The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2

In bringing the story to a neat and tidy close, the eagerly awaited fifth and final chapter in the monstrously prosperous, perpetually polarising “Twilight” saga is a sound success: it deals with the badguys, ties up dangling narrative strands, brings a sense of closure to the heroes and provides a glimpse of what the future holds for them. In that sense, “Breaking Dawn - Part 2” is about as pleasing a conclusion to the fantasy romance series as any hardcore fan could possibly yearn for. But that’s the easy part: all that needs to be done to satisfy the fanbase is to stay true to Stephenie Meyer’s award-winning bestseller with as few diversions as possible, and the devotees will booze upon its blood like vampires at a damsel’s throat.

The hard part, and it’s a ploy that director Bill Condon (returning from “Breaking Dawn - Part 1”) and franchise screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg may have not even considered attempting, is attracting the rowdy detractors and casual non-enthusiasts over to the fans’ side. In a rousingly barmy climax ripe with earth-shattering carnage, the film almost achieves this, but a misjudged surprise twist snatches it away in an instant. The only other things left for consumption are running features for which the franchise has been cruelly, and sometimes fairly, mocked: those would be the risible dialogue, the dodgy computer effects, the ceaseless melodrama and the cardboard box acting, none of which is likely to bewitch non-fans into finally giving a hoot about pasty-faced bloodsucker Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) and human-turned-vampire lover Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart).

Nonetheless, part two of “Breaking Dawn” is better than last year’s part one, which spent two thirds of a padded runtime acting as a glorified, workaday soap opera — the forbidden couple tie the knot, consummate their marriage in a picturesque honeymoon suite and discover to their shock that they are to have a baby — before a 12A-pushing third act took the franchise kicking and screaming into the icky realms of David Cronenberg’s body horrors. Bella, drained of her strength and gaunt as can be, gave birth to a half-human, half-vampire hybrid baby questionably named Renesmee. To save his sweetheart’s life, Edward turned Bella into the undead. Now, in “Breaking Dawn - Part 2," she awakens, transformed and reborn, her eyes an inhuman blood red.

Indeed, no character in this epic finale — Bella’s oblivious dad (Billy Burke, “Drive Angry") aside — is free from the red-eye effect that naturally accompanies vampirism, nor the orange-tinted irises of lycanthropy; with Bella now one of them, we lose our all-important human gateway into the weird and worrisome supernatural world. Instead, we watch as Bella experiences life as a “newborn,” experimenting with her newfound abilities: in an early scene, she tackles a mountain lion in mid-air and feasts on its jugular; in another, she and Edward engage in super-destructive vampire sex in a cosy cottage without breaking a sweat. It’s cruelly ironic that Stewart, once a lip-chewing sulk, is more alive playing a member of the undead than she ever was when playing a human being.

There’s a problem with Renesmee that’s not her goofy name or curious physical features (as an infant, she’s a hideous CG creation that dwells at the deepest point of the uncanny valley): she’s growing at a rapid rate, and when law-enforcing vampire coven the Volturi are made aware of her existence, they’re none too happy. Believing her to be a much-feared “immortal child,” they promptly recruit an army of fanged foes to do battle with the Cullen clan in Washington. The Volturi’s sadistic leader, Aro, is again played by a campily sinister Michael Sheen, whose maniacal giggle upon first setting eyes on little Renesmee is sure to send a shiver down many a viewer’s spine.

Warned of the impending attack by psychic sister Alice (Ashley Greene, “The Apparition”), Edward and Bella begin assembling an army too. In an overlong, glacially paced sequence, they gather vampire clans from all over the world: joining forces are Americans, Egyptians, Amazonians, the Irish, Romanians, etc. Notably, some members of this new ensemble have abilities not typically associated with vampires; one can control the elements, able to spurt fire from his fingertips and construct walls of water, while another has electrically charged arms. Bella discovers she can concoct protective shields with her mind. They’re like the X-Men of the Abercrombie and Fitch world.

Also offering a helping paw is the local werewolf clan, led by ab-tastic hunk Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner), whose infamously suspect love-bond with young Renesmee is smartly handled with a good deal of humour (though the inescapable creepiness remains firmly intact). In their hairier forms, the digitally rendered wolves still struggle to convince as a weighty physical presence, but the real computer-generated clanger of “Breaking Dawn - Part 2” is the super-speedy running of the vampires, who sprint through the forest followed by a strange, elongated blur, strongly resembling Shaggy and Scooby-Doo when they would clamber down those endlessly repetitive corridors. One wonders why a fantasy series so financially endowed has such a seemingly limited effects budget.

And then one realises that most of it has likely went into the hotly anticipated climax, which at first appears to be cleverly subverting the much-maligned anti-climax of Meyer’s book. Diverting from the source material’s actionless version, this ending is big, bold and decapitation-heavy, as the Cullens and co face off against the cloaked Volturi atop a vast snowy plain. Coming after an hour’s worth of largely uneventful tedium, it’s a genuinely thrilling sequence with a giddy lunacy to it and an aftermath that looks like the Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow had a field day. Unfortunately, a final, admittedly unforeseeable twist undoes all this good work, making for a hard slap in the face for those who thought the “Twilight” franchise had finally grown a pair and shone a middle finger to Meyer’s original text. Alas, ‘twas but a dream.

To be fair, catering only to the fans may well have been Condon and Rosenberg’s plan all along, and the Twihards will no doubt cherish every second of this finale’s overstretched runtime. Others — be they newcomers or “haters” — will be bored and baffled by much of “Breaking Dawn - Part 2," which does little in the way of altering negative opinions about the franchise’s merits. It’s a shame that the “Twilight" saga never managed to achieve the undying universal appeal enjoyed by “Star Wars" and “Harry Potter." Its legacy will perhaps be that it gripped an entire generation of teenage girls — along with some boys too — with a love triangle between a human, a vampire and a werewolf, and made a ton of money while doing so. Perhaps the reboot will be embraced by a wider audience (I advise more decapitations).

5/10