Breaking Dawn Part 2 (2012)
Starring Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner, Elizabeth Reaser, Ashley Greene, Kellan Lutz, Nikki Reed, Dakota Fanning, Michael Sheen, Mackenzie Foy, Peter Facinelli, Billy Burke, Jackson Rathbone, Maggie Grace and Jamie Campbell Bower
Directed by Bill Condon
Nadia Sue Sandhu and I have endured The Twilight Saga or The Kristen Stewart Lip Quiver Saga in one drunken night. Or no, I’ll admit it, I actually enjoyed the movies for different qualities other than the ones you judge real good movies on. That said, I can’t speak on her behalf. Anyway, since we already watched all of those movies we might as well watch Breaking Dawn Part 2.
Stewart doesn’t necessarily sustain an energy throughout the movie. And she still doesn’t know what to do with her mouth, a part of her face that she lost control of ever since she signed on to starring in this saga. But, and I realize that I might be judging her by lowered standards, she does make for a convincing mother. She also knows how to be campy. Watch that animated face throughout the film. This is especially true when telling Jacob that he stinks, inhabiting the xenophobia that ‘vampires’ – read: white people – have against ‘werewolves’ – read: Natives or people of colour. Although I will say that this movie’s main plot arc of ‘Bella and Edward’s (Pattinson) Daughter Reneesme (Foy) Is Not An Immortal Child World Tour’ takes away a lot of the racism and criticisms of racism against the movie.
To flashback from the previous installments of the saga, the only reason the Cullens are alive is because the Volturi think that Bella has turned into a vampire. Now they think that both vampires have conceived an immortal child although Reneesme is just a half-breed. An immortal child, in the Twilight Saga Universe, is a child by two vampires and thus have powers so uncontrollable that he or she can raze a village with a tantrum. Those children and the coven who conceive them have to be burned by the Volturi for their mistakes, a fate the Cullens want to avoid.
Back to Stewart’s campiness. Waking up as a vampire makes her a capable stand-in for the audience who, just like her, is taking in all the movie’s stimuli like a high person, slithering like Catwoman in the movie’s Northwestern woods. She knows how to do angry, dragging Jacob out of the house and yelling at him for ‘imprinting’ Renesmee and nicknaming her after the Loch Ness Monster. There’s also a scene when she has convinces her father (Burke) that she’s the slouchy human instead while equally convincing us that she’s the well-postured, quick-footed super-vampire that she has become. Her latest infidelity scandal makes us think twice about her former shy tomboyish self, and she’s playing along with this new persona both in life and in the movie. And when she’s not having these glorious moments, the cast have theirs as their characters, some more diluted than others, prepare for an epic battle with the most ridiculous twist ending.
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