Why Twilight Breaking Dawn Part 2 is actually brilliant
it's the "Cats" of the Twilight franchise
In 2024, I made a deal with my friend J: I would watch the Twilight movies with him. As a straight dude my age, he missed the first wave of Twilight mania, and some chick he was seein’ stiffed him on the experience of watching all 5 Twilight movies for the first time. I though this just wasn’t right. You gotta see Twilight.
Twilight is a franchise created by Mormon wife and mother Stephanie Meyer. Stephanie wrote four books about Edward and Bella, a young vampire- human couple struggling with immortality. The Twilight films were released from 2008-2012, and starred Robert Pattinson, Kirsten Stewart and Taylor Lautner as Jacob Black, the only believable character in the entire franchise. And now you know whose team I’m on.
If you’ve never seen the Twilight films (Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse, and Breaking Dawn parts 1 and 2), I am both jealous of you and excited for you. These movies are cultural touchstones in the worst way. You might think they are Bad Movies, but you couldn’t be more wrong. Nothing, and I mean NOTHING, can replace the feeling of experiencing the twist at the end Breaking Dawn Part 2 for the first time. The Top 5 twists in cinema history are:
5. Star Wars
4. Fight Club
3. The Usual Suspects
2. The Sixth Sense
1. The Twilight Saga Breaking Dawn Part 2.
That said, Breaking Dawn Part 1 is so God awful that I almost didn’t see my dear friend through to the end. We began the saga1 in 2024, but on November 28, 2024, some other friends marathoned the Twilight movies during Thanksgiving.
We made it as far as Breaking Dawn Part 1 before everyone threw up their cranberry sauce, because that movie is disgusting. I told J I needed another year before I re- experienced that hell froth, so we put our saga2 on hold. But, I eventually forgot Part 1, like I forget every movie, which is a skill I have that allows me to re- watch movies like I’m watching them for the first time.
Eventually, J and I resumed the saga, and this week, we concluded our Tour de Twilight with Breaking Dawn Part 2.
I remembered virtually nothing about this movie. It’s the last, maybe the worst, film in the series. Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart were publicly checked out by the time it premiered.
I did not see it in theaters, and honest to God couldn’t remember if I’d seen it at all. The first forty minutes did not jog my memory.
When you start BDP2, you think. “Oh, my God. They can’t have made a movie this bad on purpose.” This film had a budget of $136 million, and it looks cheap as hell. You can see green screen reflections on the actors’ hair and skin. There’s at least one glaringly obvious ADR mishap. I’m pretty sure there are only three genuine exteriors in the entire film. The entire cast looks like they were dressed by a Mormon lady running a church fashion show. Bella’s CGI baby is the stuff of legend. EVERYONE, and I do mean Everyone, is wearing a wig. (Okay, not everyone. Jacob isn’t, unless you count his CGI fur suit. My queen Dakota Fanning isn’t, but you can barely see her hair. And I guess Robert Pattinson isn’t either, but he probably should have been, because his hair looks disgusting.) They can’t have made a movie this bad on purpose.
But around the midway point, when they start dropping jazzy detective music into every scene, you realize, oh. They did make a movie this bad on purpose. And furthermore, they knew what they were doing. This movie is not actually bad. It is perfect.
It’s a crazy thing, making the last installment of a blockbuster franchise. While Catherine Hardwicke’s indie- lite Twilight captured all the angst of star crossed lovers coming of age, the remaining films show downright contempt for girlhood. They’re all directed by a MAN- Bill Condom3- and he seemed to think all we wanted to see were Taylor Lautner’s rippling triceps, Robert Pattinson contorting his face in agony, the most beautiful wedding in the world, and YOU KNOW WHAT MR CONDOM YOU ARE ABSOLUTELY RIGHT.
Breaking one book (Breaking Dawn) into two movies is such a shameless cash grab that you might as well have a little fun with it. And fun they had. They know how we are watching this movie: late at night, high on sugary snacks, surrounded by Twilight haters and lovers, ready for a laugh. And what they have given us is Material.
BDP2 is the Cats of the Twilight franchise. I will never call Twilight a vampire movie, because Stephanie Meyer’s vampires are downright disrespectful to existing vampire lore. These characters are not vampires. They are superheroes. They have no weaknesses except being Too Powerful, which is why it’s such a cringe fest when the entire second act of BDP2 is just a parade of overpowered “vampires”, until you get to the fourth or fifth entrant, and you realize all of them are jokes. Rami Malek plays The Last Airbender. He can control every element of the Earth with his mind. We get Lee Pace as Garrett, who you think is going to be one of those swaggadocious rocker vampires, but turns out he’s only here to drop one liners about the American Revolution (“I hated the first British invasion, and I hate the second one even more!” “This won't be the first time I fought a king's rule!” and, literally, “the Redcoats are coming!”)
Two Russian vampires pop out like Cirque Du Soleil acrobats and do Monty Python style insults at the Italian vampires for moving the Vampire Capital from Eastern Europe to Italy (except they didn’t!! Stephanie Meyer did that!! She hates Eastern Europeans and loves American wars!). Then the über powerful vampire barristers arrive looking like they marched right out of The Black Parade, and you don’t even bother thinking about how these vampires with superpowers don’t use them to, like, protect the environment, or make the world a better place, but only to DEFEND BELLA’S CREEPY MUTANT CHILD WHO IS WEIRDLY ALWAYS WEARING MAKEUP LIKE AN INFANT BEAUTY QUEEN.
The best part about the superpowers is that no matter WHAT your superpower is, you can have your head and limbs cracked off like a Terra Cotta Warrior. I don’t think anyone in any of these films ever even attempts a stake to the heart. Buffy would be so horrified. This is what I mean about the franchise being downright disrespectful to vampire lore. The only way to kill a vampire in Twilight is to crack their head off their marble body, kick them in the chest and light them on fire. And maybe have two of your buddies grab their arms and crack those off too.
By the start of the third act, I realized I had seen this movie before, and oh boy, was my friend J in for a treat. After the literally4 earth- shattering Greatest Twist Of All Time, the film ends the ONLY WAY the final film in a blockbuster romance saga based on a YA novel should end: with a fan edit. You know, those YouTube videos of only the romantic parts of movies, set to a pop ballad? They used one of those. In a $100 million movie. And you know what? It’s perfect. It’s everything.
The credits are an In Memoriam style roll call of EVERY CHARACTER IN THE FRANCHISE, whether they appear in this movie or not. They are depicted in black and white, making it seem like all these actors have died.
These are movies you cannot watch alone. They are *laden* with comic material, and you must immediately share any jokes with the friends in your proximity. For example: on Thanksgiving, most of the boys had never seen the movies before, and when my friend K saw the part where Edward crushes a four- poster bed during the franchise’s inaugural intercourse, he said, “Whoa. Dude hasn’t nut in 100 years.”
Which is canonically true.
You are SUPPOSED to howl with glee at lines like ”hang on, spider monkey” or “You nicknamed my daughter after the Loch Ness Monster??” Or cringe with disgust at Bella’s daughter’s actual name, Renesmee, which is the stupidest name of all time, so stupid it has its own Reddit thread. Statistically significant numbers of new moms named their children Edward and Bella after 2008, but no one in the history of Time will name anyone Renesmee, ever. And that right there is the beautiful dichotomy of the Twilight franchise: astounding in its impact, and also, astoundingly stupid.
When I watched these with J, the best part was looking over and seeing a big, stupid grin all over his manly face. I am happy to report that he spent most of these movies wearing this grin.
There is nothing better than watching a Twilight movie with your friends. I think Bill Condoms knew this, and he made us a very special treat. These movies are utterly ridiculous, and they know it. They are a guaranteed good time. They are $100 million dollar punching bags of comedy. There is a reason you can show them at Thanksgivings: they will spread incredulous joy whether you’re seeing them for the first time of the fiftieth time. These films bore no one. Everyone will get a priceless moviegoing experience.
Officially, all 5 Twilight movies are known as “The Twilight Saga”
Ibid.
Bill Condon actually only directed the two Breaking Dawns, but you can’t really tell.
This is literally literally, iykyk