I’m torn on The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn on the one hand I really loathed the first ½ of this movie, but something strange happened it slowly sucked me into it’s web. The issue with this movie is what I’ve said the last 3 outings, I CANNOT STAND Bella and Edward! When the movie isn’t about them, then I really like it. I know its contradiction to say this, especially about Breaking Dawn since they are essentially the “only” ones on camera for the first hour of this movie.
Structurally, splitting the final book into two movies is pointless. Usually when a movie is split in two, there’s a reason – there’s so much story that you simply can’t tell in one movie – Lord of the Rings for example. Or if a book is “artificially” split into two movies, then there’s a reason for people to want to see the conclusion. Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows Pt 1 ended with a LOT of loose ends; you still had the Horcrux hunt, the final confrontation and battle, Snape’s resolution, movie 1 ended with the bad guy getting his heart’s desire, etc. People who invested all that time in the Harry Potter world had to come back for Hallows Pt 2.
For Twilight Saga Breaking Dawn Part 2, there is NOTHING! I mean nothing to come back for. This installment completely wrapped the story. We got the marriage, we got the birth, we got a resolution to Jacob’s (Taylor Lautner) story (really stupid and creepy – unless you are a pedophile) and it ended with Bella becoming a Vampy cat. There are NO main villains that need to get their righteous beat down – although I would like to see Bella get smacked or strangled, but that’s not likely to happen. So what is the outstanding issue that needs to be resolved by another torturous two-hour, poorly made, movie?
Let’s get back to Bella (Kristen Stewart) and Edward (Robert Pattinson), I never understood why these two are together, other than being completely self involved and self loathing, they have nothing in common. In the last four movies they barely showed them doing anything together that would make me believe these two have this epic romance.
Fans of this dysfunctional romance get plenty of it here, since the entire first 80 minutes of this two-hour movie is all about their marriage and honeymoon. At some point I wanted to scream, move on already! The wedding felt weird, all of these people attending and the camera lingered on each group of people as though somehow I’m supposed to know who they are or go “Wow, there’s such and such person, how sweet! This is one of the Twilight’s major failings, in four movies it failed to show Bella (or Edward) interacting with anyone outside of the Cullens and the Wolfpack. So who the heck where these people and why should I care that they are at the wedding?
The movie picks up once they get done breaking furniture making love all over the house and Bella gets herself knocked up. Again the movie is all about Bella and everyone protecting Bella. But I really love the Cullen Clan and the Twilight Saga could have been an awesome series if it focused on them and Not Bella and Edward. Taylor Lautner really has come a long way from the first movie and I think he does a really good job with the material he has and I actually did care about what happened to Jacob – except for the weird pedophile moment towards the end, ish. That was just creepy.
I’m not sure why Director Bill Condon (who did the amazing Dreamgirls) was chosen for this movie. I mean he does have a mix of horror and drama in his background, but he’s not the first I would think of for this flaccid material. As much as I hate Bella and Edward after watching this, I did find myself finally starting to believe a bit in their dysfunctional romance but Condon doesn’t bring any new “visual” style to the proceedings. Everything still looks grey, overcast and depressing – even the wedding looked drab.
Despite all the reasons that I hate this movie, I strangely found myself getting drawn in, but as I said, my Twilight road ends here. I walked in not wanting to see this, but I certainly have no interest in seeing the conclusion.
Final Grade B-
EM Review by
Michelle Alexandria
Originally posted 11/20/2011
You don’t find the ultimate villain, the Volturi, being a necessary loose end to tie up? And what is Reneesme like? Not human, not vampire… that’s something worth exploring. And Bella as a vampire and the tumultuous first year… Jacob’s imprinting, etc. There are plenty of loose ends.