In case you couldnt tell by their leather bikinis, the vampires on the left are from the Amazon. Theyre part of the international coalition of Up with Vampires that our heroes assemble, for no discernable reason.
  • In case you couldn't tell by their leather bikinis, the vampires on the left are from the Amazon. They're part of the international coalition of Up with Vampires that our heroes assemble, for no discernable reason.

Four years ago, I read and reviewed all the Twilight books. Because my coworkers cited my decision to review the Twilight books as some sort of "expertise," I wound up watching and reviewing every single movie in the Twilight franchise. Two days ago, my long journey finally came to an end. I watched Breaking Dawn, Part 2 with a growing sense of relief as the credits drew near. Never again would I watch another Twilight movie*.

If you don't know the story by now, you'll be completely lost. There's not even a refresher at the beginning of the movie—probably because a "story so far" reel would nakedly reveal the story to be the rantings of an insane person. In the fourth film in the series, our human heroine, Bella, became a vampire after giving birth to Renesmee, the child she fathered with vampire Edward Cullen. Now the evil vampire illuminati believes that the Cullen family have turned a human child into a vampire and are coming to destroy every vampire in the Pacific Northwest. And Bella's other boyfriend, the werewolf Jacob, has fallen deeply in love with Bella's infant daughter. Naturally.

So what do we have here? Surprisingly little romance. Now that Edward and Bella are married, they don't really pine after each other too much. (Kristen Stewart's acting ability has notably declined since the first Twilight movie. In the first film, she made every line interesting, and her lust for Edward was striking in a female protagonist. But in this movie, where her Bella should be reveling in her newfound power, she barely seems present. There's nothing there.) And the bride and groom have a war to prepare for, anyway, so they go around the world collecting super-powered vampires for the big showdown. If anybody in the Twilight universe owned and knew how to operate a phone, this movie could have been cut down to a clean 45 minutes, and all the major problems could have been easily resolved.

If you read the books, you know the "climactic battle" is a huge anticlimax. The filmmakers have made some changes, presenting a battle scene that throws the whole movie over the edge into total absurdity. It's an orgy of decapitation, a senseless melee that at least provides a sense of finality. And Michael Sheen, as the leader of the bad vampires, is given one moment to trot out a line reading packed with such unbelievable camp that he earned possibly the biggest laugh of the entire series at all the press screenings I've attended. But then it's time for the movie to end, and the fans are serviced with montage after montage when one character discovers that she possesses the ability to transmit music videos with her eyes. As a movie, it's disjointed, cheap-looking, dumb, and featherweight. Which means it's a perfect ending for the series. And at least it's all, finally, over.

* At least, until the inevitable reboot, but hopefully I will have resigned in disgrace from The Stranger by then.