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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| '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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