Twilight Breaking Dawn Part 2
Before I say anything about this film, I’ll hold my hands up – I’m biased. I can’t stand the Twilight Saga. I read the books, and saw the previous films, and in my opinion they don’t deserve their wild success. I nevertheless decided, since it was the last one, to try and judge this film on its own merits, despite my low expectations from its predecessors. I’ll let you be the judge of how well that went.
Firstly – the positives. The animation on the werewolves is pretty good, and has been consistently throughout the series. (The CGI baby however, was the most frightening thing in the film). I enjoyed Michael Sheen’s performance, and that of the other Volturi members, as the delightfully creepy members of the vampire ruling class (I for one prefer my vampires bloodthirsty). I thought the battle scene was well choreographed and had just the right amount of senseless violence.
Now the easier part. Instead of listing flaws which countless others have thoroughly explored, I’ll just tell you about the main chip in my own shoulder. I genuinely believe they couldn’t have done better with their source material. Because my main problem is the story.
There are no consequences, or really any threat, to Bella getting everything that she wants; Alice’s battle vision was my favourite part of the film – (And not, as you may cynically suggest, because I wanted the cast to be brutally murdered) -because Bella actually loses something, and would have had to struggle to overcome the aftermath of her decisions, making the audience care about the resolution, and empathise with the character. Despite being portrayed as the “girl next door”, Bella Swan just isn’t convincing as a real person. She mopes, gets stared at for long periods of time, gets bitten and becomes superhuman and immortal. Happily ever after. The end. She even gets a loophole written in to overcome the whole “undead can’t have children” thing – she never works towards anything, so she loses nothing. And if Stephenie Meyer isn’t invested in Bella Swan, why should I be?