Almost Average

Rating: 4/10 (26 August 2016)

Twilight: Breaking Dawn - Part 2 follows Bella as word gets out about her new child. When the authorities begin to believe that the child is a threat, the Cullens set out to help prove otherwise and to avoid a confrontation with said authorities.
Surprisingly I actually kind of liked this movie. I thought it had some really cool ideas. While they weren't always presented super well, like the twist ending, they were interesting. If the movies beforehand had been better then I might have actually liked this movie more. But alas, it wasn't meant to be.
On top of that the soundtrack was actually pretty good. I was surprised to hear songs that both fit the scene they were placed in and just sounded nice anyway. If only the movie had put as much effort into the soundtrack as everything else.
However, this movie still isn't very well-made. To start, the special effects still suck. It's actually really noticeable by this point. The baby was made from CGI for some stupid reason, and it looked awful. It looked like someone had taken a cutout of Mackenzie Foy's face and just glued it over another kid's face. Even when she grows up it looks fake. There's this obvious change when the CGI child was replaced by an actual child actor, and after that it was much better. It was kind of hilarious that the CGI child thing went on so long though. And the wolves, wow, those looked terrible. Maybe on their own they're okay, but when put side-by-side with actual people it was just awful.
There were a lot of other parts of the movie that were just kind of really stupid. Little nitpicks here and there. Eventually they do add up and I have to stop ignoring them.
A lot of new characters were introduced into this movie, and a lot of them weren't given any more screen time than their introductions. This is fine and all, but some of them were given slightly more screen time than the others, and then somehow we were expected to care about them. There's this weird romance that starts between two of these expendables, yet we only see the two character together once before they promise to be together forever. Kind of like Edward and Bella's relationship I guess. Regardless, it's a rushed relationship that we as an audience are expected to care about despite being given no reason to do so.
At this point I can't even tell if the actors are bad or if I've lowered my expectations so low that at this point they seem passable. Regardless of which one it is, Kristen Stewart still isn't that great. It's easier to watch Taylor Lautner now than it is her. While her performance isn't unbearable, it's still one of the worst in the movie.
Overall Twilight: Breaking Dawn - Part 2 is, while the best of the Twilight saga, still an incapably made movie. Most aspects don't exceed a level beyond average, and many fall far below it. However, there were a couple moments of blind luck when this movie dared to step, or maybe stumbled, over the average line and surprised us all, only to fall flat on it's face yet again. This movie is sort of like vanilla ice cream with bits of poop here and there. It's a bland flavor, sure, but it's still tasty. Sure there's poop every few licks, but for the most part it's just a decent ice cream cone. In the end I would only recommend this movie if you liked the previous ones or are contemplating whether or not it's worth it to finish the series. This is the shortest of the saga, and it's the best, so you might as well.