The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2

4/10

Why is the Twilight series exponentially more popular than the more intriguing Interview with the Vampire?  Anne Rice’s Louis and Lestat witness history, carry around significant emotional baggage, and speak dialogue worthy of a screenwriter.  The Twilight Saga vampires are wooden caricatures, repeat the 12^th grade over and over again, and carry on some of the most stunted and underwhelming conversations ever filmed.  Teenage vampires must be more accessible to today’s occult audience than older vampires stuck in their 20s for the rest of their lives.

Breaking Dawn - Part 2 begins immediately where Part 1 ended.  Bella (Kristen Stewart) wakes up from one of the most intense birthing scenes ever recorded a ruby red-lipped, red-eyed, pale vampire.  She sees minute details football fields in front of her, sprints faster than a car, jumps to the tree tops, and lusts after warm blooded creatures, both human and animal.  For her first kill, instead of taking out a poor, innocent doe she was tracking, Bella sinks her fangs into what is most likely an endangered mountain lion who was about to feast on the deer.    

The spawn of the previously mentioned birth is the unfortunately named Renesmee (Mackenzie Foy).  CGI effects make her look more like Gollum than the half-human, half-vampire she is.  She’s got nothing on Kirsten Dunst’s Claudia in the vampire department.  She is also saddled with Jacob the werewolf protector (Taylor Lautner) who puts off an extremely disturbing vibe that in the future he is going to become much more than Renesmee’s bodyguard.  In an awkward and forced anger scene, Bella kicks the crap out of Jacob for his ‘imprinting’ on her infant daughter as an amused Edward (Robert Pattinson) looks on.  At least Jacob as a werewolf looks somewhat believable. 

The special effects showing vampires running through the woods are noticeably off.  When Bella and Edward are shown in close-up admiring one another while sprinting, they blatantly do not fit in with the passing background.  It takes the audience right out of the movie experience.  Another incongruent element is the advanced rate of Renesmee’s development.  She grows six inches every month or so which confuses Bella’s poor father Charlie (Billy Burke).  Charlie is written as the dumbest human being alive.  Jacob needlessly disrobes in front of him to show him he is a werewolf and Bella tells him she is fine but cannot tell him anything else about herself, even why she looks different.  They tell Charlie Resmenee is his adopted niece even though she looks exactly like her mother.  Poor Charlie.  These Twilight films never give him a chance to be more than a bumbling fool.

So will there finally be a pay-off?  Twilight audiences have gone through five films now just waiting for something to happen.  Through a misunderstanding involving Irina (Maggie Grace), a vampire cousin, the ancient vampire leaders known as the Volturi learn Edward and Bella had a child which runs afoul of one of the top three vampire rules.  Aro (Michael Sheen) and Jane (Dakota Fanning) lead a robed and hooded clan to go and meet the Pacific Northwest clan on the snowy field of battle.  Michael Sheen purposefully overacts; however, this works since anyone who is as old as he seems to be probably has a few cobwebs in the attic.  At least he makes up for monosyllabic Jane who only gets to mumble the word ‘pain’ every now and again.

The Maggie Grace curse strikes again!  No matter the material, if the casting director chooses Maggie Grace, your film is going to be the worse for it.  She was the worst character on Lost, the weak link in the Taken series, and helped torpedo an already horrible film from earlier this year, Lockout.  Of course she is involved in a Three’s Company misunderstanding leading to a cascade of unnecessary stand-offs, world travel, and overall nuisance.  At least she was the catalyst for the most interesting part of the film, the gathering and introduction of other vampires of the world.  It seems globalization has affected blood-suckers as well.  There is the British guy, the Irish family, the Transylvanians with corresponding atrocious accents, the Arab, and even a pair of Amazon warriors. 

The pay-off is two armies on opposing sides of a large and open field in the dead of winter.  Vampires are lucky they do not get cold because those scantily clad Amazon warriors would be in trouble.  There is a mountain of internet chatter about a twist ending and I will not reveal what happens on this field, but it works.  There are those who are angry and call it a cheap trick, but instead, it is a cleverly written piece which tries, but not does make up for the lazy misunderstanding which brought them all together in the first place. 

The Twilight series is now over and while Breaking Dawn - Part 2 was not a good movie, it was far better than its three predecessors and matches the first installment which was not that bad either.  If you are a teenager, you already saw this movie.  If you are 20 or above, save yourself the two hours and go back and watch Interview with the Vampire again.