A glorfied Fan-fic

Rating: 5/10 (1 June 2013)

After four novels and five films The Twilight Saga has ended. It is a series that has its fans but also people who hate it so much that they irrationally explode in rage. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2 is the best received movie on IMDb with a 5.6 rating at the time of this review. But how does it fare from a person who is neutral towards the series?
Three days after the birth of her daughter, Renesmee, Bella (Kristen Stewart) is a powerful new born vampire with fantastic strength, speed and self-control over her thirst. Werewolf Jacob (Taylor Lautner) is also no longer an issue because he is now imprinted on Renesmee and will fight to the death to protect her. But with all these changes Bella's dad (Billy Burke) has to be made aware of her change and Renesmee being a half-vampire, half-human child she ends up growing at a rapid rate being a nine year old child in months. The Volturi see Renesmee as a threat to their way of life and as an opportunity to destroy the Cullens. The Cullens go around the world to get allies to convince the Volturi that Renesmee is not a threat.
Breaking Dawn is the novel that even Twilight fans are critical about and the first 30 minutes seems to very self-aware about the whole series involving Bella not needing to break Edward, their sex, the lunacy of a man being in love with a baby and when Jacob strips off and reveals he is really a werewolf to Bella's dad. Then we fall into the usual melodrama and like the previous films introduces to interesting ideas but are not fully explored: this time the idea of immortal children who are never grow up mentally and therefore can never control their thirst and the hint of an old conflict between the Volturi and an Eastern European Medieval order who were much more open about their vampirism.
When we get to see the order vampires we see that they have a wide range of powers that make they look like the mutants from X-Men. We are introduced to a number of vampires during this film and we only get to see know a few of them. I expect we get to know more about them in the books but we only really know the characters through stereotypes: the Russian vampires spoke with comically bad accents. But the CGI is still terrible and cheap looking, resulting with a very creepy looking baby.
The final action sequence is the best in the series; it nothing to write home about but it is serviceable and last longer then two or three minutes. But Breaking Dawn Part 2 ends with a big cop out and has a massive deus ex machina. The whole thing felt a bit fanfictty and lazy as the writers did not want to upset anyone.
The Twilight Saga already tackled necrophilia and bestiality, now it has paedophilia under its belt. But because of the ridiculous nature of how it accurses the film actually acknowledges this and makes fun of it and does not show it as an romantic relationship: that would have been too weird.
Twilight has never been a showcase for acting and Breaking Dawn Part 2 is the same. But Lautner is surprisingly decent and it is easily the best performance I seen him give. But Stewart was the weak link in the cast this time round, having a very stiff delivery.
Breaking Dawn Part 1 was the weakest entry in the series but Bill Condon does a better with follow-up: it is much faster paced and he does have some visually interesting sequence, particular the flashback to the immortal children and the film does not flinch from showing a child's death and number of decapitations. But vampires do seem surprisingly easy to kill, especially in since the first film made it out that it is very difficult to destroy a vampire. Breaking Dawn Part 2 also has an improved music score and it is the best the series has to offer, using a bit of chorus music which I have a soft spot for.
Breaking Dawn Part 2 ranks dead in the middle of the series: Twilight and Eclipse are better, but New Moon and Breaking Dawn Part 1. The series should go down as forgetting then anything that is truly awful. I would like to see what would happen if a good writer was able to develop the basic ideas that the series has introduced because they is more potential then what the series was offered.