Awfully Good: Twilight: Breaking Dawn

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

Go home, DIVERGENT. No other YA adaptation will ever touch the greatness of…

TWILIGHT: BREAKING DAWN (2012)

Director: Bill Condon
Stars: Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner

Your typical love story. Now with 75% more rough sex, vampire decapitations and werewolf pedophilia!

Two of the best theater experiences I’ve had in the past five years involved sneaking flasks full of booze in to screenings of the final TWILIGHT films. I hadn’t seen any of the previous ones (still haven’t) but after hearing what the fourth movie(s) entailed, I knew we were headed for Awfully Good territory. And boy, did it surpass my expectations. By the end of PART 2, our mouths were drunkenly agape at the stupefying insanity my friends and I had just witnessed.

I can’t hardly wait for CAN’T HARDLY WAIT 2: THE REVENGE OF AMANDA BECKETT.

This is seriously one of the craziest movies to ever be released for a mainstream audience, let alone a PG-13 rated one marketed specifically toward teen girls. Here’s a sampling of things that happen in this movie: A werewolf falls deeply in love with a baby. Kristen Stewart attacks and sucks the blood from a mountain lion. Robert Pattinson performs a vampire C-section. A killer fetus turns in to a psychic CGI toddler. Another separate baby is thrown in to a bonfire. More decapitations than Tim Burton’s SLEEPY HOLLOW. And sex. So much sex. The entire first film revolves around whether or not Robert Pattinson’s lovemaking prowess is too powerful for Kristen Stewart and the possibility that she may not be able to handle doing it Dracula-style. Thankfully, director Bill Condon clearly has a sense of humor about all of this and amps everything up to 11 to heighten the ridiculosity.

“Taylor, this is SHARKBOY AND LAVAGIRL 2. You don’t need to do that in every movie.”

PART 1:

BREAKING DAWN PART 1 opens as you would expect—with Taylor Lautner taking his shirt off. He disrobes as he runs out in to the rain, turning in to a wolf and sulking because he just got an invitation to Bella and Edward’s wedding. Everyone else seems to be happy about the joyous occasion though and their nuptials go off without a hitch. (There is Bella’s random dream of getting married atop a literal pile of their dead friends and family, but that’s just normal pre-wedding jitters.) Like furry clockwork, Jacob shows up at the reception and warns Bella about the dangers of having sex with a no-good bloodsucker. Edward and Jacob’s wolfpack appears and everyone has a group discussion about how a single thrust from a sparkly vampire could kill a human girl. Bella insists that she likes it a little rough and Jacob runs away once again, pouting.

BRIDE WARS 2 took the title a little too literally.

The newly betrothed Mr. and Mrs. Vampire head to a tropical island for their honeymoon (good thing the sun isn’t dangerous to anyone!) and the fun begins. We’re treated to an entire montage of Bella preparing mentally and physically to lose her virginity to a mythical creature, before she joins her husband for a romp in the water. And then multiple romps in the bed, where we see Edward break the headboard before fading to black. The next morning, Bella wakes up, covered in bruises, in a room that is completely destroyed—as if a sexual tornado had passed through. Edward apologizes and they have a serious, awkward discussion about how amazing it was for both of them. And then the housekeeping staff shows up to nonchalantly clean the room and fix the headboard. (This particular resort must get sexually devastating vampire clientele regularly.)

While not my first choice to play Christian Bale’s daughter, at least Kristen Stewart looked the part for THE MACHINIST 2.

Unfortunately, Bella’s generic birth control doesn’t protect against powerful vampire sperm, because she almost instantaneously gets knocked up. The pair returns to the Cullen household (which luckily already has an entire OB-GYN wing) so everyone can discuss… vampire abortions! (Some of my favorite remarks include: “The fetus isn’t good for Bella!” and “Carlyle will get that thing out of you!”) The film ultimately decides that it’s pro-vampire life and Bella opts to keep the baby, even though it will likely kill her from the inside out with its fetal fangs. She loses a bunch of CGI weight, starts drinking human blood and then gives birth in a scene I’m pretty sure was ghost-directed by David Cronenberg: Edward saves a dying Bella by giving her a vampire C-section using his teeth.

The THREE MEN AND A BABY remake can go straight to hell.

If that’s not enough, in what is absolutely one of the most amazing scenes in cinema history, Jacob returns, sees Bella’s terrifying CGI newborn baby—and falls in love with it! He “imprints” all over the helpless child, which in this case means he imagines a fuzzy fairytale world where he, as a wolf, spends the rest of his life with a creepy still-CGI older version of the child. He actually falls to his knees overcome with love for the baby (ironically, much like the audience is on its knees, begging the film to stop). Some werewolves try to break in to kill the baby, but Edward announces, “Jacob imprinted. They can’t hurt her! It’s their most absolute law.”

Okay, THE MACHINIST 2 is one thing… But leave Kristen Stewart out of the live action LION KING remake!

PART 2:

In the second film, Bella awakens as a “newborn” vampire and must get used to her strength and new abilities to run at sparkle speed. The other vampires give her lessons on how to act like a human, which actually improves Kristen Stewart’s performance. She also goes hunting with Edward and fights the urge to attack a human and instead kills and eats a mountain lion. (You can now cross “Watch Kristen Stewart Eat Large Cat” off your bucket list.) Then Bella runs in to Jacob, who explains how he imprinted on her newborn daughter and will someday make sweet, sweet wolfie love to her. Bella is rightfully upset, but everyone else reminds her that “It’s imprinting. That’s what those silly werewolves do!” and continues to allow the sexual predator near their child.

Oh, God. Oh, God. First THE MACHINIST 2, then LION KING. I draw the line at a sequel to OVER THE TOP!

Edward and Bella have sex again, but this time with all of their vampire sensory organs intact and it’s clearly mind-blowing. (You can just hear all the lonely housewives crying that they’ll never get to experience this.) Meanwhile, Jacob is creepily watching the baby from a window or going on long walks with it while in wolf form. It’s all very disconcerting.

Eventually, Renesmee (this is really the idiot name Stephenie Meyer gave to the kid) grows up at an alarming rate, reaching 7 or 8 years of age after a few months. The Volturi, the pissy vampire governing board, announces their attention to kill the unnatural hybrid child, so Edward and Bella take her on a world tour so other vampires can see that she’s harmless, even though she can read minds and perform other psychic tasks. The film also attempts to kill time with various dumb subplots like an arm wrestling montage and a completely pointless scene with The Wire’s Wendell Pierce. It’s all just waiting until the final showdown…

What happens at the end of BREAKING DAWN PART 2 is something I still can’t comprehend. The final fight between the vampires and werewolves and the Volturi is one of the most gloriously over-the-top and randomly violent battle scenes I can remember. Heads are ripped off like they’re made of Play-Doh. People are torn apart limb from limb, quite literally. And major characters are killed in the most graphic way possible. (There’s little to no blood, but I still can’t believe this was allowed a PG-13 rating.) Here are some other highlights:
– Jackson Rathbone (possibly the world’s worst actor) gets his head karate chopped clean off
– Dakota Fanning force chokes a wolf before someone breaks its neck.
– Someone rips a dudes face in half via his jaw
– Bella now knows martial arts and can somehow project force fields to shield her and her loved ones.
– People and animals fall in to a chasm filled with liquid hot magma. (There’s even a total Mufasa moment as a wolf falls to its death and locks pity eyes with the camera.)
– Ashley Greene drags Dakota Fanning by the head so a wolf can maul her to death
– Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson tag team Michael Sheen, WWE style. He literally picks her up and uses her as a weapon.

Of course, in an effort to not psychologically scar millions of young girls, this sequence ends up just being a vision Ashley Greene was sharing with Michael Sheen to scare him. (Sheen, by the way, is the MVP here. He overacts like a champ.) I don’t care though. It’s so out of the blue, so awesome, and was so clearly disturbing to the teen girls in our audience that it almost justifies the entire series’ existence on its own. But thankfully the rest of the movie sucks on an epic level too.

Some Michael Sheen greatness, as well as people reacting to Taylor Lautner falling in love with a baby.

1) The final, ridiculous fight. Take a shot every time someone loses their head.

2) Kristen Stewart attacking a mountain lion, random acts of violence, Taylor falling in love with a baby and much more.

None. Though the sex scenes are pretty graphic for a PG-13 movie.

Take off your shirt and buy this movie here!

Take a shot or drink every time: