As many of you know by now, the (hopefully) final installment in the Twilight film franchise came out last week. If you haven’t seen the film yet and plan on it, I will tell you now that I openly discuss events of the film here. Tharr be spoilers ahead, mateys.
(Source: Original image owned by Summit Entertainment)
By now I’m sure most of you are familiar with Twilight and what a blatant disregard it has for all modern concepts of feminism (in spite of what KStew may attempt to say to the contrary). Girl falls in love with vampire, vampire is kind of a jerk, desperate codependent love story, werewolf, being emo, fight, blah blah blah.
Of course this whiny, supposedly intelligent girl gets everything that she wants in the end: a baby, a vampire husband, a werewolf best friend, immortality, and an awesome superpower… without really deserving anything. However, that’s another matter entirely.
Breaking Dawn Part 2 has been lauded as the best installment in the film franchise. Unfortunately, that’s not saying much.
The first portion of the film is fairly boring and is dedicated to showing the viewer how much better Bella’s life is as a vampire. I couldn’t help thinking how well the makeup team did on KStew’s transformation and how they really dropped the ball on everyone else. I mean, wrong shade of lipstick on Edward yet again. Don’t even get me started on the hair—obvious wigs are obvious.
Helloooooooooooo extensions. (Original image)
And the special effects. Holy crap. While the Twilight Saga isn’t particularly well-known for it’s strong special effects (the wolf pack… lol), the CGI demon baby Renesmee takes it to a whole new level of terrifying.
So basically, this first half of this movie is all about poor Bella getting everything she ever wanted. Look at how pretty Bella is, look at how awesome her life is, look at all the new things she has! KStew even tried to really act! Unfortunately, scenes that should have been hilarious like her confrontation with Jacob and contest with Emmett just fell flat. Like her face.
Luckily, there’s that great scene between Jacob and Charlie to liven things up a bit for a few minutes. We get to shamelessly objectify Taylor Lautner’s body for a few seconds and admire yet another hilarious Charlie moment. Billy Burke, you are the only saving grace in this entire franchise.
After the film is done shoving how wonderful Bella’s life is down your throat, the good stuff starts. Alice has her vision, the Volturi are coming! We get to meet a whole slew of new characters and get bits of pieces of their backstories, though there really isn’t enough time to get a strong sense of any of the characters as few of them are actual speaking roles.
While Garrett and the Romanian vampires are entertaining, for the most part the entire preparing for the battle portion of the film isn’t particularly noteworthy.
And then the battle arrives. Michael Sheen really makes this scene with his absolute insanity. That laugh has already gone viral.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3UMwuzZDLM]
Original content owned by Summit
On top of it all, you have the grand plot twist. I have to admit, I cried out in shock with everyone else once I saw Carlisle’s decapitated head. I also have to admit that my shriek of “What?!” was probably full of more amusement than the cries of the teenage girls around me. There were glares exchanged.
I loved every second of the battle scene. I even joined in with the “Awws” as other characters were killed off. I sat on the edge of my seat as the Volturi were destroyed. I laughed at Marcus’ happy sigh of “Finally” before being ripped apart by Vladimir and Stefan. Yes, this was how the book should have ended. This is what I had been expecting when I first read Breaking Dawn.
I wasn’t surprised, however, when it all turned out to be Alice’s vision. There was no way that Summit would deviate so drastically from the source content… and live to tell the tale. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, especially when that woman is more like a fanatical teenage girl who then brings all her friends along.
Post the battle-that-didn’t-really happen, the film gets boring again. We go back to being shown how perfect Bella’s life is, Renesmee is going to also live a perfect life with her perfect and totally creepy relationship with Jacob. Edward and Jacob have a weird moment (that totally proves my point in this post). Blah blah blah.
While I’m sure this film was gratifying for the Twihards and I appreciated the attempts to liven things up and mess with the audience’s mind, ultimately this film is just okay. Definitely won’t be winning any Academy Awards, this one.
All-in-all, can’t say that I’m sad to see this “saga” finally come to its nauseating, sparkly Mary Sue end.