So, I never really bit that
deep into the whole
Twilight hysteria but you can see why it works. Apart from Robert Pattinson’s pouty charms as pale-faced vampire Edward Cullen, Twilight features a weirdly wondrous world of vampires and velvet coats, preppie students – werewolves in their spare time – with raging hormones, skin-tight jeans and salon-slick hair, flying in and out of valleys, classrooms and beds. But staying chaste and not biting into the forbidden fruit actually created the tension Twilight was all about.
That explains the lack of drama in the series finale, Breaking Dawn-Part 2. Edward and Bella are finally married, she’s a vampire now and they’ve done ‘it’ without either getting bitten to death – plus, they have a baby daughter and a home that’s floor-waxed bliss – but laden with so much fulfillment, the finale lacks life or zip. The plot features the Cullen family standing about looking adoringly at new bloodsucker Bella shattering tree trunks with her hands, then clustering around her and baby Renesmee as the Vultari gather menacingly. The latter have been misinformed that the child is an Immortal – an undying vampire that kills entire communities – and some gory time-travel happens where medieval Vultari fling Immortal babies onto fires, before ripping their mothers’ heads off. Renesmee must be protected and all the Cullens’ family friends – drunken vampires from Ireland, loincloth-clad Brazilian wonders, water-controlling Turkish-types, even some vintage Euro-trash – join forces. There’s potential for exciting drama here but Breaking Dawn: Part 2 fades before it even begins, struggling somewhere between the now-fatigued Ed-Bella romance, stagey acting, hilariously hackneyed lines (“You guys look so good together,”) and that Stewart clenched-lip grimace. As werewolf Jacob, Lautner tries injecting life and soul into the party – and obligingly takes his shirt off too – but with the rest of the cast really acting like zombies, his efforts don’t make much impact. Just like the chill Sheen as villain Aro tries to inject, the Vultari instead resembling an odd bunch that didn’t make the grade at Hogwarts and now skulks about sulkily sucking blood.
Twilight fans will undoubtedly troop the theatres for the finale but it’s not a fitting end to such quintessentially American drama, all folklore and fantasy, sexiness and suburbia. As Breaking Dawn-Part 2 finally closes, you’re left wishing you’d been bitten so much harder. (Agencies)