Twilight Tuesdays: Breaking Dawn - Part Two wraps a messy saga with bursts of enthralling camp

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part One began with monotonous wedding preparations.

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part Two kicks off with Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) in vampire form needing to quench her thirst for blood. This compulsion leads to Swan speeding around the forest, nearly eating some guy Free Solo-ing up a mountain, and eventually viciously attacking a mountain lion for dinner. The shackles are off for director Bill Condon and screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg. The first Breaking Dawn movie wielded strong PureFlix vibes. Now, the Sunday school sermon is over. Twilight is going out with a preposterous bang.

Once Bella has done a quick run with her newfound vampire powers, it's time to focus on Renesmee (Mackenzie Foy), her half-human/half-vampire offspring. The vengeful vampire Irina (Maggie Grace) eventually spies Renesmee and believes she's a forbidden "immortal child" threatening the vampire world. She reports this development to The Voltouri. Inevitably, the organization's leader, Aro (Michael Sheen), is all too happy to have an opportunity to take on the Cullen's. Now, Bella, Edward (Robert Pattinson), and the Cullens must assemble vampires from all over the world. These undead entities must function as witnesses for this meeting between our heroes and the Voltouri.

Like its predecessor, Breaking Dawn – Part Two is clearly eating up time to draw out one book into two movies. Various vampires (like a trio of Irish vampire cousins) receive extensive screen time yet don’t do anything in the actual story. The entire plot even pauses for an Emmett (Kellan Lutz) and Bella arm-wrestling match determining which of them is strongest. Awkward plot threads, like a plan involving Renesmee going to live overseas, are stretched out like taffy before petering out into nothing. Rosenberg’s script is once again stalling for time in an incredibly awkward fashion.

Rosenberg is also tasked with translating some truly abhorrent material from the source material, including Jacob's primary plot thread of "imprinting" on Renesmee. In a nutshell, this means Jacob will eventually be Renesmee's lover and, yes, it's just as creepy in execution as it sounds. Meyer's original Breaking Dawn novel clearly came up with this plot detail to provide Jacob a "consolation prize" for losing out on the Edward/Bella/Jacob love triangle. Meyer wanted to reassure Team Jacob "Don't worry, he still gets a love interest! He didn’t really ‘lose’!"

This tremendously unsettling plotline was her solution to that problem. There’s just no getting around how terribly conceived this storyline is, especially since the movie ends with a disturbing “joke” where Jacob tells Edward “Should I start calling you dad?” Breaking Dawn- Part Two, you’re only making the problem worse. This egregious facet of the storytelling reinforces that Jacob Black has been the worst part of this entire saga. From Taylor Lautner’s dismal performance to the character’s insufferable demeanor, everything about Jacob is terrible. This creepy storyline is just the poisoned cherry on top of the repulsive character sundae that is Jacob Black.

On a more positive note, other aspects of Breaking Dawn – Part Two’s narrative return the series to functioning nicely as teenage wish-fulfillment fantasies. Breaking Dawn – Part One made the creepy Mormon subtext of this whole saga flagrant text, rendering the entire film as a movie parents could live vicariously through. The franchise’s target demo of young girls was left out in the cold. Breaking Dawn – Part Two, meanwhile, has sequences that return the saga back into the hands of younger viewers. Bella getting a birthday present in the form of a beautiful, secluded cottage for her family especially encapsulates this. Living out your days with a dreamboat vampire in a woodland domicile feels like a fantasy some 14-year-old girl would pen in a Tumblr Word post shared to the world at 2:15 AM. That’s exactly the vibe and target demo Twilight should always channel.

Breaking Dawn - Part Two also has the good sense to bolster its runtime with a comically excessive cast of broadly defined vampires, including Lee Pace as an Anglophobic vampire. Breaking Dawn – Part One got way too enamored with stiff werewolf drama that nobody liked. This follow-up, meanwhile, gets enjoyable cartoony with newcomers like a pair of Russian vampires that are basically the “loose cannons” of the Cullen clan. It’s also unintentionally amusing how Bella and Edward having a kid becomes a background element. Renesmee is largely just a plot device with no personality to speak of. Bella and Edward don’t evolve much functioning in their role as parents. A conceptual game-changer for this saga doesn't really impact much!

Speaking of Renesmee, the baffling decision to render this character in CG will haunt my nightmares forevermore. Condon opts to keep the camera tightly focused on this digital child’s plastic-looking face. Carter Burwell’s score accompanies these images with sentimental music insisting the audience get invested in this youngster…but she looks so divorced from reality! Renesmee is truly a boondoggle in CG effects work despite the unquestionably hard work visual effects artists put into the feature. This movie’s reach has far exceeded its grasp in terms of realizing a “believable” CG human baby. What’s extra puzzling is…you didn’t need a digital double. You could’ve just used real kids to represent Renesmee at different ages! It’s bizarre that Breaking Dawn – Part Two shot itself in the foot by staunchly committing to this terrible-looking CG baby.

This shortcoming, though, does provide some unintentionally hysterical moments throughout Breaking Dawn – Part Two. So many moments of “pathos” center around this child that wandered away from a Robert Zemeckis mo-cap movie. Nobody on-screen ever acknowledges or makes some quip about how Renesmee “looks funny”. It’s just an uncanny valley CG baby intruding on conventional cinematic melodrama. That’s an artistic defect, but the deep conviction of (most) actors on-screen makes this shortcoming extremely entertaining to watch. Many outlandish Breaking Dawn – Part Two flourishes prove extra thrilling through folks like Stewart and Pattinson refusing to condescend to this material. Even in the home stretch, they remain committed to this weird material that gave them their careers.

Also inexplicably dedicated to this material is Michael Sheen as the main baddie. Getting more screen time than in prior Twilight entries, Sheen’s Aro is an over-the-top hoot anytime he’s on screen. At one point he delivers a lively cackle that just exudes big Tim Curry energy, the highest compliment one can pay a blockbuster movie villain. His performance anchors a finale that eventually goes entertainingly off the rails in a go-for-broke fake-out fight sequence. Eventually revealed as a vision conjured up by Alice, for roughly 10-ish minutes, a war between our heroes and the Voltouri transpires against a wintery landscape that’s so delightfully gruesome.

In pop culture, Twilight is often placed right alongside Polly Pocket and Strawberry Shortcake as juvenile “girly” entertainment. While not entirely incorrect, that perception makes Breaking Dawn – Part Two’s fake-out finale extra fun to witness. All the surprisingly brutal vampire kills from Eclipse come back ten-fold, including werewolves chomping the heads off nasty foes. One member of the Voltouri announces “Finally!” as two vampires murder him. Bella and Edward are suddenly channeling John Wick instead of Nicholas Spark's protagonist. Rami Malek’s vampire character even uses his “mastery of the elements” to crack open the very Earth itself, exposing this battlefield to rivers of magma.

It's all madness, with Rosenberg’s screenplay reveling in the consequence-free nature of a dream sequence. Oscillating so wildly from Part One's wedding scene to this unhinged duel between good and evil is wickedly entertaining. Come to think of it, there’s a violent streak throughout this entire final Twilight movie that’s deeply fun to experience. Bella beating up Jacob after learning he imprinted on her daughter is a riot, especially since Edward watches this interaction with zippy “that’s my girl!” glee. Honestly, just delivering more carnage gives Breaking Dawn – Part Two more bite (no pun intended) than its predecessors. Juxtaposing mushy romance with Lee Pace slaughtering a random British musician in an alleyway, I’m a sucker for that kind of dissonance.

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part Two suffers from all the faults of its predecessors. It caps off an erratic and messy saga often too buttoned-up to reach its full camp potential. Even with that reality, a strange phenomenon came over me during Breaking Dawn’s final minutes. The final proper scene of this franchise (with Edward and Bella talking amongst the field of flowers from Eclipse) ends with the camera pulling back and pages turning on the couple. Things have gone meta as Breaking Dawn, like Winnie the Pooh and Friends, depicts Bella and Edward existing inside a book. That cute touch segways into the first section of the end credits, in which all the principal Twilight Saga actors get their names put on-screen next to footage of their characters.

It doesn’t matter if you were in Breaking Dawn – Part Two or not. Everyone from Edi Gathegi from Twilight to Bryce Dallas Howard from Eclipse is highlighted here. Christina Perri’s “A Thousand Years” blares as The Twilight Saga tips its hat to all the on-screen performers who made these weird movies possible. The sheer scope of this montage gradually began to dawn on me as this tribute went on…and that’s when I began to cry. It was the most ridiculous thing, I only really liked two of the five Twilight movies! I was fine with never watching these movies again!

Yet here I was, sitting alone in my apartment wiping away tears as Perri belted out lines like "time has brought your heart to me" while Charlie Bewley's name flashed up on-screen. Perhaps Perri’s vocals were just deeply moving to me…maybe it was also the mood I was in that day. However, I also think it was just the deeply sincere execution of this sequence that got to me. There are no jokes here, no wry self-deprecating lines mocking the whole Twilight phenomenon. Instead, it’s a final moment of reflection before Twilight firmly goes into the past. That ambition is executed with nary a wink to the audience. It’s all about sincere affection for the cast members who dominated these movies that meant so much to people. How can you not get swept up in that?

12 years after Breaking Dawn – Part Two’s release, these credits also register as an unexpectedly moving time capsule. Many actors in these Twilight movies (Gathegi, Anna Kendrick, Justin Chon, Pattinson & Stewart) have gone on to bigger and greater things. Could Bryce Dallas Howard have ever imagined she would be a director when she was on the set of Eclipse? Would Rami Malek have called you out of your mind if you suggested to him on the Breaking Dawn set that he’d one day win an Oscar? How could Robert Pattinson have comprehended random lines from The Lighthouse back in 2011?

These Twilight performances simultaneously feel like they’re from another planet yet also show flashes of the exciting careers ahead. Maybe in 2012, this would’ve felt like a self-indulgent pat on the back for a franchise consuming pop culture. In 2024, though, it just hits differently. These credits are now like snapshots of a family vacation from decades past. Living in a post-Good Time/Certain Women world, Breaking Dawn – Part Two’s credits poignantly raise a glass to a specific era in the larger arcs of countless artists. Couple that externalized meaning with a sincere execution and lovely touches like incorporating actual quotes from Meyer’s novels against the credits for the saga’s three principal performers and…maybe it isn’t so shocking this Breaking Dawn – Part Two capper reduced me to tears.

It's odd watching the Twilight movies now well over a decade removed from their pop culture dominance. Only the first and final entries in this saga are truly “good”. Even those installments come with plenty of caveats stemming from the franchise’s creepy subtext and its source material's sloppy storytelling. Still, it’s also easy to see why a generation of moviegoers latched onto this saga. Not everything we grow up with is sacrosanct. The art that defines our childhood or teenage years is rarely also perfect. Whatever exists in our earliest years gets to be the soundtrack/movies/books of our lives. It’s all such a luck of the drawn. To paraphrase Anette Bening in 20th Century Women, influential art from our youth “may just be the art that showed up”. It's not necessarily the best art around.

The absolute worst mid-2000s country songs molded my childhood. So too did the exploits of Bella and Edward inform so many people’s teenage years. Just as I can still tap my toes to Brad Paisley's “Online” while recognizing this genre's grave imperfections, I can understand how so many have sincere and loving affection for this weirdo saga. It’s especially easy to grasp that appreciation given the dearth of long-form romantic drama sagas since Twilight ended. It's easy for fondness to brew for these titles given that Twilight pastiches no longer dominate theaters, especially after one-off 2013 flops like The Host or Beautiful Creatures. We must all make peace with the past or else it will consume us. That's a bit easier to do when grappling with The Twilight Saga, which does have its virtues.

Warts and all (and by warts, I mean that absolutely and by warts, I mean that absolutely dreadful Breaking Dawn – Part One movie!), I’m glad I finally finished up The Twilight Saga, especially since Breaking Dawn – Part Two ended things on such a high note. Even the choice to make the final sounds of this entire franchise Christina Perri and Green Day tunes feels...so quintessentially 2012 and Twilight. That's exactly the ending I'd imagine this series getting at this point in human history. If nothing else, finally absorbing this entire saga meant that I learned adrenaline rushes can stop moving vans. Trust me, I Googled it, Edward was totally right, it’s a scientific phenomenon.