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Review: The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn (2011-2012)

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Directed by Bill Condon, 2011-2012.

It took exactly 47 seconds after starting this movie before I got to see the first male character take his shirt of and run around naked in the forest. The tone was set: I obviously just started my ‘epic’ 4-hour Twilight-adventure! Five years after the first Twilight (2008), Bella is still the same overly dependent girl with low self esteem. In Breaking Dawn the character continues to fail to develop a personality or any character traits that make her in any way likable. After 22 minutes, Bella finally laughs for the first time… But this wonderful moment happens after her wedding ceremony with Edward, when the young bride lays eyes on Jacob, the lover she didn’t marry.

The first part of Breaking Dawn feels as if the three-minute opening credits of a regular romantic comedy have been stretched out to last two hours. In the first 45 minutes of the movie we see Bella and Edward getting married (wedding preparations not included!) and having contradictory foreplay. The foreplay somehow destroys their bed and gets Bella pregnant. For the rest of the movie, Bella does what she does best: sit on a couch while shady, sparkly, and clingy men take care of her.

Almost every scene in Breaking Dawn looks as if it was written by the drooling three-year-old son of Marcy and Charlie Runkle. The dialogue, the acting, the pace, even the storyline in general… it’s hard to find redeeming qualities for the Twilight-sequels. The second part of Breaking Dawn introduces an interesting element, though: the fast-growing semi-vampire daughter of Bella and Edward, Renesmee. Renesmee’s introduction into the world of Stephenie Meyer might actually prove to be interesting… But we won’t find out any time soon. In the movie, Renesmee is just used as a plot device to force the series into an epic climax… One that never actually happens, because one bad CGI fight later, director Condon pulls the ‘it was all just a dream’-plot device, and all the characters return home after going through a compilation of previously seen footage.

The thing that Twilight had going for me was that I didn’t know how it would end. OK – I could at least pretend I didn’t know. Harry would defeat Voldemort, the Ring was obviously going to be destroyed, but Twilight had so little plot that the ending could be picked from a series of random cliches.

Breaking Dawn is the last movie in a series about a numb, dependant heroine, her creepy stalker, and a bunch of naked guys running around in the forest. Strangely, the two-parter shows the best the sequels had to offer. Seriously – unless you want to see the story of a 108-year old virgin and a wolf that likes to mate with babies, watch Argo (2012) instead; at least that movie needs no defense. Period.

Official poster (Credit: The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn)

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