Review 40: The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2

  

I can not tell you what I have just witnessed! The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2 is without a doubt, the worst film of the Twilight Saga and a downright lazy conclusion to the Saga to boot.

Based on the "second half" of Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer. After the birth of Renesmee Cullen (Mackenzie Foy), Bella (Kristen Stewart), who is now a vampire, finds herself enjoying her new life and abilities with Edward (Robert Pattinson), Renesmee, Jacob (Taylor Lautner), and the rest of the Cullen Family. But Irina (Maggie Grace), a member of the Denali Vampire coven, misidentifies Renesmee for an immortal child, an infant human who has been bitten and transformed into a vampire, which has become a taboo in the Vampire world. Irina reports the Cullens to the Volturi, in revenge of her mate, Laurent (Edi Gathegi), who had been killed by the Quilute Wolf Pack.
In a final attempt to survive, the Cullens begin to gather foreign Vampire clans and nomads to stand and witness against the Volturi, including the Denali, the Amazonian, the Egyptian, the Irish, and Romanian Covens. With their allies, the Cullens and the Wolf Pack stand to prove their innocence to the Volturi once and for all.

The problem with the film is that premise is silly and dimwitted but the execution is even worse.           The whole affair comes off as dull, uninspired, lazy, boring, silly, rushed and lacking in scope and scale.  The first 30 minutes of the film are spent wrapping up left over plot threads from Part 1 making it like the film was spinning its wheels until instigating the conflict and it felt routine as a result and when the "conflict" in motion and it just appears as if from nowhere with no build up.

A large chunk of the film is dedicated to the Cullen's globe trotting searching for witnesses, but at this  point in the Saga, we don't know who will show up. Who are these friends? Who are these other Covens that we would connect with that they'd expect to show up? These films suck at world building. The film spends far too much time focusing on the Cullen's trying to reach out to other neighbouring Vampire covens to act as witnesses against the Volturi and not enough on actually building to a coherent finale.

 

Every moment spent on Bella “adapting” to her new life as a vampire, lengthy exposition on Immortal Children or the Cullen’s search for witnesses slimmed down the time spent on a potential deeper exploration of the Volturi and the larger vampire culture or building momentum with all of its established elements. 

Unlike a certain other Part 2 which was released last year, very little about Breaking Dawn - Part 2 felt like the end of a journey for Bella and the Cullens. I never felt like I was watching the culmination of anything because the foundation upon which it's built is so shoddy and once you look past the picturesque cinematography and nice production vaules, everything else that's on display is so shallow and pathetic. The lack of genuine stakes, momentum and build up make it feel more like a direct-to-DVD finale.

Practically the entire conflict of this film hinges on this misunderstanding involving Bella and Ed’s daughter which is so fantastically, stupefyingly, irritatingly dumb and ludicrous that there’s no humanly way it can be taken seriously on any level. You stare in disbelief as things happen onscreen all because of something that could be so easily fixed if the characters just sat down and had a simple, honest, authentic conversation with each other. I also didn't connect with the plight of trying to protect Renesmee because she's done nothing apart from be Ed and Bella's dhampir daughter with phychic powers who also ages rapidly. But we're suddenly suppose to care about this "person" whom we have no attachment to.
It robs the film of any tension and/or high stakes whatsoever or lack-thereof.
Up until the confrontation with the Volturi, the film doesn’t feel as if it’s built up any momentum.

Much like everything else in this film, Breaking Dawn - Part 2 is trying to convince you that the conflict between the Cullens and the Volturi matters, but in actuality it just doesn't because everything else is so undercooked.

 

The Immortal Children concept is flimsy and underwhelming for two main reasons. One is that they were never mentioned prior this instalment so Rensemee being mistaken for one rang hollow and was impossible to get invested in. As a result we’re treated to an exposition dump courtesy of Carlisle (Peter Facinelli) in a desperate attempt to make up for lost which adds to the films wonky pacing.

The other problem is that it contradicts previously established lore or lack thereof. Judging by their appearances, Volturi guards Jane (Dakota Fanning) and Alec (Cameron Bright) can’t have been more than 12 or 13 when they were turned and Ed is established as being 17 when he was turned by Carlisle so shouldn’t the former two count as Immortal Children and wouldn’t Ed be mature enough to control his impulses if newborn vampires are that volatile?  

 

The initial confrontation with the Volturi plays out like a courtroom drama; a game of mental chess with each side to trying to outmanoeuvre the other akin to Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice; It comes across as extremely tedious because all it amounts to is Cullen’s and their allies trying to protect a MacGuffin we have no emotional attachment to punctured by campy, simplistic dialogue. It also feels at odds with what the film seemed to be building towards and when you realise that this is a situation you can’t just worm your way out. In The Merchant of Venice, it’s made clear that Shylock will loose everything if he receives his pound of flesh. In this film, the Cullens know that Aro will settle for war and nothing else. 

Ultimately, it comes across as half hearted imitation of that play rather than feeling inspired by it.  It also shows once again that Stephanie Meyer doesn’t understand the classics all that well beyond a surface level interpretation.

 

Overall, my best explanation for the relative failure of the Volturi as an antagonist is that with so much time dedicated to the Love Triangle between Bella, Edward and Jacob, the Saga never really got across why they mattered. Furthermore, the saga never really explained the Volturi's ideology; for the most part, they've been made out to be this terrifying arbiter that rules dictatorially by fiat. But instead, they operate on a tell, don’t show principle and come across as this pseudo royal class of quiet, old vampires that keep some arbitrary and loose definition of order and who pull their punches. I wish I knew what threat they actually posed to the Vampire world besides mistaking them from breaking some never clearly defined rules. It's all been rather hazy.

The previous world-building is also weak because it doesn't feel like any of the other covens apart from the Cullens are ruled by fear. 

The Twilight Saga has had its ups and downs, but nothing before on the level of stupidity, idiocy or plain unintelligence and laziness of Breaking Dawn - Part 2. You go to a Twilight film expecting, at least, some level of creatively, flash and supernatural romantic lift. You don’t expect ridiculously lazy and inept set ups and idiot plots. Catherine Hardwicke’s first film was a surprisingly entertaining standalone supernatural teen romance movie, but by this point the saga has officially descended into tedious nonsense.

Why do they persist in making these two-part finales? Because 'Twilight' is a brand name, I guess and this films is this years latest edition. It’s an old tradition of studios to take an old design and (attempt to) give it a fresh paint job.

Returning director Bill Condon's direction is so incompetent, it's baffling. He stages the melodramatic storyline and he climax so apathetically with little energy and dignity, that the picture (as Pauline Kael put it) itself seems dissociated. I don't think I've ever seen another film where wolves are mistreated, vampires and wolves go smashing into each other and the director failed to work up any indignation or visual creativity. If Condon has any passion about what he puts on the screen, he keeps them to himself.

This coupled with the films hapless screenplay results in one of the most shoddily directed films in recent years.

The climactic battle is dull, unexciting and lacking in scope and scale. I was never thrilled, excited or scared while it was going on. The whole time I kept thinking to myself "I'm starring special effects” I never got the illusion that a vampire showdown was actually happening onscreen. We have thousands of vampires and werewolves squished together and charging at each other in completely random and nonsensical ways. It's less of a battle between two armies and more of a wave of random people crashing at each other without any real semblance of strategy or purpose and because so many of these characters are seemingly invulnerable to damage there's no tension. There's no sense of pop joy coupled with a resolution that can only be described as a writers cop-out. It's tedious to watch and makes for a hollow experience. Maybe a darker ending would've alienated its audience but at least the conflict would've had some weight to it. It ends up being all set up with zilch pay off, so what's the point? 

It's just to short. It goes on for 1h 56 mins and if your going to to do a grand finale your need to give the running time a bit more punch and more time to raise your stakes and develop your characters.

Oh, the film is well-made, the cinematography is beautiful and captures the beauty of the romanticised version of Forks Washington, the production design is brilliant, the costumes are majestic (except for the Volturi who dress in blatantly evil black cloaks), the scenery is breathtaking, the locations are fantastic and the score by Carter Burwell is excellent.

The special effects are very uneven, some are pretty good whereas others like when Bella and Ed are running through the woods, plastering Mackenzie Foy’s face onto babies and during the final confrontation with the Volturi look incredibly ropy. The make up, however, takes a steep nosedive, The Volturi in particular look more pale and anaemic than usual coupled with a lot of painfully obvious wigs. 

The acting was weak, I could bearly stand the sight of Kristen Stewart playing Bella as a vampire, her performance is just wooden - there's no other word for it. Bella has always been a caricature, someone clearly designed so readers could put themselves in her shoes and experience this crazy fantasy world. Now that she's become a vampire, it's nigh on impossible to identify with her because she's basically transformed into a quasi Superman-esque invisible hero like every other vampire in Twilight. But the thing is, I liked Christopher Reeve’s Superman and hoped he got out in one piece - whereas my concern for Bella was based more on her status as a passive protagonist and wether Ed or Jake could save her.

Now that Bella has become a vampire, that tension has vanished because she easily controls her bloodlust, is good at hunting is gorgeous, talented, self-controlled and everyone just treats her as though that's the way she's always been like that to the point where she's a jarringly different character than when she was human. She goes from klutzy to insufferably vain. 

By this point, she's basically gotten everything she wanted and because of that she became less interesting to watch. Why should I care about this character? She now feels no pain and nothing can defeat her so essentially she’s a story device for action scenes. At one point she utters “I was born to be a vampire.” How sanctimonious is that?

In a truly dreadful scene, Bella physically hurts Jacob after he "nicknames" Renesmee and "imprints" on her leading to one of the most cringe-worthy moments in the whole saga. He's supposed to be her loyal friend and he explained to her what "imprinting" meant. She knew Jacob didn't mean to imprint on Renesmee yet she gets mad at him for ziltch impetus.
This is something only a weak, unstable woman ruled by her emotions would do which is made all the more problematic when you factor in their history together. This action instantly degrades her character and makes her look emotionally volatile to the point where I have to wonder if Stephanie Meyer and the producers think that it's ok. 

Robert Pattinson looks embarrassed just to be in this film. Pattinson's heart just isn't in it. He's too mature an actor to think this is first-rate material and too talented an actor to turn this into enjoyable trash.

 

Stewart & Pattinson share no chemistry whatsoever. Whatever romantic chemistry they shared over these past four years has evaporated by the Season Finale. Now that Bella has become a vampire, their relationship is on a much more equal footing than in previous films and made it all the more stale in the process. Seeing those two sharing the screen together as fully fledged vampires is just wrong. They’ve clearly reached the point where they’ve found their romantic heaven and have nothing left to say. There's not a romantic word they exchange that has not long since been reduced to cliche or cringeworthy.

 

No wait: Towards the end of the film, Bella tells Ed: "Nobody has ever loved anybody as much as I love you." How sanctimonious is that?

  
Taylor Lautner looks similarly embarrassed as well as forlorn playing Jacob. But at least he looks like he’s trying to give a dam. Almost as a consolation prize, he receives all the coolest lines in the film i.e. a defient "We've never been afraid of vampires". Too often though, he felt supurfluous and it was pretty clear that he was only there so he could get his pet Renesmee a relationship which is just as bafaling as it is incomprehensible.

Having Michael Sheen's Aro as the main villain of this film is a major problem for several reasons; for one thing, he hasn't had much screen time up until now and hasn't been allowed to be developed as a credible threat to the Cullens and whenever he has been on screen he's been nothing more than an overracting slice of white bread with Sheen overplaying every nuance of evil which feels out of place against the rest of the cast who are clearly taking their roles seriously and it feels as if he's in a completely different film.

The most that we've seen of him has been sitting on a throne in a basement in Italy where he gathers some inner circle of vampires with special gifts as other people collect pictures. Not exactly compelling villain material.

Dakota Fanning's Jane is also particularly egregious because she has literally done nothing up to this point except pout like a prepubescent, female version of Joffrey Beratheon and utter the word "Pain" roughly half a dozen times.

 
The film also shamelessly wastes the talents of admittedly photogenic (and talented) actors like MyAnna Buring (whom you may recall from the Doctor Who episode The Impossible Planet where she perished in the vaccum of space), Mia Maestro (aka Nadia from ABC's Alias), Casey LaBow & Christian Camargo in the roles of Denali Coven, a fellow coven of "Vegitarian Vampires" who are considered cousins of the Cullen Coven as result. Maggie Grace’s Irina, on the other hand, is relegated to little more than a plot device meant to instigate the films “conflict”. Unfortunately, we never knew the Denali's until Parts 1 & 2 of Breaking Dawn so them being the Cullen's "cousins" means nothing and rings hollow. 

 
Additionally, Billy Burke, Peter Facinelli, Elizabeth Reaser, Kellan Lutz, Nikki Reed, Jackson Rathbone, Ashley Greene, Christopher Heyerdahl, Jamie Campbell Bower, Cameron Bright, Daniel Cudmore, Charlie Bewley, Lee Pace, Remi Malek, Noel Fisher, Joe Anderson, Angela Sarafyan, Andrea Gabriel, Omar Metwally, Patrick Brennan, Lisa Howard, Chaske Spencer, Booboo Stewart, Julia Jones, Toni Trucks, Judi Shekoni & Valorie Curry, round out the film’s massive cast with dedicated but ultimately forgettable and interchangeable performances.
As you can probably tell that is a lot of new faces for a grand finale, which brings us to another big problem with this film; There are too many characters. Between the familiar faces and the newcomers not enough time is dedicated to developing the latter group. Bella and Edward's romance is still the focal point, but they've got to be surrounded by a bunch of underdeveloped supporting characters designed to help them get out of this hot mess. The members of these covens are a bunch of underdeveloped characters played by a bunch of actors given too little to do.

It’s impossible not to compare this to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2 from last year and its amazing plethora of returning characters.

 

There's no satisfaction seeing all of these vampire covens onscreen together because they're so thin.

The newcomers get aproximately one scene to demonstrate their powers or infodump their backstory and then they're just along for the ride. Their introductions feel rushed probably because of a lack of world building done in earlier instalments. It’s these rushed introductions that show there’s no escaping the fact that these covens should’ve been introduced and built up over the previous instalments. All of this proves that Meyer clearly had no idea what to do with any of her characters.

You may have noticed that during this review, I didn't mention Bella and Ed's daughter, Renesmee. That's because she has no discernable role in this film other than being their love child. She was purly a plot device and that's the beginning and end of her "character." But what confounding is how much weight they put on trying to prove Renesmee isn't an "Immortal Child" despite the fact that we've just been introduced to her.

 

What exactly is the cut-off age for turning humans into vampires? Who are all these other vampire covens that the Cullens ask to act as witnesses? How do they feel about the Volturi? How the hell does Imprinting work? How is Bella so good at controlling her shield and bloodlust? How do the Volturi operate and why should they be feared? Why does Renesmee age at such a rapid rate? How does all this connect with their previous films? When will the Volturi strike again? In all modesty, I think my questions are more entertaining then the movie itself.  

To quote Roger Ebert: "I hated this movie. Hated, hated, hated, hated, hated this movie. Hated it. Hated every simpering, stupid, vacant audience-insulting moment of it. Hated the sensibility that thought anyone would like it. Hated the implied insult to the audience by its belief that anyone would be entertained by it." 0/5.

The Anonymous Critic