The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2 marks the end of a pretty polarizing franchise with an entry that only slightly improves over the previous film, and is a qualitatively fitting end to it. Something that middles between the other Twilight films. Thus far, we’ve had the first three middling films that featured some good spectacle at least, and then the first Breaking Dawn film, which would be the worst film of the franchise.
The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2 is quite worse than the first three Twilight franchise films, but also quite better than The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1. The entire franchise doesn’t serve as a good standard though, as even the strongest entries have been subpar at best.
There’s not as much to criticize in The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2 as there was in its predecessor, but there’s barely anything to like about the film either, which besides the visuals and music was also the case with the franchise’s first three films.
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The Movie Review
The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2 begins with the completion of Bella’s transformation into a vampire and her introduction to her daughter Renesmee. It even begins with a pointless little conflict. Bella was unaware of Jacob’s imprinting on Renesmee and is furious at him upon learning.
The corny dialogue surrounding this scene is most of what you get in the earlier parts of the film until the conflict finally resolves. This follows with Bella’s father Charlie visiting the Cullens and coming to terms with the fact that Bella is now a vampire. Renesmee begins to grow rapidly, and things escalate against her very shortly.
After an encounter between Renesmee and Irina, it is known that an immortal vampire child is forbidden, and is bound to be executed alongside anyone who’s found with her. Irina informs the Volturi, and Alice begins to see visions of the Volturi attacking the Cullens.
The film can barely provide a sense of suspense for all the bad things that seem to be escalating, and there’s no positive breathing room between everything that happens, only corny conversations between the characters that whine more than they make you feel for the characters. Renesmee is the only character that you come to care for, but only because she’s in a predicament she didn’t put herself in.
Things go south after the notorious character Aro, who leads the Volturi comes to attack the Cullens. The Cullens on the other end have been attempting to prove that Renesmee is not an immortal child. It’s hilarious how even survival and peace in this universe means accidentally complying with all the terrible societal constructs that both humans and vampires follow.
And despite the proving of Renesmee as a non-immortal child, things go violent because why not? For a film series so hell-bent on conversation scenes, it definitely fails to execute any conversation where the characters arrive at a valid conclusion. Can’t blame Melissa Rosenberg for what she’s adapting, whereas Bill Condon simply seems to be complying since, with more creative freedom, he’s made decent films.
The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2 may not have technical prominence, but the cinematography and music are still quite more memorable and better than they were in the previous film. The performances elevate slightly in comparison to the previous due to Mackenzie Foy’s talented acting as Renesmee, but they’re brought to square one by Aro, a character corny enough that it made even an actor like Michael Sheen seem laughable.
It may not be a good send-off to the Twilight franchise, but it’s a very fitting one, and for a mediocre franchise and at times worse, this film at least gave us a moment to cherish its end. Even if you’re a fan of the first few Twilight films, it’s better to stop watching after The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, especially because you’ll have to go through that horrible first part of The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn
