Comic-Con 2011: The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1 Footage

Thousands of dedicated Twihards camped out days in advance to see early footage of The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1 at San Diego Comic-Con 2011. Then they crammed the massive Hall H for a first glimpse and because we love you, we were there too.

After the new moon, after the eclipse, breaks the dawn. Following Stephenie Meyer's virginal vamp-lover through her big-screen adventures has become a national obsession, and much like the last Harry Potter flick, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn will be split into a pair of movies. The first one drops on November 18, 2011 and the second a little under a year later. Directed by Bill Condon, who also helmed Dreamgirls, the story picks up with Edward and Bella getting married, going to Brazil, finally banging, and having a kid that will... change everything. Condon opened by saying how excited he was to work on the movie, "It's a lucky thing for a director. It's all third act. Everything's been leading up to this."

The first clip shown came from late in the movie, with Jacob Black having defected from his pack to protect Bella and the baby. The acting is as wooden as ever, laden with dramatic and portentous pauses, but the composition is gorgeous. Jacob takes off to the woods to confront his former pack, demanding that they stay away from Bella and the baby until the child is born. It closes on a dramatic note, with Jacob saying that he'll take care of the problem. "I'm the only one that can. They trust me."

The second clip had the audience screaming with sheer horrifying delight all through it. When Condon announced that it would be a segment from Bella and Edward's honeymoon in Brazil, Hall H exploded. This clip had a pretty odd tone, veering from a very traditional romance to a sort of perplexing comedic segment where Stewart has a ditzy panic attack about getting ready for her big evening of vampire boning. It all felt a little schizophrenic, but there was some nice non-verbal acting from the two leads. It ends with Stewart dropping her towel to wade into the ocean in the buff to join Pattinson. You can only guess how that went over.

It's fair to estimate that the climax of the first movie will be Edward transforming Bella into a vampire so she survives the violent birth of daughter Renesmee. Side note: that is a horrible, horrible name. The Cullens must band together against the Volturi to protect the baby's life. Stewart says "We wanted to go as hardcore as we could with the birthing scene," which took two days to film. The whole cast played up the birth scene multiple times, with Lautner claiming "It's stunning, it's phenomenal."

An interesting thing about the Twilight films as opposed to many of the modern franchises is that they're not unified by a single hand on the directorial reigns. From what we saw, Condon brings his own sensibility to the footage, with a lot of attention paid to carefully-constructed environments and simple but effective shot framing. He started out with horror movies, and claims that "Breaking Dawn 1, at the end, turns into a really cool horror movie."

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn 1 opens November 18, 2011.