Even the happiest marriage can feel like a war. But what if the relationship really was a killing field, with husband, wife, in-laws, friends and far-flung relations literally trying to exterminate each other? And what if that was really hard, because they're mostly undead? 
 
 This is the world of "Breaking Dawn, Part 2," where Mr. and Mrs. Edward Cullen work through some domestic issues in a combat-zone blowout sufficient to bring down a medium-sized country. 
 
 In the final film installment in the "Twilight" franchise, the evil Volturi vampire clan, feeling threatened by the birth of Bella and Edward's half-vamp offspring, mount a blitzkrieg on Forks, Wash. The Cullens recruit a league of allies with X-Men style magical powers to fight back. Since the only way to destroy a vampire in Stephenie Meyer's mythology is to separate the cranium from the shoulders, the film features more beheadings than a "Game of Thrones" marathon. 
 
 If you think the premise is absurd, wait till you see the execution. Logic and plausibility are not commodities valued by fans of the immensely popular "Twilight" series, and here they're abandoned entirely. The film's motto could be, "Look, don't think." Stars Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson are lavished with visual caresses by director Bill Condon and lenser Guillermo Navarro to an extraordinary degree, which certainly makes the picture's romantic scenes easy on the eyes. 
 
 We begin with Bella adjusting to her new status as a bloodsucker, having been turned by Edward to prevent her dying during childbirth. Oddly, Stewart's acting was more corpse-like when she was playing a mortal. Having crossed over to the undead, she's livelier and more expressive. 
 
 The newlyweds live in acute domestic luxury, occupying an idyllic forest cottage evidently based on a Thomas Kinkade painting. Their little mutant bundle of bliss, Renesmee, grows faster than humans do, reaching a toddler's size in just weeks. Eleven-year-old Mackenzie Foy plays the girl at six months of age. In earlier scenes and a flash-forward, Renesmee is an eerie fusion of child actors and wide-eyed digital face painting. 
 
 So for a time, the biggest challenge facing the couple is keeping Bella's policeman dad, Charlie (Billy Burke), from asking too many questions about why his granddaughter shot up 6 inches between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Since a comic scene of supernatural show-and-tell with Taylor Lautner's werewolf Jacob reminds us that Charlie is North America's least inquisitive cop, it's easier to believe he'll swallow anything. 
 
 A weird amalgam of hard action and soft romance, "Breaking Dawn" is most amusing when the Cullens, their ethnically stereotyped multicultural allies, and the swarming Volturi are hell-bent on mutual annihilation. Condon stages the frenetic battle royal with frenetic energy and no small amount of humor. The sequence is a showcase for Michael Sheen's campy, cackling vampire chieftain, Aro. Sheen makes a lark of his scenes. But there's too little of him and too much of everything else. "Breaking Dawn, Part 2" doesn't end the series on an especially strong note, but it ends it. Let's count our blessings. 
 
 ccovert@startribune • Twitter: @colincovert ||||| This is it people, the long awaited day that Stephanie Meyer’s asinine chronicle of lame vampires, talking CGI werewolves, and the single worst female protagonist in all of fiction comes to a close. While the fandom may live on for decades, at least we’ll never have to suffer through one of these movies again. 
 
 Of course Meyer’s could always write another novel and cash in, god forbid. But maybe I’m speaking too soon. Perhaps “The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2” will be the rare sequel that finally delivers on all the hype, at the very least working as a light guilty pleasure along the lines of “True Blood.” It could happen. Yeah, and monkeys might fly out of my butt. 
 
 This final curtain to the “Twilight” saga might not be as pointless as “New Moon” or flat-out stupid as the first “Breaking Dawn.” Regardless, the performances are still adequate at best, the characters lack any substance, the effects are cheesy, the narrative goes nowhere, and the dialogue would make a canceled ABC soap opera laugh. The one redeemable aspect of the film is good old Billy Burke as the underutilized Charlie, providing the only intentionally funny lines in the film. But even Charlie reacts all too casually to the fact that Jacob is a werewolf and his daughter has “changed” herself. Then again, what do you expect from a man that raised Bella to be as insecure and needy as possible. 
 
 Bella’s grotesque pregnancy and vampire transformation is fortunately out of the way. Now Edward and her have a creepy little vampire girl with the idiotic name of Renesmee. They find that Renesmee is growing at a rapid rate, looking like a 10 year old after only a short amount of time. Jacob ‘Clueless’ Black is also sticking around the family after imprinting on little Renesmee. I don’t entirely know what it means for a werewolf to imprint on a child. But I’m fairly certain it means that Jacob is a pedophile. 
 
 With these “Twilight” movies and “Tron: Legacy,” Michael Sheen has established that when he goes over the top he really goes off the deep end. Sheen swallows the scenery whole here as the Volturi leader, Aro, who believes that Renesmee is an uncontrollable immortal child that could threaten the closeted existence of vampires. To protect Renesmee from the Volturi, the Cullen’s enlist the help of several other vampires from across the world. Some of these characters might actually be interesting if the film took the time to develop any of them. Yet, they’re all basically thrown in at the last minute with next to no buildup. 
 
 Like all conclusions to major franchises, “Breaking Dawn - Part 2” of course works up to an epic final battle. It doesn’t mean anything though unless there’s genuine concern for the characters. A film like “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2” truly made your heart race as the heroes faced their final confrontation. In the finale to “Twilight,” the climax is never really alarming and feels like a bit of a cheat in the end. But at least we do get to see “Last Airbender” alumni Jackson Rathbone deservedly lose his head. 
 
 The best word to describe “Breaking Dawn – Part 2” and the “Twilight” saga as a whole is “bad.” It’s simply a bad a series needlessly stretched out to four bad books and five bad films. If you happen to like it, then good for you. These movies just didn’t do anything for me and they never will. Now if you’ll pardon my departure, I need to go watch the complete first season of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” to get the horrid taste out of my mouth. 
 
 Grade: C- 
 
 - Nick Spake is a college student at Arizona State University. He has been working as a film critic for the past seven years, reviewing movies on his website, NICKPICKSFLICKS.com Reach the reporter at nspake@asu.edu ||||| 'The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2' 
 
 By Michael O'Sullivan 
 
 Friday, Nov. 16, 2012 
 
 At the far end of the spectrum of potential audience for the “Twilight” franchise is the “Twi-Hard” contingent, those fanatic loyalists to the book-turned-movie series who will camp out for a front-row seat, no matter what the reviews say. Their only regret about “The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn,” the two-part film whose final installment opens tonight, bringing the five-chapter saga to an end, is that the whole magical experience couldn’t last forever. 
 
 Alas, all good things must come to an end. And some bad ones, too. 
 
 For those with no vested interest in this protracted and supernatural soap opera, but who do care about cinema, “The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn -- Part 2” will be, unsurprisingly, a silly and somewhat cheesily made waste of time. 
 
 But this review isn’t written for either of those two extremes. Rather, it’s for the theoretical viewer in the middle, the one who cares as much about good storytelling as about whether Bella the human ends up with Edward the vampire or Jacob the werewolf. Whether such a mythological filmgoer even exists -- and is not more fanciful than the pasty-faced bloodsuckers and buff fur balls who populate the tale -- is a question for another day. 
 
 As “Breaking Dawn -- Part 2” opens, our once-mortal heroine, Bella (Kristen Stewart), has just given birth to a half-human, half-vampire baby, Renesmee, with her new, undead husband, Edward (Robert Pattinson). To save her life, which had been threatened by carrying such a monstrous, if undeniably photogenic spawn, Bella has been turned into a vampire, through an injection of venom by her husband. 
 
 Almost the entire first third of the movie is devoted to Bella’s adjustment to her new life and unfamiliar powers: her sudden thirst for blood; her superhuman speed and strength; her seemingly insatiable (if PG-13) sex drive; and the tricks she must learn in order to pass as human. Endless minutes are devoted to colored contact lenses (to mask her red eyes), an arm-wrestling contest with her vampire brother-in-law (Kellan Lutz), and scenes of Edward and Bella running through the picturesque Pacific Northwest woods on her first hunt, which culminates in an al fresco picnic dinner of venison tartare. 
 
 Once again, the special effects are low grade, relying heavily on old-fashioned camera blur and unconvincing wire work to convey a sense of quickness and acrobatic agility, as Bella bounds from rock to tree to mountaintop. It’s “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Vampire,” without the verve. 
 
 Eventually, the real story kicks in after word reaches the Volturi -- the vampire world’s governing elite -- that Renesmee may be what’s known as an “immortal child,” a vampire baby who grows up with the mental maturity, and imperfect self-control, of an infant. Immortal children are illegal, since they cannot be trained to rein in their appetites, which threatens to expose the carefully hidden vampire subculture to the rest of the world. As Aro, the leader of the Volturi, Michael Sheen is a rare delight, smiling malevolently -- and at one point issuing an insane cackle that’s worth the price of admission -- as he attempts to determine whether Edward and his family must be punished and Renesmee destroyed. 
 
 It ain’t much, but it passes for drama -- if by “drama” you mean a climactic showdown in a field of snow between the powerful, berobed Volturi on the one side, and a ragtag band of the “good” vampires, now in league with Jacob and his pack of giant CGI werewolves, on the other. I’ll tell you one thing: You have never seen so much unrealistic decapitation in your life. After about the 20th head-popping, which flips off like the top of a soda bottle, it’s just ridiculous. 
 
 Not so funny? The relationship between the werewolf Jacob (Taylor Lautner) and Renesmee, played by the adorable poppet Mackenzie Foy. As in the books, Jacob, Bella’s former suitor, has “imprinted” on the little girl, a bit of lupine gobbledygook meaning that they are destined to become lovers when she’s fully grown. 
 
 I know, I know: It’s fantasy. It’s also more than a bit creepy, smacking of the child bride. Fortunately, Lautner brings a welcome sense of detachment from the film’s absurdities. “Breaking Dawn,” which only every now and again seems to have figured out that it’s okay to laugh at itself, could use a little more of the actor’s wry, laid-back energy and a little less pomposity. 
 
 As for Stewart and Pattinson, once again he looks perpetually stoned, and she as if she has just detected a bad smell -- coming off of her own underarms. Neither one has much range, or makes much of an impression, other than vague malaise. 
 
 Then again, neither one has to. They are both so indelibly associated with the roles of Bella and Edward at this point that it will take each of them at least another couple of films before they fully shake the connection with “Twilight.” 
 
 As for you, dear reader, the symptoms of our long national nightmare should begin to fade as you’re heading out of the theater, dissipating by the time you clear the concession stand. 
 
 Contains sensuality and violence. ||||| Photograph by Doane Gregory – © 2011 Summit Entertainment, LLC. 
 
 The very title Breaking Dawn, Part 2 hints at what the movie, sadly, reveals to be the case: The Twilight franchise has overstayed its welcome. Splitting the last book in Stephenie Meyer’s teen-vampire series into two separate movies may have been a wise business decision—with guaranteed throngs of adoring Twihards willing to go back for multiple viewings, why not eke out an extra sequel?—but it leaves the last film in the series with no place to go. 
 
 Dana Stevens Dana Stevens is Slate’s movie critic. 
 
 Of course, one might argue that none of the four previous Twilight films have had any place to go. The world of Twilight is intermittently action-packed, but dramatically static. The story’s central love triangle—mortal Bella, vampire Edward, werewolf Jacob—exists in a state of unconsummated tension on all sides: The purpose of the movies is, in essence, to contemplate the mystery of this holy trinity. This curiously placid, devotional quality is part of what I liked about the first four Twilight films: They lulled the viewer into a somnolent daze that mimicked their spacey heroine’s perpetual love-fog. Breaking Dawn, Part 2, (directed, like its predecessor, by Bill Condon), gets the “somnolent daze” feeling right, but with the sexual heat gone from the center of the story now that Bella and Edward have done the deed, the only thing left for viewers to contemplate is the sanctity of the nuclear family (which, compared to the lurid joys of human-on-vampire dry humping, seems a pallid prize indeed). 
 
 When we last saw Bella (Kristen Stewart), she had finally been changed into a vampire by her long-resistant undead husband, Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) in a last-ditch effort to save her from dying while giving birth to their monstrously fast-growing half-vampire/half-human child, Renesmée. (It’s a portmanteau of her grandmothers’ first names, OK?) Breaking Dawn, Part 1 ended on the image of Bella’s eyes popping open on the delivery table, ablaze with a new, unquenchable fire, the irises changed from brown to a coppery red. As Breaking Dawn, Part 2 begins, we look at the world through those transformed eyes: the pollen on a flower, the down on a bumblebee, all appear in extra-sharp relief. Damsel-in-distress Bella has now become superfast, superstrong, and tireless—after she and Edward have vampire sex for the first time, she observes with wonder that she’ll no longer need sleep in between their marathon sex bouts. These are conducted in a Thomas Kinkade-esque cottage that the Cullen coven have provided for the newlyweds behind their more stark, modern house.* 
 
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 In a plot development that’s consistent with the Twilight series’ ongoing propensity for unacknowledged incestuous creepiness, Bella’s lupine ex-suitor Jacob (Taylor Lautner) has now “imprinted” on her daughter (not in that way! He’s just bound by werewolf instinct to protect her from harm! Renesmée, that is!). This arrangement, by dissolving the sexual tension between Jacob and Bella, allows the once-dangerous Edward/Jacob rivalry to be subsumed into a stable family unit, with Lautner’s character as a kind of neutered babysitter. 
 
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 All in all, life as a vampire is pretty sweet, even if Bella has to lie to her father (a severely underused Billy Burke) about her new existential status. But then the Volturi—a kind of Vatican council of vampire high priests, headed up by an impish, scene-stealing Michael Sheen—get a tip about the birth of the half-breed vampire baby and determine that the entire Cullen family must be destroyed. 
 
 About an hour in, it starts to occur to you that, for creatures capable of moving through space so quickly they’re perceptible only as gray blurs, the Volturi are taking their sweet time getting from Italy to Forks, Wash. The Cullen clan spends eons standing around in front of modern-art installations, trading fretful observations about the impending vampire civil war. They enlist a militia of rebel vampires from around the world to their side (including a pair of disgruntled immortals still smarting from the Volturi’s seizure of their castles 1,500 years ago) and even get some backup from their erstwhile enemies, the werewolves. By the time the great vampire showdown finally got started, I was good and done with Breaking Dawn, Part 2. But the big action scene is so campily over the top—with one twist so unforeseeable—that it sent me out on a burst of grudging goodwill. 
 
 The film’s endlessly drawn-out ending, with its multiple spoken and written iterations of the book’s last word, “forever,” over an image of the matte-skinned, cultishly beatific Cullens, may be the scariest moment in the whole pulpy yet vital Twilight series—a teenage girl’s fantasy of perfect domestic contentment, frozen in time and doomed to last forever.
– Today's premiere of Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 2 brings with it one piece of good news for critics who have had to review the whole thing: That's it for the Twilight saga ... unless, of course, Stephenie Meyer writes more books. Some of the best lines floating around the Web today: "This is it people, the long awaited day that Stephanie Meyer’s asinine chronicle of lame vampires, talking CGI werewolves, and the single worst female protagonist in all of fiction comes to a close," writes Nick Spake in the East Valley Tribune. "The Twilight franchise has overstayed its welcome," declares Dana Stevens in Slate. "The film's endlessly drawn-out ending, with its multiple spoken and written iterations of the book’s last word, 'forever' ... may be the scariest moment in the whole pulpy yet vital Twilight series." "The symptoms of our long national nightmare should begin to fade as you’re heading out of the theater, dissipating by the time you clear the concession stand," writes Michael O'Sullivan in the Washington Post. "Breaking Dawn, Part 2 doesn't end the series on an especially strong note, but it ends it. Let's count our blessings," suggests Colin Covert in the Star Tribune. Writing for Rolling Stone, Peter Travers is ecstatic. "It's Dead! It's Dead! By which I mean, It's Finished! It's Finished! Five movies have been squeezed out of four Stephenie Meyer Twilight books. All of them redefining cinematic tedium for a new century. And now, It's Over! It's Over! No more Twilight movies EVER!" Writing in the Detroit News, Adam Graham sums things up: "Good riddance Twilight, may it be an eternity before you're relaunched or rebooted."