Breaking Dawn Part 2 Review - OR - The Adams Family: Retribution

Plot

After nearly dying during labour, Bella (Kristen Stewart) is finally a vampire after being saved by her now husband Edward (Robert Pattinson). Its still not an easy life for the couple though: their hybrid child Renesmee is growing at an exponential rate and, after being spotted by a vampire from a different coven, is reported to the all-powerful Volturi as being an illegal ‘immortal child.’ Together with help from the Cullen clan and best friend Jacob (Taylor Lautner) they must find a way to save their child and themselves.

After reading the script, the cast thought it best to improvise

Review

The thing with twist-endings is that if they’re implemented poorly then they are reallypoor. If an entire film is predicated on the effect of one instance it better be a bloody monumental one otherwise the entire experience will be left feeling fettered, lazy and sad. The Sixth Senseand ‘Luke, I’m your father’ are the kings of the twist (and shout) because they perfectly compliment and embody what their cinematic vehicle is about both in terms of narrative and thematic structure. Long story short: Breaking Dawn Part 2’s much marketed (that in itself a ludicrous paradox) and touted ‘twist’ is the worst example of what is increasingly debasing into a ‘cop-out’ device.

If Part 2 is evidence of anything it’s that a book can just as readily ruin a film as a film can spoil its more sedentary cousin. It’s also screaming evidence that there should never have been a second part in the first place. Simply put, there just isn’t enough there to validate four whole hours of cinema. Whereas the Harry Potter Deathly Hallows split just about got away with it due to the majesty of its cinematic universe, the Twilight Saga has no such backdrop to rely on: its dreary Washington State town setting filled with the most anguished cast of emotionally emo-phoric characters ever assembled hardly scream ‘magical fun.’

Kicking off almost immediately after the conclusion of Part 1, Part 2 finds Kristen Stewart’s freshly vamped Bella Swan looking remarkably sprightly for a woman who just endured the world’s worst labour. Very little is offered in the way of background or explanation with it simply being assumed that everyone coming to see the fifth film of a series has seen at least some of the previous installments. A fair assumption admittedly, but for the few (i.e. unfortunate boyfriend types) who are unacquainted with the series it is a jarring introduction.

Never eat the last chocolate finger.

 Swiftly, Part 2 launches into what is – surprisingly – one of its greatest strengths: Kristen Stewart. The life of pasty insomnia clearly agrees with Bella Swan. No longer is she the dowdy girl of infinite scowl and brooding emptiness; she’s an energetic vessel of endearing attitude and playfulness, too busy murdering lions for fun and food to sit on a chair and cry for half a year. Seeing Bella discovering her new abilities and life is a legitimately intriguing chunk of cinema – all the more so if you’re a fan of the series – and injects a bit desperately needed fun into Twilight’s overwhelmingly glum vampiric lore.

And from there we hit a brick wall. Of the many things that Part 2 is missing – note: pacing, contemporary CGI, character development – the worst offender is narrative. Simply put, there isn’t one. The peculiar – and, at least in the film’s context: supportive – thing is that this unforgiveable failure is derived from the book. The simple fact that there should never have been two Breaking Dawn films is made laboriously clear by the painful, incessant deficiency of actual content. So much of Part 2’s running time is dedicated to needless, flatulent filler (mandatory sex scenes and contrived conversations with the films bloated and superficial supporting cast for example) because it had no content to use in the first place. The entire narrative arc could- and really really should – have been the final half hour of one seamless Breaking Dawn film. Except, of course, what about all that money?

Part 2 is one serious tonal miss-kick. The Twilight Saga is one of romance, albeit with vampires, giant dogs and Machiavellian Italian covens but a romance all the same. It is about Bella and Edward, their love and their relationship but, come Part 2, there’s nowhere left for them to go. They’re already married and have a magical child straight from the uncanny valley; in terms of romance Part 2 is dead as its protagonists. Instead, it is left with the already challenging task of reinvention made all the more difficult by the utter dearth of content to actually do it with. What is left is more mediocre-action-film rather than epic-romantic-swansong and Part 2 suffers endlessly because of this. Had it been the final half hour of a film in which Bella and Edward get married and conceive aforementioned demon child it would have been, while not necessarily good, but at least more forgivable. That it isn’t merely served to exacerbate the insipid failure of the film as a cinematic production.

'At least I've Frost/Nixon too.'

Much has been made of the epic snowy conclusion, lauded as Twilight coming of age at last. And, for the time in which it stays canonically relevant, it is. Brutal, frenetic and energetic, it injects a sense of action and dynamism never before seen (and sorely missing) in the rest of the series, so much so that even the dodgy CGI is forgivable. There’s so much going on, so much vigor, that it’s easy to not care that none of it actually makes any sense. While the entire scene may be predicated on almost child-like shock-tactics, it doesn’t matter; at last, after all the running and grimacing, all the copy and paste characters, something is happening. No, more than that, something interesting is happening.

And then…well, that would be encroaching on major spoilers territory. For those that have read the book the whole sequence will correctly seem odd and for the rest…read the first paragraph again. It says a lot that easily the standout sequence of the film is the film’s own creation. That it’s conclusion is utterly ruined by the demands of the book only capitulates the prevailing irritation that Part 2 will no doubtlessly breed in all but the twi-hard crew.

Verdict

Breaking Dawn Part 2 is a film that should never have happened. Its failings are derived from the fact that Breaking Dawn is a text that could never have hoped to support two separate films. What’s left is a husk, a vapid empty shell of a film whereby nothing much happens for far too much of the time. When its good, Part 2 is actually surprisingly good (any scene with the outstanding Michael Sheen is a bastion of entertainment) it’s just an epic shame that there are only two or three of these instances in a largely squalid, uninteresting production.

2/5

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As a final note, please follow me on Twitter: @smariman. You'll get told of updates and new posts as soon as they happen as well as the odd desperate attempt at being funny, entertaining and likeable. Such is life.

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Why Disney Buying Out Lucasfilm isn't a Bad Thing - OR - Jerry Bruckheimer Versus the World

Halloween it seems became all too real for a certain genus of film fan this year. As every man and his dog dressed up last month – some cosplaying, others vamping it up and many thousands more lumping it for ‘zombie’ – a certain piece of news was unyieldingly nudged onto the no-mans-land of the Internet. So secretly was it done in fact that many major publications didn’t get a report out until several hours later.

This nugget of news was, of course, that Disney had bought out Lucasfilm for the casual little sum of $4.05 billion; or what Michael Isner found down the back of his sofa earlier that morning.

'What do you mean "there's no garlic dip"!?'

And then there was the outrage. Oh, the outrage. Despite the utter dearth of actual information and that whole logic thing, it took nothing more than the words ‘Star Wars Episode VII’ to elicit reactions before then the exclusive reserve of Hitler, Stalin and all those charming chaps. Check out any sci-fi/ videogame/ film based forum for a glimpse into the frothing mire of malnourished opinions and mewling entitlement. As a case study, have a gander at this discreetly edited tirade found plastered upon this writer’s news-thread:

“To the people at disney. Do not let Jerry bruckheimer, I repeat DO NOT LET JERRY BRUCKHEIMER get any wear near the lucasfim division, if you do i shall swim over to that clucking country of yours, through that clucking hurricane and tear your clucking eyes balls out and clucking ram them up your own clucking arses where they belong ! you have been clucking warned !”

Grammar, morality and sanity taking a major bashing there. But why has the buy-out caused such unbridled hatred and, let’s face it, fear amongst some people? Now, a week or so after the event, it’s safe enough to reflect on what happened and note that there is a reason. A largely uninformed and depressingly ignorant reason but a reason nonetheless. It’s also safe, however, to highlight how Disney’s buying out of Lucasfilm can only be a good thing.

But first and foremost, what is it that’s apparently so bad about this buy-out?

Dealing with the Madness: Why are the Haters Hating?

The Men In Black were running short of funding.

For the rational and clear thinking, or any old cinephile, Disney buying out yet another film IP is more evidence of the creative dearth often lamented as plaguing the modern film industry. The incessant flow of ‘revisions’ and re-makes, the overdependence on books and other media forms as well as the increasing adoption of foreign cinema as a source of ‘new’ content (Japan’s Ringu(1998) and Ju-On (2002) became Hollywood’s The Ring (2002) and The Grudge (2004) for example), have all contributed to a prevailing exasperation surrounding Hollywood. Quite rightly for some, Disney’s newest signing is simply the next step along the increasingly grey and featureless path towards an inevitable cinematic singularity. A tad nihilistic a belief perhaps but at least it’s a conceivable one (check out Empire’s Studio infographic linked below for a little clue).

http://www.empireonline.com/features/infographic-studio-franchises/?utm_source=ExactTarget&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=110912+newsletter- Empire: studios infographic

For everybody else – which is, sadly, the overwhelming majority – the dominant reason for rage is a basic sense of child-like entitlement. As happens far too often with properties in the ‘geeky’ realm of entertainment, die-hard fans of the series simply don’t want to see the story and world that they love change in a way that they either don’t like or don’t understand. Or, to put it more accurately: to see things develop in a way that they themselves have not decided is right. We’ve seen two uncomfortably impassioned examples this year alone: first with Mass Effect 3’s ending and, more recently, with the news that Bayonetta 2will be a Wii-U exclusive. In aid of staying on topic we won’t go into these farces here, but a quick Google search will yield all of the capricious idiocy you could ever dread to read.

And this, believe it or not, is the reason. Individuals will no doubt dress it up in whatever various forms of contrived heroism they want but, at the bottom line, the sheer vehement hate stemming from the likes of the charming chap quoted earlier derives from little more than a misplaced sense of privilege. While such a stance could easily be interpreted as a sweet or resilient dedication to a nostalgic past – the whole ‘we shall not be moved’ thang – its difficult to do so exactly because there are people like this. There are fans who find themselves perturbed by the change and that’s precisely the point; uneasiness is a perfectly reasonable and rational in response to change, shouting and threatening as though it’s the end of the world is not.

Let’s make this clear: the above description applies only to the abhorrent haters, divisible according to industrial cynicism and abject fanboyism. For the rest, those that are ambivalent to whole shebang and those others who find it a little disconcerting, have no fear! Below are three reasons to celebrate Disney’s newest business acquisition.

Star Wars: Going Nowhere in Particular in a Galaxy Far, Far away

'S'up dudes, I'm a visual metaphor.'

Brace yourselves Star Wars fans but here comes a truth bomb: Star Wars is a series rapidly stagnating. Think over the last couple of decades or so and its difficult to pinpoint any explicit highs for the series. For some (*cough* many) even the not-so-recent prequel trilogy is considered a blight on the series’ gilt-edged 80s mastery. Outside of that and what have we got: an uninspiring short-lived animated series and a metric ton of game tie-ins who’s most telling impact has been expanding the canonical universe to ridiculous and ever-more complicated degrees. In the realm of fandom, the most successful venture outside of the original trilogy have been the comic books, but their permeation into the cultural zeitgeist is comparable to a fart in a hurricane.

Simply put, Star Wars has been crying out for a bit of TLC. Videogame adaptions may come and go (with some admittedly hitting the mark like The Knights of the Old Republic) but Star Wars is first and foremost a film series. Lucasfilm, when under their increasingly geriatric furby-like leader, were merely burying the series under layer upon layer of unnecessary lore and exposition – midichlorians are the Jar-Jar Binks of the cellular world – and a fresh pair of legs is exactly what Star Wars need.

Disney: The House of Mouse has Some Serious Clout

'I own them and I'll own you soon too!'

Here’s another truth bomb: Disney is a consistent producer of fantastic films. When was the last time Disney made a truly bad film? Oh…John Carter…Okay, when was the last time Disney made a truly bad film that wasn’t John Carter? This may seem a really obvious point – and if it does then good! – but it is one of boundless importance as it seems to have been missed by a decent portion of the Internet pie.

Disney for many is synonymous with animations and children’s films, banded wantonly with ‘childish.’ But children’s films are not necessarily childish (in the negative sense of the word) and are certainly not intrinsically bad or ‘lesser’ than supposed adult films. It seems as though for many of whom this buy-out signals the apocalypse that Disney solely produce relentless Aladdin sequels and nothing else…a belief so majestically misguided that a fairy dies each time its followed.

Pixar and Marvel: both of these companies, too, are owned by Disney. And while under Disney’s parentage they have produced an inordinate amount of quality: the Toy Story trilogy, Finding Nemo, Monsters Inc., Up, Brave and others; the Iron Mans, Captain America, Thor, X-Men: First Class and that wee billion dollar hitter Avengers Assemble. The point here is clear: Disney have a proven track record of taking on existing IPs and helping to mould them into something monumentally successful. While Pixar and Marvel could quite conceivably survive on their own feet (and indeed have in the past), the point is that Disney has not only not ruined them, but given them the fiscal/organizational/creative impetus imperative for prolonged success and survival. Star Wars needs this as badly as students need caffeine and free junk.

Vaughan and Arndt

And finally, talking of creative impetus, two news stories have hit the internets over the last week which should give any self-respecting Star Wars fan reason to cheer as though it’s karaoke night at the Mos Eisley Cantina.

First up there was the rumour that Kick-Ass and X-Men: First Class kinetic director Matthew Vaughan is in talks to direct the already contentious Episode VII (link below). For anybody that wants Star Wars to be good again they should be frothing at the bit about this. Vaughan has already proven (remember that he’s still relatively new to directing) that he can not only immerse himself in an existing world (X-Men) but also adapt a story from elsewhere to stupendous effect (Kick-Ass). While this may still be just a rumour, it’s a reassuring indication that Lucasfilm, in their new home, are looking to current and creative avenues to reboot one of cinema’s most famous sons. And, oh would you look at that, Vaughan is a man attached to Disney at the Marvel level, able to move to Lucasfilm through Disney’s soft and gooey center.

http://www.mtv.co.uk/news/star-wars/368067-matthew-vaughn-talks-direct-star-wars-epsiode-7 - Vaughan rumour.

Secondly – and perhaps more excitingly – Oscar winning writer Michael Arndt has been confirmedas the writer for at least the first part of the eventual trilogy. For those feeling somewhat underwhelmed at this news let’s just specify that Arndt was the man behind the brilliant Little Miss Sunshine and (Disney connection alert) was the writer for universally adored Toy Story 3. Once again, Arndt’s involvement is testament to the monumental influence of Disney, an influence the company can – and clearly is – using in helping Lucasfilm piece together the revival of their flagship title.

http://www.empireonline.com/news/story.asp?NID=35719 - Arndt confirmed as Episode VIIwriter.

So don’t worry Star Wars fans! The series that you know and love has, for the first time in a very long time, the opportunity to hit the heights first achieved all those moons ago. Rather than cause for fear and unease, this buyout is exactly what Star Wars and Lucasfilm need to potentially get the ball rolling again. And hey, nothing they make can be as bad The Phantom Menace.

And if the world still seems grim and miserable, go have a giggle:

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