No Really, Nas Saw ‘Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 2′ [Review]

I’m not sure how to explain the story of how I ended up at a Twilight movie on opening night. My, um, relationship with the series has been complicated from the very beginning. I’d heard all the stories of sparkling vampires and how heavy breathing was used as a stand-in for actual romance back when the first one came out, but in the spirit of objective reporting, I sat through the first Twilight via an illegally downloaded copy copy a friend brought over. It was pretty much every bit as bad as people were saying. Low budget and full of cheese, with some truly atrocious acting from everyone involved who didn’t have a mustache. Even then, I ended up seeing the second one under some pretty complicated circumstances (a hot woman asked me to go with her) and while it wasn’t good, the change-up from original director Catherine Hardwicke to Chris Weitz and bigger budget definitely made it… I guess “better” is the word. From then on though, I avoided Twilight movies like the onscreen plague that I consider them to be. And then my best buddy just kinda put the third one on in the background one time at his house, like he was hoping it would slowly, seductively lure me into making out with him.

I managed to steer completely clear of the fourth installment and thought I’d finally broken the cinematic curse I’d been afflicted with, but then the folks at M-Net Movies were having a screening, one thing led to another (there was wine involved) and the next thing I know I’m leading my date into the cinema, telling her to grab some of the free popcorn to make this all worth it.

What follows is an account of the blunt force trauma that is Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 2. I doubt any of you care whether or not I spoil it, so expect me to reveal pretty much everything I can about it. Here we go…

If you’re a Twihard (that’s what they’re called, people) I’m going to go ahead and apologize now for missing the absolute revelation of plot dynamics that Breaking Dawn Part 1 must’ve been, and again for forgetting what happened at the end of the third one. What I know about Twilight is usually just the broad strokes stuff because, like the Kardashians and the kids from Jersey Shore, this kind of mass pop cultural stuff just sinks into my brain slowly, subtly, hiding out like a ninja waiting to strike when I least expect it. The last thing I remember is that Edward (the vampire) was going to marry Bella (the girl) and that pissed off Jacob (the werewolf), but I’m pretty sure that about sums up the gist of the saga’s plot dynamics anyway. Meanwhile, in Italy, some Italian head vampire types with perfect English accents who dress like extras from an Anne Rice novel were upset because a vampire loved a human. This part never made sense to me since vampires are, by their very nature, transformed from humans into vampires. So if I was a vampire in love with a human, I think a bite should seal the deal and shut up the worrying old guys. But I guess this series needed some conflict beyond the dead guy and the Native American creeping on the same blank-faced girl.

By the time we catch up with them at the start of this movie, things have changed a lot. For one thing, Bella is now a vampire and, along with a little age, the filming of movies that aren’t Twilight movies but certainly look like them, and the addition of a sexy weave to her arsenal of sexy, she’s also a mildly better actress. I’m not saying Kristen Stewart should now go on the Oscar A-list, but I at least found her reactions to most of what’s happening in each scene somewhat diversified from her early days onscreen. Also, she’s married to Edward and they have a baby whose name completely escapes me because it sounds made up. Of special note is that their baby’s face is inexplicably rendered in CGI, presumably so it matches up with the later child and adult versions we see of her, but why they didn’t just cast similar looking people is beyond me. As it stands, their kid just ends up looking a lot like Yoda from Star Wars Episodes 2 and 3.

It gets creepier though because, as the dialog informs us, Jacob has “imprinted” on CGbaby. The dialog doesn’t really make clear what that means, but when I think of a dog imprinting on anything, it usually involves pee. Now homeboy swears he isn’t creeping on their baby girl, but (spoilers!) there’s a flashforward near the end of the movie that totally shows the four of them all hanging out and he’s certainly more like the creepy uncle that takes you for a tour of the basement by that point. Just saying.

The early half of the movie is dedicated almost exclusively to hijinks, which is not at all what I was expecting. There are a ton of jokes (although we’ll use the term loosely) about being immortal, how fun it is to be a vampire and how having superpowers totally makes sex great. All this stuff got the Twihards giggling incessantly in the audience, but for the most part I found its appeal mystifying. Some of the one-liners are winners even if they’re not that memorable, but then it dovetails into awkward scenes of Bella “running” really fast, using a motion blur effect that makes anything seen on Smallville look like a Hollywood production. Or worse: stuff like an arm-wrestling contest to see which vampire is stronger, the Mary Sue protagonist or the jocky bodybuilder.

The movie spends a fair amount of time with this level of anime-style horsing around, and there’s a truly hilarious scene that works well where Jacob has to strip down to his skivvies in the woods that actually made me laugh, but it’s all just more cheese till the plot requires some conflict. After all, if the sole fight your storyline was originally based around involved your ‘pure of heart’ female lead having to choose between the Deadwardian or the Native American wolf-bro, and she’s already married and has a kid with one of them, you’re gonna need something for the characters to get tense about an hour into this thing. Arm-wrestling and unrequited bloodlust just won’t cut it. Neither will a truly hilarious sex scene that looks like a bad commercial for Nivea lotion, focusing on nothing but mouths, faces and the occasional foot.

So here’s the meat of the plot: the evil Italian vampires with English accents hear that the main characters have a vampire CGI kid (who is aging super-quickly) and they think their vampire bros have broken an ancient law and transformed a regular child into a vampire. Instead of stopping to maybe ask about it, they decide to put together a posse and head into the beautiful forests of Washington for a throwdown in the snow. The good guy vampires respond to this by taking their magical lovechild to everybody they know except the actual bad guys and letting her explain herself by, you know, rubbing their cheeks and psychically informing them of what’s what. The good guys round up a bunch of vampires with special powers that basically make them feel like leftovers from an X-Men screenplay, and there’s a metric fuckton of complex racial politics and bad costume design going on.

This all culminates in a big battle sequence, which is where that shitty poster of them running at you comes from.

Now you may not know this, but the only way to kill a vampire is to behead it and set its body on fire. I’m down with that, but only when it can be properly executed. Twilight chooses to render all its superpower effects and beheadings with prop heads that look like they’re straight off the set of Doctor Who which, for a major Hollywood production, is pretty embarrassing. The CGI looks like it comes straight out of the late 90s, and there’s an excessive amount of it in the final battle, so much so that it makes the whole thing cringe-worthy.

The only shining bright light in this whole thing is Michael Sheen, who plays the lead Italian bad guy vampire; a guy you know is evil because he’s basically cosplaying as Michael Jackson from around the time History came out.

Sheen has elected to play the role while chewing as much scenery as humanly possible. He glides around, sing-songing his way through his lines and giggling like a schoolgirl watching a Twilight movie all the while. And yet somehow he still makes that whole thing seem vaguely threatening at the same time. It’s a role that a lesser actor would’ve just seemed silly trying to pull off.

The movie’s finale does have one big twist that I won’t spoil, but it’s not a rewarding one because it kills the movie’s momentum stone dead and makes you realize that, yep, you’re in the middle of a Twilight movie and not an awesome season finale of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Needless to say, the movie ends the way you thought it was going to the minute you heard me say “I went to see Twilight“. That being said – and I’m gonna go out on a limb here hoping it doesn’t get severed – it isn’t completely the worst thing I’ve ever seen in the history of cinema ever.

In fact, it’s not even close to that bad, because the saga is finally at a point where it’s distanced itself from the parts where things sparkle and mope, and moved on to telling something resembling an actual story. The actors have all settled into their roles pretty nicely and so all their back & forth quipping feels more like the light-hearted joking between a group of old friends than stilted arguing between a guy who’s clearly going to lose the girl and a dude who can’t emote. There’s some genuine revelry in the early scenes from the cast and the whole thing seems to mostly not take itself too seriously anymore. I can’t say I would’ve made the effort if it weren’t a premiere, but I at least wasn’t bored during the movie, which is more than I can say for the rewatch of Superman The Movie I did the night before.

All in all, I’d say if you’re going to see this one, be aware that you’re going to see a Twilight movie. And if you’re not going to see it, well, you’ll probably live a little longer.

One last thing: the woman sitting next to me swore up and down I should stay in my seat for an after-credits sequence but I couldn’t be fucked by that point. If Samuel L Jackson showed up to recruit Jacob to The Avengers, could someone post that shit to Youtube?