"It's over. Now let's never speak of it again."
-My friend, upon leaving a screening of Breaking Dawn, pt. 2
Well, you can breathe a sigh of relief. The Twilight Saga films are officially over and done with (for now...until Stephenie Meyer decides to continue the series). I stuck with the Twilight movies to the bitter, sparkly end, and I can't say I'll miss the series. However, the final part of the series, Breaking Dawn, pt. 2, had a surprising amount of...bite to it. Ho-ho!
For one thing, now that Kristen Stewart's character, Bella, is a vampire, she is finally granted a personality. No longer the shrinking violet with a masochistic streak, Bella is kinda cool as a vamp. She's sexy, she's hungry, she's strong. She also has a quirky little special power--she's a "shield". She can protect others by projecting her shield onto them (visually, it kind of looks like when movie characters have flashbacks and the screen gets all wavy and blurry). So, finally, Bella isn't so damn weak. And it's a good thing, since she's made an enemy of the Volturi.
Let me remind you who the Volturi are again. Basically, they are the high church of vampires. They reside in Italy and make sure that all other vampires in the world are following the rules. When the Volturi get word that Bella and Edward Cullen have created an "immortal child" (a vampire child), which is a huge sin in the vampire world because such children cannot be controlled, they amass an army to confront and punish the Cullen clan.What they don't know is that the "immortal child" is actually mortal. She's the half-human, half-vampire spawn of Bella and Edward, conceived and born while Bella was still human. She also has a terrible name, Renesmee, and a grown man (Jacob) is in love with her. But, you know, let's roll with it.
So the Cullens begin amassing an army of their own--not to fight, but to serve as witnesses to the fact that Renesmee poses no threat to the vampire world. This is an excuse to meet cool vampires from all over the world, include a couple of black vampires from the jungle who are dressed like exotic natives and it's all racist and shit!
Once the final showdown begins, with the Volturi showing up to confront the Cullens and all their cool vampire friends, it gets veeerrry interesting.
Stop reading now if you don't want to get spoiled!
In the trailers for BD2, you may have noticed that there is an intense fight sequence between the Volturi and the Cullens. Indeed, there is an epic battle scene in the film that begins with Aro (Michael Sheen, camping it up wonderfully), the head of the Volturi, ripping Carlisle Cullen's head from his motha-fuckin' body!!! During this battle we see many beloved characters kick the bucket before Bella and Edward finally take out Aro himself.
Here's the thing. I've read Breaking Dawn and no one, except one minor villainous character, dies at the end. The ending of Breaking Dawn is one of the dumbest, most anti-climatic endings ever. Basically, the Volturi come, they try to pull some vampire tricks on the Cullens, but Bella protects everyone with her
Ok, so the movie seeeeems to take the source material in a radically different direction by actually having a battle sequence where characters actually die. And man, the crowd was going wild in the theatre where I saw the movie. But at the last minute, they pull the biggest cliche in the book: it was all a dream! Sort of. It turns out that the fight sequence was a vision. Alice Cullen, who can see into the future, takes hold of Aro's arm to show him how a battle could turn out (with Aro, and many other Volturi, dying the true death by getting their heads ripped off) if the Volturi insist on fighting. Well, needless to say, Aro doesn't much like that, and the Volturi turn tail and head back to Italy. And no one dies! Yay!
Ultimately, BD2 wanted to have its cake and eat it too--to have an awesome battle scene, complete with shocking and violent ends to beloved (and not so beloved) characters--but to also please the fans by staying true to the (awful, bad, poorly written and plotted) source material. And you know, it kinda works. I would have loved it if the battle scene had been real--what a shock to the throngs of tween girl fans!--but even though they pulled the whole "It was only a dream" switcheroo, I'm glad they got even a little subversion in there. It was better than nothing.
End spoilers!
I could mock the Twilight movies further, but they are such easy targets that it's not very fun. The books are poorly written and the final book is absurdly anti-climatic and reads like bad fan-fiction. The movies are not great, and Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson are underwhelming. The whole Twiverse is sexist, heteronormative, shallow, and simplistic.
But are they the worst books and movies ever? The most sexist books and movies ever? No. Not even close. It's kind of sad, actually. The series is so mediocre, it doesn't live up to the haters' expectations of it.
In conclusion, the only thing to really say about Breaking Dawn, pt. 2 is: it's not as bad as the other Twilight movies.
3 stars out of 5
No comments:
Post a Comment