The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn—Part 2 

There’s also the issue of the bond that’s formed between Stewart’s rapidly aging daughter and Stewart’s former emotional play-toy Jacob (Taylor Lautner). The exceedingly awkward situation of a full-grown man-wolf being in everlasting, inexplicable love with a child is handled with some actual wit, allowing Stewart and Lautner to flex their comedic muscles as they engage with the soap-operatics. (Lautner gets to flex his substantial physical muscles as well, specifically in a funny scene where he strips down in front of a horrified Billy Burke in order to exhibit his shape-shifting abilities for Stewart’s perpetually in-the-dark father.) But like every other major conflict in the Twilight series, it’s quickly shrugged off with a conciliatory sentence or two, and everyone goes back to being even happier than they were before.

That is, until the evil vampire authority known as the Volturi get involved. Originally introduced in the series’ second film, New Moon, then mostly ignored in the following two installments, the Volturi are especially interested in Stewart and Pattinson’s offspring, whom they incorrectly believe to be an “immortal child,” their culture’s ultimate taboo. The new parents and their peace-loving coven know they can’t fight the looming, black-becloaked force (fronted by Michael Sheen, having the time of his life in a tremendously campy performance), so they decide to handle the issue as they do everything else: by talking. This involves recruiting several sympathetic “witnesses” to their cause, leading to the introduction of a dozen or so new, very minor characters. Many of the newbies have their own convenient “special gift,” a favorite plot contrivance of the Twilight series that allows for sidestepping major problems via mind-reading, premonition, mental persuasion, or whatever other power is needed to hurdle the issue at hand.

These special powers become the focus of a larger, poorly explained threat posed by the Volturi, leading to a tense, snow-blanketed showdown between the two factions. In these concluding scenes, the movie feints toward actual substance and consequence—and threatens to diverge from its rigid adherence to the book—before chickening out in spectacular, baffling fashion. If nothing else, director Bill Condon and screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg deserve credit for rendering the story’s passive conclusion so epically, but they’re ultimately beholden to the inert source text and its exacting fan base.

If there were any doubts that Breaking Dawn—Part 2, like all of the Twilight films, is meant foremost as a love letter to fans, they’re put to rest with the presence of both a series-spanning montage and a video-yearbook-esque closing-credits sequence that lists every single character in the movies, including ones who haven’t appeared since the first film. Moments like these, combined with the series’ insistence on introducing and naming every single minor character, no matter how insignificant, suggest that the Twilight films were never intended to stand on their own terms—they serve as a visual extension of an established entity with a built-in fandom. That fandom will be thrilled to see their beloved characters’ happy endings in Breaking Dawn—Part 2, while everyone else will be left wondering why they were supposed to care about any of them in the first place.

For thoughts on, and a place to discuss, plot details not talked about in this review, visit The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn—Part 2’s Spoiler Space.