BREAKING DAWN PART 2 (2012): One disbeliever's honest appraisal of a movie that doesn't need his approval

Let it be known, in case I haven't yet made it clear, that I profoundly dislike the Twilight series.  What little I have read of Stephenie Meyer's books has left me agape at how such simple and juvenile writing manages to be a bestseller among relatively smart teenagers.  Never mind that its socially conservative message and disturbing cipher of a female lead sets a damaging example for young girls: remember, sex before marriage is EVIL, but defining yourself completely by the men in your life is OKAY.

But whatever.  Most teenagers are hip enough to see through the conservatism in the books; that's not what draws them to it.  Meyer has fashioned an empire with an undeniably savvy hook: two hunky guys fighting over a decidedly average girl.  What teen or tweener could resist?

The movies have been fairly bearable, mainly because they've assembled top-notch actors and directors behind them.  But with few exceptions, most of the talent behind the series has fallen prey to the terrible writing.  Casualties in the director's chair include Catherine Hardwicke (Thirteen), Chris Weitz (About a Boy), and David Slade (Hard Candy), and even otherwise blameless actors like Bryce Dallas Howard and Graham Greene have faltered under Meyer's clunky plotting and dialogue.

But with Bill Condon, the series seems to have met its match.  The director of such sexually frank films as Gods and Monsters and Kinsey, Condon finally lends the series the authenticity it has been so sorely missing all along.  A chief complaint about the series has been that its female lead, Bella (Kristen Stewart), is a complete blank screen, and that her male counterpart, the vampire Edward (Robert Pattinson), is a parody of a brooding rock star.  Condon's solution is to start from scratch and make the two main characters flesh and blood, so to speak.  His adaptation of the series's last novel, Breaking Dawn, brings a much needed humanity to the characters that other filmmakers have failed to apply.  By the end, well, I actually cared.  That Breaking Dawn Part 2 is the best in the series is without question.  That it is--deep breath, here we go--an actual good movie is the real surprise.

The splitting of Breaking Dawn into two parts is beneficial.  It limits each film to one plot apiece; while earlier films in the series felt like prefaces with lots of exposition, no beginning and no end, Condon's two Breaking Dawn films are more conventionally constructed, and easier to take.  For those playing at home, in Part 1 Bella Swan and Edward Cullen--he the dashing 100-year-old vampire who only looks 20, she the 18-year-old plain Jane--got married, Bella got pregnant with a half-vampire-baby, she died in childbirth, but Edward bit her, so she became, well, you know.

The child, Renesmee (Mackenzie Foy), grows at a highly advanced rate and has the supernatural strengths of her vampire father.  Word of the child reaches the Volturi, an ancient folk who are sort of a Vampire Senate, led by the slithery Aro (Michael Sheen).  The Volturi are not happy, and assemble an army to dispatch with Bella, Edward, Renesmee, and their entire family.  The Cullens call on their vampire friends, an assemblage of oddballs from around the world, to defend them.  At their side is the werewolf Jacob (Taylor Lautner), who has vowed to defend Renesmee.

Meyer's storyline has its faults.  The way it deals with Bella's newfound sexual hunger is downright sketchy, especially for a movie geared toward kids, but the movie thankfully doesn't spend much time on it.  I still haven't figured out how Bella's dad (Billy Burke) is meant to figure into the whole deal, or why he doesn't seem to notice that Renesmee is growing, well, way too fast.  The whole story with the Volturi is pretty filmsy too, and depends a whole lot on basic things being conveniently misinterpreted; for a race who appear to be psychic, vampires seem to misunderstand a lot.

It's not that the writing has substantially improved with this entry; it's merely that there is less of it.  The plot is ridiculous, but it at least has a clear through-line.  With a more well-defined story arc, the characters seem less like automatons and more like real people inhabiting a real story.  There is more action in this entry than in all of the previous ones combined.

The very large cast is exceptionally good; few of the film's talented actors are wasted.  The ensemble of vampire henchmen from various countries is made up of surprisingly well-defined characters.  I particularly liked Lee Pace (of the magnificent The Fall) as the Revolutionary War soldier who takes a special joy in sinking his fangs into Brits.  Dakota Fanning is chilling as a young telepath.

As the head of the Volturi, Sheen completely hams it up, and why shouldn't he?  He's now played the heavy in not one but two vampire/werewolf crossover series.  He's played an evil vampire more often than he's played Tony Blair.  His performance here is not up to his usual standard, but, well, let's just say he has fun with it.

Though Lautner remains one of the weaker actors of the bunch, even he seems looser and more human than before; this is the best performance he's given yet.  The movie even allows him to kid himself, and his serial shirtlessness gives way to one hilarious scene he shares with Bella's father.  Even Kellan Lutz, who hasn't been particularly noteworthy in the series thus far as the hulking Emmett Cullen, is pretty good here.  Alas, the series has failed to make a case for the existence of Jackson Rathbone, but I suppose it can't do everything.

The climactic battle sequence between the Volturi and the Cullens is really something.  It works, because Condon invests much of the film in making us care about the characters involved.  As has not been the case with much of the series, there is something at stake here.  Condon also takes a good deal more joy in the various grotesqueries of the vampire genre: I'm happy to report that, for anyone fed up with the inert kissy-kissy sparkliness of early entries in the series, there is a greater number of beheadings in this one.  I also liked the concept of the Immortal Child: apparently it is a crime to bite a child, since a vampire child becomes nothing more than a remorseless killing machine.  I'm imagining an army of bloodthirsty tots attacking the town.  But that's another movie.

It was no small feat to bring a respectable close to this usually mediocre, sometimes heinous series.  Perhaps it was a little easier to tackle the series after Bella and Edward's marriage; with the two of them finally doing the dirty deed, the off-putting abstinence allegory of the series's earlier films is no longer necessary.  Because Condon downplays the bigger picture and gives Stewart and Pattinson room to breathe, they become more believable.  The movie closes with an admittedly indulgent final moment between Bella and Edward, which is--for the first time in the series--completely earned.

Okay, so it could be that I'm suffering from a slight case of Stockholm Syndrome, having sat through ten hours of this series now, but I have to say I was pleasantly surprised.  Actual fans ought to eat this movie up.  As a non-fan, let me offer this olive branch: I enjoyed it.

*** out of ****

NOTE: The movie doesn't do itself any favors by closing with a screenshot of the final page of Meyer's novel.  One sentence is enough to remind us of how poorly conceived her prose is.  "Our forever"?  Give me a break.

BREAKING DAWN PART 1: One disbeliever's honest appraisal of a movie that doesn't need his approval

To say that Breaking Dawn Part 1 breaks some new ground is not to say that it’s particularly noteworthy. Still, I must regretfully admit that in the teeny-bopper bottomless pit of money that is the Twilight series, it takes some risks that the other films haven’t, and unlike its leaden predecessors, by the end it has actually gone somewhere. It’s not the best of the series (the briskly paced New Moon remains the most bearable so far), but under the guidance of director Bill Condon (Gods and Monsters, Dreamgirls), it finally moves the story and characters forward. And what’s more, it gives Kristen Stewart something to do other than be plain, and Robert Pattinson something to do other than brood.

The wedding day has finally arrived, as Bella Swan (Stewart) is preparing to walk down the aisle to her 100-some-year-old vampire husband Edward Cullen (Pattinson). He whisks her away to a Brazil honeymoon, where they finally do that thing that married people do. Bella has, of course, remained a virgin until her wedding night; the much older Edward’s sexual history is unclear, another of the many nuggets of patriarchy in the often disturbingly conservative series. But I digress.

So yes, they do the nasty. Since the Twilight vampires have superhuman strength, Bella wakes up with bruises and aches. Edward, now frightened for her safety, retreats back to chastity. Then comes the morning sickness.

Though Breaking Dawn is slowly paced and never subtle, it at least tackles some of the more interesting questions about the vampire-human relationship. That this is the most sexually frank of the previously coy series is likely attributable to Condon, who directed Kinsey and rarely shies away from the big sexual questions. The early honeymoon scenes are a believable portrait of a couple struggling with their sexual chemistry.

When Bella becomes pregnant, the movie also isn’t afraid to delve into the consequences of having a vampire baby. The scenes in which we see the toll the pregnancy takes on Bella are surprisingly honest, graphic, and disturbing, with one hilariously gross blood-drinking scene and at least one moment that is reminiscent of the ordeal Christian Bale went through in The Machinist. Though the series has been known for its embrace of socially conservative values, the movie doesn’t shy away from the prospect of abortion, either. When Bella insists upon carrying to term, it is not because of a moral conviction (or a Mississippi personhood law); rather, it is a choice of hers based on what the baby means for her and Edward’s relationship.

Ms. Stewart, in her fourth time playing this role, is finally allowed to make it her own. To date, Bella has been defined mainly through the men she is interested in (Is it Edward? Is it Jacob?). In Breaking Dawn, we see what makes her tick. Condon injects life into the role and allows Stewart to have fun with it. Now we see not just a typical, plain, uncommonly reserved girl who is the object of desire for a couple of hunks, but a fragile yet determined young lady with desires of her own.

Mr. Pattinson is also better than usual; where his performances in the previous films seemed phony and furtive, here we sense that he is a kind, attentive, caring guy who’s just trying to do the best he can for his lady. His emotions come through as true feelings rather than affectations. Billy Burke continues to be entertaining as Bella’s kindly yet ineffectual father. The underused Sarah Clarke finally gets a few nice moments for herself as Bella’s mother.

That said, though Condon tries with all his might, the movie still isn’t particularly good. No matter what talented director tries his or her hand at it (Catherine Hardwicke, Chris Weitz, and David Slade have been the casualties so far), the writing remains incredibly poor. Not-so-freely adapted from Stephenie Meyer’s book by Melissa Rosenberg, each line of dialogue hits with a whopping thud. Though Condon coaxes good, thoughtful performances out of most of the actors, they cannot hope to wrap their mouths around the words without sounding phenomenally silly. Peter Facinelli, Elizabeth Reaser, and Nikki Reed are among the talented actors left to spout this nonsense, and fail to make much of an impression. Anna Kendrick once again manages to rise above it, but the movie has far too little of her for my liking.

As the hotheaded Jacob, Lautner continues to be the cast’s weak link. Though he certainly looks good without a shirt (and has appeared in the film for all of 1.5 seconds before he violently tears it off), he doesn’t fare as well when he’s required to talk. If the more accomplished actors have trouble with the insipid dialogue, Lautner doesn’t stand a chance.

While the makeup on Stewart showing Bella’s deterioration is disturbingly convincing, the visual effects are laughably bad. The CGI wolves that Jacob and his crew transform into are about as seamless as “South Park.” One scene in which the wolves telepathically communicate—with their human voices awkwardly playing in the background, no lips moving—begs to be drug into the street, shot, stuffed, and mounted. The visual effects were supervised by John Bruno, who performed the same job on Avatar, Terminator 2, The Abyss, Poltergeist, and Heavy Metal. Those are among the most visually engrossing films ever made. I assume Breaking Dawn, which looks like a Nick Jr. cartoon, will not be listed on his resume.

** 1/2 out of ****