The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part One began with monotonous wedding preparations.
The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part Two kicks off with Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) in vampire form needing to quench her thirst for blood. This compulsion leads to Swan speeding around the forest, nearly eating some guy Free Solo-ing up a mountain, and eventually viciously attacking a mountain lion for dinner. The shackles are off for director Bill Condon and screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg. The first Breaking Dawn movie wielded strong PureFlix vibes. Now, the Sunday school sermon is over. Twilight is going out with a preposterous bang.
Once Bella has done a quick run with her newfound vampire powers, it’s time to focus on Renesmee (Mackenzie Foy), her half-human/half-vampire offspring. The vengeful vampire Irina (Maggie Grace) eventually spies Renesmee and believes she’s a forbidden “immortal child” threatening the vampire world. She reports this development to The Voltouri. Inevitably, the organization’s leader, Aro (Michael Sheen), is all too happy to have an opportunity to take on the Cullen’s. Now, Bella, Edward (Robert Pattinson), and the Cullens must assemble vampires from all over the world. These undead entities must function as witnesses for this meeting between our heroes and the Voltouri.
Like its predecessor, Breaking Dawn – Part Two is clearly eating up time to draw out one book into two movies. Various vampires (like a trio of Irish vampire cousins) receive extensive screen time yet don’t do anything in the actual story. The entire plot even pauses for an Emmett (Kellan Lutz) and Bella arm-wrestling match determining which of them is strongest. Awkward plot threads, like a plan involving Renesmee going to live overseas, are stretched out like taffy before petering out into nothing. Rosenberg’s script is once again stalling for time in an incredibly awkward fashion.
Rosenberg is also tasked with translating some truly abhorrent material from the source material, including Jacob’s primary plot thread of “imprinting” on Renesmee. In a nutshell, this means Jacob will eventually be Renesmee’s lover and, yes, it’s just as creepy in execution as it sounds. Meyer’s original Breaking Dawn novel clearly came up with this plot detail to provide Jacob a “consolation prize” for losing out on the Edward/Bella/Jacob love triangle. Meyer wanted to reassure Team Jacob “Don’t worry, he still gets a love interest! He didn’t really ‘lose’!”
This tremendously unsettling plotline was her solution to that problem. There’s just no getting around how terribly conceived this storyline is, especially since the movie ends with a disturbing “joke” where Jacob tells Edward “Should I start calling you dad?” Breaking Dawn- Part Two, you’re only making the problem worse. This egregious facet of the storytelling reinforces that Jacob Black has been the worst part of this entire saga. From Taylor Lautner’s dismal performance to the character’s insufferable demeanor, everything about Jacob is terrible. This creepy storyline is just the poisoned cherry on top of the repulsive character sundae that is Jacob Black.
On a more positive note, other aspects of Breaking Dawn – Part Two’s narrative return the series to functioning nicely as teenage wish-fulfillment fantasies. Breaking Dawn – Part One made the creepy Mormon subtext of this whole saga flagrant text, rendering the entire film as a movie parents could live vicariously through. The franchise’s target demo of young girls was left out in the cold. Breaking Dawn – Part Two, meanwhile, has sequences that return the saga back into the hands of younger viewers. Bella getting a birthday present in the form of a beautiful, secluded cottage for her family especially encapsulates this. Living out your days with a dreamboat vampire in a woodland domicile feels like a fantasy some 14-year-old girl would pen in a Tumblr Word post shared to the world at 2:15 AM. That’s exactly the vibe and target demo Twilight should always channel.
Breaking Dawn – Part Two also has the good sense to bolster its runtime with a comically excessive cast of broadly defined vampires, including Lee Pace as an Anglophobic vampire. Breaking Dawn – Part One got way too enamored with stiff werewolf drama that nobody liked. This follow-up, meanwhile, gets enjoyable cartoony with newcomers like a pair of Russian vampires that are basically the “loose cannons” of the Cullen clan. It’s also unintentionally amusing how Bella and Edward having a kid becomes a background element. Renesmee is largely just a plot device with no personality to speak of. Bella and Edward don’t evolve much functioning in their role as parents. A conceptual game-changer for this saga doesn’t really impact much!
