The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part II Review
Something broke in that theater. I think it was my brain.
Do you know why so many hapless red shirts died in the original Star Trek series (I swear I have a point and am not just finding excuses to talk about Star Trek in my Twilight review)? It’s because whenever a character, even a minor one, dies it indicates that the story and situation are extremely serious. It’s a way of drawing you into the story and actually caring about what happens. The old news phrase “If it bleeds, it leads” can be rewritten for fiction into “If no one dies, no one cares” (Dead Man Walking image courtesy of the Star Trek T Shirts).
The point is the entire Twilight series has been about as willing to let any character of any worth die as any hot girl is willing to go on a second date with me (by that I mean extremely unlikely, to any new readers out there). This seems to have been true in all the movies, but never so much as in this one. By the end of the movie I was expecting to see all the sets wrapped in bubble wrap and corner protectors like a house baby proofed by the most anal and overprotective parent in history. Stephanie Meyer seems to treat these characters like spawn of her own loins in every sense of the term.
I’m about to get extremely free with the spoilers, so if you are some kind of freak who plans on seeing this movie without having read the books for any purpose other than to write a bitter and acerbic review you should probably just skip to the end where I beg you to follow me on Twitter.
The part that really crushed me was towards the end. You see, the entire series has been building up towards a huge epic battle between the vampires, werewolves, and some other vampires called the Vulturi. After literally hours of teasing the crap out of it they finally throw down and I have to say it was pretty freaking cool. For the first time in the entire series I felt pulled in and actually excited. Vampires and werewolves were dying in big batches, including some of the main characters (which kind of made sense as this is the last episode). Super powerful vampires were being foiled by other vampires and vamps that had been more or less jerks for the entirety of the series were getting their long deserved comeuppance. For the first time ever I started to doubt my conviction that the Twilight series was the McRib of the film industry.
Then, in the biggest blue ball inducing cop out in the history of movie making the entire bloody mayhem scene turns out to be some kind of induced vision brought on by the future seeing vampire (that was the big spoiler, by the way. Sorry if you didn’t take my advice a few lines ago and skip to the end). Absolutely nothing gets even remotely interesting, and they pull an ending so painfully happy and cheesy that it would embarrass an episode of My Little Pony (no, I am not a Brony). I didn’t think a writer had depths deep enough in his (or in this case her) ass to pull this ending out of. Nothing is resolved, nothing really changes, and everyone wanders off to a blissfully happy immortal life while all the interest and tension they managed to actually build drained out like a water balloon hit with a shotgun blast.
I am going to join all the other reviewers in a lemming-like chant of saying that this is the best of the series, but that is like having to swim in three different pools of raw sewage and Hep C before finally finding a pool only filled with pond scum, dead rats, and tuberculosis. It is the Revenge of the Sith of the Twilight series, but like that episode it is still part of that horrible family of films.
Before I get into the story, I want to rail a bit on a few things that really bugged me in this film. First of all, for a movie that had a $120,000,000 budget the CGI wolves still look like stickers taken from a nature book and stuck into a children’s coloring book. I thought we had progressed beyond bad CGI. However, as bad as the wolves looked the were like a nature documentary compared to the CGI baby Renesmee (still the stupidest name for a baby ever). It literally looked like a Cabbage Patch Kid.
As bad as the baby looked, it still was more human and lifelike than Animatronic robots they got to play the main characters. Kristin Stewert overwhelms every scene with a massive tsunami of mundanity and wooden facial expressions. I would have taken even stupider looking babies and wolves if they could have CGI’d some acting into her performance. Talk about overrated. Robert Pattinson was not much better, but he was better and therefore his bland performance was totally eclipsed by Kristin’s.
I suppose at some point I should get into what passes for a story here. It is actually the best part of the series and the most linear and non aggravating one to date (mainly because it skips on the whole Bella/Edward/Jacob bland love triangle and focuses on something even slightly interesting). The story picks up almost to the second where the last one ended. This is a good thing, as the first movie was nothing but padding to milk more money from brain damaged teenaged girls (and bitter movie reviewers). Bella is now a vamp, and has to learn to control her yearnings which she does with remarkable ease. She and Edward are supposedly deeply in love, although their sexual chemistry has all the passion of an amoeba reproducing through binary fission. Their child Renesmee (even typing it hurts my eyes. When I finally conquer the planet any of you who thought this is the perfect name for your child will be relocated to slave camps at the bottom of the ocean) is growing up at 7 times normal rate. Jacob has imprinted with her as an infant (nothing creepy to see here folks. Keep moving on) and acts as her protector, which is pretty good since Bella and Edward seem totally content to ignore her for the most part. She is growing up fast and in no time is the exact age of the child actress they hired to play her (Mackenzie Foy).
She is spotted by some other vampire everyone else seemed to recognize but I couldn’t pick out of a lineup to save my life (the film was kind of overrun with hot blond girl vampires). She runs to the Vulturi where it turns out one of the biggest laws they have for their culture of people who eat people is never turn a child into a vampire (if this is their biggest law why is it we never hear about it before now? I hate it when writers make stuff up to facilitate the story and then act like you are stupid for not knowing it all along). The head guy (looks like a younger, heavier Alice Cooper) has some trick where he attacks a vampire family, kills them all off but one, and then recruits that one into his secret vampire army (? Anyone else have an issue with the idea of recruiting someone by murdering all their friends and loved ones?). He wants Alice, the future seeing vampire. Edward and his brood run around trying to recruit vampires from across the world to act as witnesses and red shirts for the upcoming epic battle. Battle is joined, and then not as it all turns out to be one of Alice’s vision.
The stars. I want to give this one a star for an actual coherent story, but honestly it is only good in comparison to the other three. I guess I can afford to be generous due to the broken firehose of black holes I am about to spew all over it. One star. The fake action scene was actually really good up until the part where it was proven fake. One star. The annoying romance got way less annoying once Jacob stopped mooning (haw!) over Bella. One star. Total: three stars.
The black holes. Creating a really cool and bloody action scene with lots of great death scenes of characters who well deserve it only to make the whole thing into a fake. Two black holes. I’m not even exaggerating when I say I’ve seen the Muppets deliver better acting and more believable characters than Bella and Edward. At least their facial expressions change when they are supposed to be sad, scared, or happy. Two black holes. A million billion minor characters pulled out of no where that we are supposed to give a crap about (If she were fourteen I would swear that Stephanie Meyer is one of those RPG players who loves nothing more than rolling up hundreds of characters and then creating backstories for them). One black hole. If you haven’t seen the whole series you will be lost at sea without a paddle on this one. One black hole. CGI that is an insult to the industry. One black hole. I know I hit them with this every movie but it remains a thing: vampires who glow in daylight. One black hole. The vampires we are supposed to have sympathy for lose a lot when they are slaughtering people who are begging for their lives. One black hole. A big giant Amber Alert for the whole Jacob/Renesmee romance. One black hole. At no time in this movie (or the entire series, for that matter) does the movie subject matter at all have anything to do with twilight, dawn breaking, new moons, or eclipsing of any kind. One black hole. A happy ending that even the Disney writers would figure as too campy to be taken seriously. One black hole. Total: twelve black holes.
A grand total of nine black holes. Should you see it? If you are a mewling teenage girl who wants to see Taylor Lautner with his shirt off than sure, why not? Honestly, it boils down to fandom or not. If you have seen them all, read all the books, and have the entire Twilight cast tattooed on your back then by all means go for it. I’m sure you will enjoy it in the same way fans of Nascar enjoy watching cars go around and around a track. If you have not seen the whole series then believe me when I say this film will be a massive waste of time and money for you. Date movie? If your date is a huge fan you will score some good points by being willing to see it, but be warned as I would bet she will want to subject you to the entire series beforehand and that is a torture not to be borne. Also, there is a pretty good chance your date is an insane psychopath. Bathroom break? It’s one big 115 minute bathroom break as far as I’m concerned. However, if you want to find a scene that is more worthless than the rest of them (and that is a deep pit to be reaching into) I’d say any of the Bella/Edward “romance” scenes. It’s nothing you haven’t seen done as mediocrely in the other films and adds el zilcho to the story.
Thanks for reading. Looks like a painful week for your humble reviewer, as I have nothing to do for Thanksgiving except watch Red Dawn. I expect this movie to be the zenith of unnecessary, crappy remakes and could actually cause the long anticipated Movie Apocalypse. Please follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu. If you have any comments on this movie or my review feel free to post them here. Any off topic suggestions or questions can be emailed to me at [email protected]. Hate mail from fan boys (or girls) will be completely disregarded, so if you want to tell me what kind of idiot I am best to do it here. Happy Thanksgiving to everyone, and I will talk to you soon.
Dave
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