My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard

Rating: Null/10 (18 November 2013)

The final film in the "Twilight" franchise, "Breaking Dawn 2" finds Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) doing exactly what she did in previous instalments: TRY TO DECIDE BETWEEN BEASTIALITY AND NECROPHILIA. The problem? Her hot werewolf love interest (Taylor Lautner, totally fine) is as hot as her hot vampire love interest (Robert Pattinson as a post lawsuit Michael Jackson).
What's a girl to do? Easy. Have a baby with the vampire and let your newborn daughter hook up with the werewolf. Seriously. By the franchise's end, metro-sexual vampires - quiet, emotional and totally hairless - have triumphed over animalistic wolf men who, apparently, have to make do with child erotica. Who writes this stuff?
Stephenie Meyer, apparently. A devout Mormon, Meyer's entire franchise plays out like a Mormon's guide to abstinence and 18th century domesticity. Women are frail, tend to traditional roles, family homes resemble isolated cult covens, sex before marriage (and vampire baby abortions) is really really bad and all men are kinky dudes who exist only to rip off their shirts and direct their barely controlled, lust-filled crotches at oh-so-innocent maids who want to get down and dirty, but only in the name of God, love, destiny and arranged marriage.
A giant girl's fantasy, Meyer's entire franchise is about chaste, pubescent gals fretting about losing their virginity. Such romanticised abstinence is typical of teen fiction, but "Twilight" then veers into new territory: it is men who become guardians of virginity and female "purity". Whilst both Meyer's boys and girls "boil" and "spontaneously combust" with roiling passion, it's ultimately guys who prevent sexual lust from turning into actual penetration. "I don't want to hurt you," sexy vampire Edward Cullen murmurs, fearful of leaving bruises on the porcelain white Bella. For Meyer, sex is dangerous, hurts, is wild, a fact which the innocent Bella doesn't know. And so Meyer has her male characters make it their priority to "make things safe" before copulation can begin (and even then, sex promptly leads to Bella dying). In the world of Twilight, physical safety becomes a substitute for virginity which man, gallant, protects with zeal. It's the ultimate female fantasy: to be so smoking you bring all the hormonal boys to the yard, at which point you pick the one who most gallantly resists lurching at your bodice. For Bella, love and lust aren't enough. You must love her enough not to touch her...and then touch her so hard you kill her with manly prowess. Chastity and hedonism, all in one. Kinky.
5/10 - Worth one viewing.