Breaking Dawn Part 2 review, and series overview

Despite the fact that they are often badly written, badly acted, predictable and rather full of benign characters, I am actually quite the fan of the Twilight series (I've not read the books), although I will be very soon. The second part follows on from the end of the first part of Breaking Dawn where Bella gives birth and then turns into a Vampire.

For the first time in the entire series I actually came out of the cinema and didn't fee like I had enjoyed myself. One of the biggest problems with this film compared with the others is that all of its plot narratives and ideas make it hard to take it seriously. For the first time it felt like I was watching a TV movie based on a soap opera. One of the most notable differences from the first Twilight film with the finale is how disjointed and overblown it became. With the introduction of many more characters and the expansion of each films production budget, the series forgot about the characters and became overblown with too many non sentical plot narratives. This was exclusively evident in the final two parts.

Twilight is not the only movie series to suffer this fate, in fact most do.

The first half of the film is the worst in the entire series,  without spoiling too much Bella is united with her daughter Renesmee, and has to deal with the consequences of now being a vampire. We are shown her struggle with not being able to hunt humans despite the fact that it is now in her nature, this is portrayed quite well. But what isn't shown so well is the power of the vampires themselves, in the first three films they're shown to be extra strong and run as fast as the speed of light. In the early films this worked because there was still a mystique about the vampire race, despite being incredibly beautiful looking they genuinely seemed menacing and intriguing. Their powers were used for a reason, in Breaking Dawn we see it so much that it gets kinda boring, on a couple of occasions its even used as humour.

Another thing I miss about the early films is the love triangle, without it the fourth lacks any chemistry between Bella, Edward and Jacob. I also missed the appearance of any of her high school friends such as Jessica. Instead we have a new bunch of vampires with different super powers, who have about as much character as cardboard box. These new vampires are introduced to aid the Cullen family to fight the Volturi, who are angry at the illegitimate birth of Bella and Edward's daughter.

But what killed the film for me was the unexpected ending. The audience just as bewildered as me actually laughed. We were all given a nasty surprise.

Verdict- a decent and watchable film, will split fans and non-fans will find nothing new. 3/5