Thank God It's Over, A Review Of The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2
By Staff in Arts & Entertainment on Nov 19, 2012 5:20PM
Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart, and friends, consider a future without Twilight
It is with heavy (though ironically still beating) hearts that Twihards across the country infiltrated movie theatres this weekend to witness the heavily flourished end of novelist Stephenie Meyer’s epic vampire and werewolf-infested love triangle, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part Two. In the series’ fifth installment, director Bill Condon returns to mop up the sap and gore begun and sustained for—yes, really—four other movies.
The film picks up right after Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) has given birth to what will be a half-vamp, half-human child enchantingly named Renesmee. She has survived the wretched and not at all romantic removal of this baby by virtue of her husband’s careful ripping of said thing from her stomach with the trusty use of a little vampire venom; what has resulted is a beautiful, lithe newborn woman vampire whose speed and hunting abilities prove to be superior to the average vamp. She even delightfully bests her brother-in-law in an arm wrestling match. Her new mutt child rouses the suspicion of the Italian vampire police known as the Volturi led by Aro (Michael Sheen), and so the Cullen clan must raise a proverbial vampire army to serve as witnesses for why this child isn’t going to be catastrophic for their entire race.
It is cliché and obvious to lament the rotten acting, abominable plot, and crass special effects found throughout these movies. Interesting additions to this film included the slow, curious opening credits and careful attention to symbols. Similar to David Fincher’s Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, the film’s first ten minutes are spent lingering over surreal images; here we see freezing flowers and powdery snow narrated by the signature, ethereal Twilight theme song—all very heavy-handed metaphors for the ‘frozen’ though beautiful future for our favorite vampire couple. It is no mystery that Twilight’s Stephenie Meyer was an English major at some point as all of her books have been very topically defined by symbols: a red, forbidden apple, a cold and impersonal moon, and a stoic, esoteric chess set. How can movie-makers possibly channel this obscene attempt at meaning into something worth watching?
From the onset, this tale was devised and written as a Christian allegory in favor of abstinence when faced with overwhelming desire and obsession, though it was marketed and sold to teenage girls all over the world ironically as a passionate and even erotic love story. This movie and its immediate predecessor are intended as an example for why a young woman should never end her baby’s life, even if your half-vampire child is going to break your back and destroy you. The issue overall resides with the notion that there is truth or integrity to these addicted-to-each other human-vampire-werewolf relationships so fraught with religious undertones couched as romance, and it is shameful that such a mess has made billions and topped box offices so many times. This is not an indictment necessarily of the religious connotations implied throughout, but more a condemnation of taking those beliefs and profiting from them being sold as romance and sexual longing. Are young girls seriously debating the moral questions that are asked during a life-threatening pregnancy or whether or not to avoid intercourse before marriage as Meyer intended, or are they salivating over Taylor Lautner’s rippling pectorals and Robert Pattinson’s chiseled jaw line? To pretend anything other than the latter is laughable, yet the whole mission intended for this series is lost amid gory battle scenes, a whiny, flat heroine, a profound amount of heads and limbs ripped off, and two reputed male heartthrobs that lack any authentic engagement with the task at hand.
It is a relief that this ‘saga’ has ended its reign and will most likely fall silently into cinematic oblivion; few will remember much from this bloody, torrential downpour of melodrama and hidden messages from a religious author except for Kristen Stewert’s classically dour expression and R. Patz’s lanky, ice-y body.
By: Victoria Pietrus