Not bad enough to be laughable but not good enough to be interesting, “Breaking Dawn – Part 2” comes across as a waste of time rather than a thrilling close to the Twilight saga. Minus a plot twist that would fit right into a telenovela, the second half of “Breaking Dawn” follows a predictable and monotonous route.
Last year, for the midnight premiere of “Breaking Dawn – Part 1,” girls lined up hours in advance, decked out in Twilight swag. This year, there were no lines at all, and despite a few preteens in pajamas, everyone was wearing normal, non-Twilight-themed clothing. The audience was about 90 percent female, but still only about half the theater clapped when the movie started. It felt more like a Saturday 2 p.m. showing than the midnight premiere, and the audience stayed tame and uninvolved for the entire movie, even when Taylor Lautner took his shirt off. The audience’s lack of interest directly reflected the extremely boring and anticlimactic plot.
Bad acting added to this lack of interest from the audience. Lines fell flat in moments that should be tense, and even the natural rhythm of speech and conversation was missing, pulling the audience out of the film every time a line missed a beat. The thin plot was based solely on a miscommunication between the Cullens and the Volturi about Edward and Bella’s daughter Renesmee, which could have been resolved with a phone call, but draws vampires from across the globe to Forks for an anticlimactic conflict.
Kristen Stewart, as always, was awkward and emotionless. I never felt the connection between Bella and her daughter, although Bella holds her and reads to her and whines about her for a good portion of the movie. Because of this, Bella’s desperation to keep her daughter safe reads as fake and almost frivolous. Additionally, Bella doesn’t even seem to connect with Edward on a romantic, sexual or platonic level. The vampire sex scene promised to fans is boring and unbelievable, and the 30 awkward seconds we see of skin and hands doesn’t connect with Bella and Edward’s supposed “epic” romance.
Stewart’s most emotional scene was one with her father, when he sees her as a vampire for the first time, and the bulk of the emotion comes from Charlie, played by Billy Burke. Her anger with werewolf and best friend Jacob came across forced and fake, especially when she gets over it as soon as Jacob says about two sentences in his defense. Overall, Stewart played the role as expected but still managed to disappoint the audience.
The special effects were terrible throughout the movie, despite the $75 million budget. When Bella tested out her newly acquired, vampire newborn speed in the woods, the green screen was painfully obvious, and once again, the lone appearance of the vampires’ sparkly skin was cringe-worthy.
The most disturbing of the special effects, however, had to be Renesmee. Because the half-human, half-vampire child is supposed to grow so quickly – and maybe to avoid child labor laws – the film used animatronic babies for many of Renesmee’s scenes. Still, as she grows, her face remained a special effect. The result was a half-real, half-animated, disturbing child that is much creepier than cute. It almost made you side with the Volturi in their attempts to destroy her. Renesmee eventually grew out of her special effects face, but she remains creepy and almost emotionless throughout the movie, although she was supposed to be endearing.
The movie ended with a montage of Edward and Bella’s epic love story, with clips from all four movies. It could have come across sweet or even nostalgic, but it really just seemed to scream “Remember when Bella almost got hit by a car? Remember when Bella tried to kill herself because Edward left her? Remember when Edward’s family tried to eat Bella? Remember when giving birth broke Bella’s spine? Good times.”
Everyone expected the final installment of the Twilight saga to be bad, but rather than cringing at Stewart’s failed attempts at facial expressions or the massive plot holes surrounding the entire movie, I spent most of the film concentrating on the actors’ extremely large foreheads and hoping that the saga would end Dakota Fanning’s career. Despite having a plot and even a battle scene, so little happens in “Breaking Dawn Part 2” that the actual movie is immediately forgettable – but the important part is that the series is finally over, right?
Contact CU Independent Copy Editor Ainslee Mac Naughton at Ainslee.macnaughton@colorado.edu.
