
But Jacob, who maybe doesn’t fully understand the threat of the Valtyrie, he goes out of his way to say, no, Charlie would give his life to know that Bella is okay. And for Jacob to be the only one who believes that is a character moment
[00: 48:52] Tim: that I like. The timeline of Renesmee aging, um, it really seems to be sped up in the movie so much faster than it is in the book.
The passport and everything that that Bella gets for Runesme is for a five year old when she’ll actually be about three months old, uh, but she would look like she’s five or six. But by the time she’s two months old in the movie, she already looks like she could be six years old. Uh, and by the time of the fight in the clearing in the movie, she looks like she’s ten years old.
So, I mean, they really accelerated that. And I have to say, One of the things I really disliked about the movie, CG was different a decade ago. That is the creepiest stuff with the baby. Why didn’t they use a baby’s real face and then use a child’s real face? There’s just no
[00: 49:51] Josiah: reason. Why did they use a baby?
It just looked strange. Well, the funny part about that is,
[00: 49:58] Rebekah: in the book, they like describe her as looking more like of an adult shape and she’s got like a full set of teeth earlier than it seems like she should and stuff like that too, so it’s like, okay, if you’re gonna do all that I understand. Y’all, in the end credits, there are four or five different actresses.
That’s crazy. Who are named as Renesmee at different points. So they literally use different actresses like as the baby, as the younger kid, as a whatever. And then use CGI somehow.
[00: 50:26] Josiah: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
[00: 50:27] Rebekah: I thought that was really weird. No, I agree. It was it was
[00: 50:29] Josiah: kind of unforgivable.
[00: 50:31] Rebekah: I don’t disagree. Also, another thing I noticed was the the inconsistencies in the movie with Alice and Jasper and the related J.
Janks thing. So like in the film, Alice and Jasper stay for like at least a day after she sees the future thing with the Volturi happening, which is terrifying because in the book she like has to run so that Edward can’t hear her thoughts. realizing what’s going to happen because she doesn’t want Aro to know that she’s coming like there’s this whole lead up to that but it’s like in the movie she’s there there for like a day and finally run away Um, also the book changes the whole thing with like Jae Jang’s.
Alice leaves a note that’s only for Bella in You know, the book that she tore the page from to leave the note to say they had to leave. They couldn’t come back, whatever. She writes Bella a note and in the book, it has an address on it. And Bella has to like discover what Jay Jenks does. Whereas in the movie, Jay Jenks is a pretty short, uh, section of it all.
And we find out that like Jasper actually ordered passports with him for Jacob and Renesmee, because like Bella never really knows what he does. And then he just hands her the passports. And so they really like shorten a lot of that up. But again, some of it’s like inconsistent. Like I don’t mind the Jay Jenks stuff being different, but the fact that they stayed longer at the beginning was kind of weird.
So, uh, I thought that was a really notable thing that didn’t make a ton of sense to me. There was a lot more in the book about preventing Aro from knowing that there was a possibility Alice could come back.
[00: 52:03] Josiah: I didn’t love Jay Jenks in the, in the book. What about the new
[00: 52:07] Tim: characters?
[00: 52:08] Donna: This was like, Overload of people.
[00: 52:11] Tim: Yeah, at some point it just becomes too many people for the audience to keep up with
[00: 52:16] Rebekah: which is funny Because in the book they deal with that in the end of the book They have a glossary page where all of the vampires are written down and in the book They they make a joke that jacob said he was going to require Like a glossary or something if they were going to have so many Bloodsuckers in the area and so in the book physical book, there’s actually a list which I think is really funny You
[00: 52:38] Josiah: Oh, that is funny.
That would have been useful. I listened to the audiobook.
[00: 52:41] Rebekah: Yeah.
[00: 52:41] Josiah: I think that in the book, you get some more backstory and characterization on some of the characters. Whereas in the movie, you lose that backstory and characterization for the most part, but you gain a visual. And I think whenever you have a big cast of characters, it’s not just movies, it’s whenever I do plays and stuff, I notice whenever we read through a play, Sometimes, uh, it just does not translate onto the page when you have a bunch of characters.
Audiences, readers, just cannot keep everyone separate. And so having that, uh, movie visual helps the audience to differentiate. Even though I don’t think, uh, all of the extra characters were needed anyway. Uh, I think that it was kind of an improvement in some way, kind of not in other ways, kind of a wash.
[00: 53:35] Donna: The film shows like a French coven, they’ve got a Japanese vampire who Aro realizes is going to go to join Carlisle, and I kind of didn’t get that scene.
[00: 53:46] Rebekah: I understand that it’s to set up. The Volturi as the bad guys. Yeah. I do really get that, like, that’s why they do it, but
[00: 53:55] Donna: Don’t we know that? Why,
[00: 53:56] Rebekah: like, it just, also, Aro, Marcus, and Caius do not travel.
They do not go places. The fact that they came here for the Cullens was like, this huge deal. And so you’re telling me that the three of them, with two members of the guard Yeah. Went and found this other dude? for one guy.
[00: 54:13] Donna: Yeah.
[00: 54:13] Tim: But Marcus just wants to die. He’s so bored with being a vampire. We love
[00: 54:21] Donna: Marcus.
You do such a good job with that. Yes. It’s amazing because I love when he’s He’s so funny. One of the things I’ve come to wait for when I watch, re watch these is at the very end when they’re in the fight, mind fight, whatever it ends up being, and the, and the two creepy Creepy guys are coming at him and he goes finally.
It’s great. I just wait for him because I think you’re poor guy Just wants to die
[00: 54:56] Josiah: That’s what I was thinking is that you are vampire Okay, can can we get just a roll call? Who liked the fight? In Alice’s vision, I will start with a resounding love it. A. Ha ha!
[00: 55:17] Rebekah: How did I freaking know that you were going to be that person?
What are you talking about? I loved that fight. I thought it was stupid. It was a dumb waste of time. You messed up the whole fight. I was so confused in the theater. I hated it.
[00: 55:32] Donna: Rebekah, think about it this way. Every other movie had some climactic fight scene, and even though it was fine the way it went in the book, you put that on film, and after, I, I could have seen people throw tomatoes at the screen, if you’d gotten to the end, and there was nothing, For the new viewer.
Maybe not the reader.
[00: 55:56] Tim: I didn’t like how it ended in the book. And nothing for the teenage boy that had to come as a date for the teenage girl.
[00: 56:02] Rebekah: Hey, that’s what I was gonna say. Ugh, I think it’s stupid that we needed the action to keep people engaged. It just like, I don’t know, I just felt like it was so cheap.
Cause it didn’t do any, it wasn’t real. I literally think it would have been so much more interesting if they had built in a fight, like a real fight that came to a similar end as the book. The fact that it was literally a vision and it had nothing to do with anything just made me mad. I felt like it
[00: 56:34] Josiah: was pointless.
I think that, I think that I loved the vision fight, but what I did not like Is that, uh, the filmmakers kept in the book ending of bringing in the half vampire, half human. I think that was a horrible deus ex machina in the book, and the fact that they brought it into the movie was still bad. And also, It lessened the effect of the vision, because I think one of the reasons that Alice’s vision of the fight is so effective is because, in my headcanon, Uh, without the half vampire, half human coming in at the very end, after the vision fight is over, Uh, Aro, selfishly, because of his own Self preservation says, okay.
Yeah, we’re actually not gonna fight these guys and but he doesn’t say why you know, he doesn’t say well We would lose the fight because he’s also very conceited Arrogant he is a coward, but he doesn’t want people to know he’s a coward He has to maintain the facade and so I think character moment for Aro Your main villain of the entire series So that’s one of that’s I think You I mean,
[00: 57:51] Rebekah: I get all of that, but again, here’s another problem.
Alice can’t see werewolves, nor can she see half vampires.
[00: 57:59] Donna (2): There
[00: 57:59] Rebekah: are tons of things in that vision that have to do with Jacob, with Renesne, with Sam, with Leah, like with all these people, and it’s so inconsistent. Yes, Seth, er, I know Seth dies. I don’t remember if they kill Leia or not. But they start off by killing Carlisle.
Like, it’s kind of obvious ever, like, once you’ve seen it the first time, it’s like, oh, obviously this was fake. But I, I don’t particularly mind the half vampire thing coming in. I think that actually makes sense as to how it resolves things, but I just, yeah, I thought the fight was just, it goes on for so long.
It is, like, I I don’t know, 10, 12 minutes or something. Like, it was so long for the run time. It’s a five
[00: 58:42] Josiah: minute fight.
[00: 58:43] Rebekah: Rebecca. Five? Okay. Oh my gosh, it felt so much longer. I
[00: 58:47] Donna: just had an epiphany about this. I’m pretty sure that had the creators of La La Land known how you felt about the end of this movie, I bet they would have changed their whole plot.
Their whole, I bet the whole thing would have been written differently. And I think this was foreshadowing. Well, I bet that that would have made the movie worth
[00: 59:12] Rebekah: watching because La La Land is trash. Well, I know you like La La Land. It is trash. If you let me go
[00: 59:24] Tim: way back. I kinda, kinda like it. If you let me go way back in history of something you probably never saw, may have never even heard of before.
There was, um, a television show that ran for a long time. It was very popular. Um, it was called Dallas and the, the writers, they were having problems. They were having, yes, we were. And Dallas, they were having problems at a revival. They wrote one of the favored characters. They wrote him dying, I think. Yeah.
He was incause. They were, they were gone at the end of the season. And so they were going to get back at the show, at the producers and things like that. And they wrote him out of the show. He died at the end and they broke them into such a whole, uh, that the very, the next season opened. with his wife seeing him come out of the shower, which was the scene at the very beginning of the previous season.
And she said, Oh, I just had a terrible nightmare. And it was the entire season that had just, that had ended before. So that was, uh, that was one of those times. That’s different. That is different.
[01: 00:39] Rebekah: Trash!
[01: 00:40] Tim: Trash!
[01: 00:41] Rebekah: Trash! That’s
[01: 00:45] Josiah: so
[01: 00:45] Rebekah: dumb. That is
[01: 00:45] Josiah: different. That was bad. That was horrible. I, I think if I remember my film, my TV history, that was horrible.
One of the very first times that writers ever used the, it was all a dream trope. Yeah. I think it was. So they kind of got away with it with some people. So, so it wasn’t a trope at the time, that was bad. It wasn’t necessarily a trope at the time. It, it was a mistake, but it wasn’t necessarily a cliche at the time.
Um, it was a mistake because, oh, we watched a season of television. That didn’t matter, whereas in Twilight, it impacts Auro’s choices. Yeah, that’s true. Which is the important part. That’s true. Yeah, yeah. Well,
[01: 01:24] Rebekah: I know what Mom thinks, I know what Josiah thinks, Daddy, what did you think of the fight? Keeping in mind that you and I are supposed to be on a team.
[01: 01:36] Tim: No guilt involved here. Um, actually, I, I have, I have so many feelings both directions. I have It was, it was a nice action scene and all of that stuff. Oh no, it wasn’t real, and poor Marcus doesn’t get to die because he’s so bored with being a vampire. I, but I liked the book ending, so I, I’m really proud of it.
I’m really twisted on it. It’s like, okay, yeah, it was really fun. It was, it was good, but it was useless in a way. And it was very different than the book ending and just. Yeah. Yeah. I would say I liked it. I thought it was good. I’m not sure exactly why they did it unless they were just trying to get that, uh, excitement for the young male audience.
[01: 02:24] Donna: You know, and then of course they come to the end. And they wrap it up in this beautiful scene in the book at their, it was at their cottage and Bella has practiced projecting her thoughts out to Edward so he could see them. And in the book, and it reads lovely. That’s great. But I did love that they went back to the meadow.
I thought that was great. A great decision.
[01: 02:46] Rebekah: Yeah. I thought that was a good
[01: 02:47] Donna: change. And the fact that they closed it out. It was iconic. Yeah. Yes. And I thought it was great how they closed it out. Yeah. and the end credits and the way they went all the way back to people that were only in the first few movies even, but they, they picked up all the actors, they gave them all a few shots.
I thought that was great.
[01: 03:11] Josiah: I liked it. Credits honored all the actors. The credit sequence was surprisingly lovely.
[01: 03:17] Rebekah: It really was. I cry every time. Me too. I literally think I hate this series and I get the credits and I cry. Yeah,
[01: 03:25] Donna: and you don’t want to, but you do. Right. I agree. Hey, I want to cover some basic info.
Please don’t cut that. Before we head, as we head into the end of our Time together. Rotten tomatoes. Breaking Dawn 1, 25%. Not fresh. Breaking Dawn 2, 49%. Interesting because less went on. But maybe it was because the whole thing Which rounds out five
[01: 03:51] Rebekah: movies of not freshness. Yeah, exactly.
[01: 03:55] Donna: Going on, looking at audience scores, Flickster, first movie 60%, Breaking Dawn 270, and I understand the audience.
That, that to me tells me where all the 12 and 13 year old girls went to
[01: 04:10] Tim: give their rating. For a movie that people didn’t like, I am amazed at the amount of money that they made. Absolutely amazing.
[01: 04:20] Donna: Uh, box office, and the cost, the production of Breaking Dawn 1, and keep in mind the first Twilight budget was 37 million.
So Breaking Dawn 1, 110 million. Breaking Dawn 2, 120 million. A lot of movies, they’re, what’s their goal? They want to make a certain percentage in their first weekend. Okay, so 110, 000, 000, 120, 000, 000, the opening box office weekend in the U. S., 138, 000, 000 for the first movie and 141, 000, 000 for the second.
So they cleared their production cost just in the opening weekend. Which is crazy, again, because everybody believes these are horrible. So, then USA Canada. That usually
[01: 05:07] Rebekah: doesn’t include
[01: 05:07] Donna: marketing. Yeah. That’s true. Then USA Canada, Breaking Dawn 1, the gross was 281 million. And then Breaking Dawn 2 was 292 million.
And then worldwide, 430 million for Breaking Dawn 1. Everybody hold your breath. Breaking down to 848 million, and I looked at that again. 848.5 million.
[01: 05:31] Tim: That is almost $1.3 billion for these two movies.
[01: 05:38] Donna: Yeah, yeah. Unbelievable.
[01: 05:39] Tim: Billion with a B
[01: 05:40] Donna: in a one. Oh my gosh. Bit of tribute that I did not even put in my.
I did not even note some of the facts I was looking at because of the money that they made. Uh, Robert and I think Kristen, I’m not sure about Taylor, but got like 2. 5 million dollars of a bonus beyond what they made in the last movie. He got 25 million.
[01: 06:06] Josiah: The Breaking Dawn Part 2 worldwide gross. The fact that Breaking Dawn 1 and 2 US Canada gross is so close, but the worldwides are so different.
That tells me, Rebecca, that producers directly said put a big fight in at the end, with wolves and vampires, so we can make an extra 400, 000.
[01: 06:27] Rebekah: Ugh. And it worked. 400 million dollars. I say thousand, oh yeah, four hundred
[01: 06:34] Josiah: million dollars. You did. Wow, that’s a lot of money.
[01: 06:40] Donna: It’s beyond. I mean, that’s
[01: 06:42] Rebekah: right. All right.
Well, let us discuss our final verdicts. I want to know what we think about this. So I wrote a couple of things down as I was making my verdict Like I love a lot of things and I hate a lot of things like a lot of the things I disliked I vehemently disliked the things I really enjoyed. I really really love there’s so many inconsistencies in the movie It just, like, Alice shouldn’t be able to see them.
Bella is, we never talk about why Bella is unable to move. She’s completely paralyzed while she changes to being a vampire. It was because of the morphine. Like, I don’t know. There were so many things that just felt like massive gaping plot holes. I just, the whole time I was like, well, that doesn’t make sense.
Well, that doesn’t make sense. Well, that doesn’t make sense. And it really bothered me like to have to just feel that over and over. And so in my opinion, the book was absolutely better than both movies. I actually disagree with the, um, rotten tomatoes rating. I think that the breaking down part one, I enjoyed a lot.
For all of the inconsistencies and all the things like that I noticed, I actually liked it a lot. I think that their beach stuff, like I said, was really well done. All of the characterization there. I think that Jacob and like just getting in with the Cullens and their whole interactions were really interesting.
You know, I think her change was done. I think the visuals that they made were really good. So I, I don’t hate the movies. And like I said, at the end of the last movie, I literally Cry at the stinking credits every single time. But yeah, I think book, book was clearly demonstrably better in this case. The vice scene at the end was dumb.
I don’t care what anybody says. So that’s my verdict.
[01: 08:29] Donna: It’s good that we can agree to disagree. That’s all right. That’s what I say, but I will agree with you about the book to the movie, the books, the books going to win it here. I I’ve watched the movies. I’ll watch the movies again. Sorry, Rebecca, I do disagree about the fight scene at the end, but I get where you’re coming from.
[01: 08:48] Tim: Well, I think for, for me, I definitely liked the book, which is kind of amazing. I saw the movie first. And then I went back and watched the movie another time just before I listened to the audio book. And I just, I like the extra detail. I get that the visual medium is always, you know, you’re condensing it all.
And I think they did a decent job. of going from one to the other. But I like the detail in the book. The book is better.
[01: 09:23] Josiah: I think that I’m gonna split it again like I did with the last, uh, episode. I was captivated by the beginning of the novel. I, um, Love the wedding scene. Oh, I wanted to ask y’all a question.
Can you guess in the first chapter of the book? What made me tear up? Was it when Renee was talking to Bella? Wow! You sniped it. That’s exactly it. When, for a few, for a few paragraphs, it’s setting up a That Charlie is kind of smug about, Well, Renee will talk her out of it then. And then she goes to talk to Renee about getting married.
And Renee is like, She’s expecting Renee to be like marriage is the worst men are the worst, but then she says oh, no, that’s me My problem. I have problems because I’m a bad person when it comes to marriage But you are obviously prepared for this you are obviously in love and I did tear up at that. It was a nice surprise I was I don’t think that was in the movie or I didn’t they didn’t make a big deal out of it if it was No, it wasn’t.
Yeah, and so that was a very nice surprise you Um, I really loved the beginning of the book, and even though Jacob’s point of view dragged on. I thought that the book was genuinely great up until Bella became a vampire and the movie felt like part one of the final book. So I definitely give the Breaking Dawn part one To the book, but Bella going on for ten.
I can’t, I think it’s more than ten chapters as a vampire before Alice has a vision of the Volturi. There’s no conflict. The Volturi are the conflict of Breaking Dawn and they don’t come in until like the final ten chapters. There’s ten chapters, and there’s so much before that. That, that the movie condenses.
[01: 11:22] Rebekah: I would disagree that there’s no conflict because they do try to introduce being afraid about Renesmee’s well being as the conflict. Like that it was scary that she was aging so fast and they were.
[01: 11:36] Josiah: It’s certainly an interesting mystery, both when she is, when Bella is pregnant and when Renesmee is born.
It’s an interesting mystery. I don’t know how much of a conflict it is, it’s just like, Oh yeah, I like figuring out what this mystery is, what Stephanie Meyer is just deciding about little vampire human hybrids. But um, uh, with a little, I felt like there was a little more focus on Charlie. I felt like you condensed the going slow parts of The latter half of the book.
I feel like the fight was a huge improvement. And even with all of the bad stuff in the movie, whether it was in the book or not, I’m still going to edge it out for the movie for part two being better.
[01: 12:19] Rebekah: All right. Wow. Is that everybody’s? That’s everybody’s.
[01: 12:22] Tim: That’s all of us.
[01: 12:24] Rebekah: It’s okay that not all of you are correct in your, in your, uh, decisions here and how do you rate things, but I’ll let it go.
Cause we’re a family. Well, mom also thinks that the fight scene was good. So you know what I mean? Like not everybody can be right all the time. Well, I know it’s a hard burden to carry. So I don’t
[01: 12:44] Josiah: say to that, Rebecca, we can be found most places online. As at book is better pod to send feedback or future ideas can be found ideas for future episodes Email bookisbetterpod at gmail.
[01: 13:00] Rebekah: com. I’m very offended. Listen, you are not allowed to steal my thunder quite that big. So, uh, I guess we’ll leave you there. It’s been really great to do this whole series with you guys, but if I’m being honest, I’m really glad to move on to something a little bit different, and I hope that everybody else is excited too.
I’m glad to have experienced it. Agreed. Thanks for listening. Bye! Bye. Bye. Be sure to watch out for our first bonus episode that comes out next Friday where we interview a real life author about the process of taking his vision and putting it onto the page. We’ll resume with regular episodes the next week discussing the Polar Express.
We have got an episode every single Friday in December for you as our Christmas gift to you. Thanks again for listening.
[01: 13:58] Josiah: We’re such a spy drama.
