Breaking Dawn: Part 2

Director: Bill Condon (also did "Dreamgirls" and "Beauty & The Beast" with Emma Watson)
Writers: Melissa Rosenberg (screenplay) and Stephenie Meyer (based on her book)
Composer: Carter Burwell 

Returning Cast:
Bella Swan- Kristen Stewart
Edward Cullen- Robert Pattinson
Jacob Black- Taylor Lautner
Carlisle Cullen- Peter Facinelli
Chef Charlie Swan- Billy Burke
Alice Cullen- Ashley Green
Jasper Cullen- Jackson Rathbone
Emmett Cullen- Kellen Lutz
Rosalie Cullen- Nikki Reed
Esme Cullen- Elizabeth Reaser
Jane- Dakota Fanning
Aro- Michael Sheen
Caius- Jamie Campbell Bowyer
Notable Newcomers (and/or major cast members I hadn't listed yet):
J. Jenks- Wendell Pierce
Benjamin- Rami Malek
Sue Clearwater- Alex Rice
Renesmee- Makenzie Foy
Tanya- MyAnna Buring
Kate- Casey LaBow
Irina- Maggie Grace
Garrett- Lee Pace
Carmen- Mia Maestro
Eleazar- Christian Carmago
Zafrina- Judi Shekoni
Alistair- Joe Anderson

Opening Comments:

I'm FINALLY getting around to this. And of course once I finished the movie, I really didn't want to leave this world so I watched a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff. 
I'm seriously as Twi-Hard as they come. I love these stories and I get so sucked in that it's hard to leave sometimes. And I never saw those DVD extra before so that was really fun getting that perspective.

Of all the movies, this is probably the best one... the original isn't perfect. None of them are. But I still love the original movie too. The original book too. It's the one I've clearly read the most. Probably because it's the shortest, easiest to get through. The others are either longer, run long in places or are kinda agonizing. After this last run-through, I'm never stretching out New Moon again. Next time I read it, it's gonna be over a long weekend. 

As for this book, I read it following the movies. I stopped where Part 1 ended and then read the rest of it after seeing the movie. 
I really hated how every one of these YA book-to-movie series split the last book into 2 movies. I get why Harry Potter did it to really give focus to the final battle at Hogwarts. After Breaking Dawn came out in two movies and I saw them both... yeah, they really did need the two movies.
But Mockingjay did not need 2 movies. Nothing but a blatant cash grab. I really didn't enjoy reading the book and it was just difficult to watch. [And yeah, I'm still bitter that they didn't kill off Peeta because he was clearly too far gone after getting hi-jacked... and that Katniss didn't end up with Gale... but I shouldn't really complain because Team Edward took home a win in this series like I wanted]

Other Comments:

I don't know how else to categorize this so I'm just gonna let the train of thought flow.
I looked back at my previous blog post and unlike part 1, I did not write a full review about this movie. Just a bunch of comments. I guess I didn't want to spoil anything. But in this post, I'm probably going to spoil A LOT. But that's ok. 7 years later, nobody's really going to care what I give away.

For the most part, the movie follows the book really well. We have a beginning, middle and end as there ought to be. The beginning is Bella getting used to being a vampire as well as getting used to being a mom and also dealing with Jacob in the new capacity he has in her life.
At the end of part 1, Jacob imprinted on Renesmee, which completely averted a war between vampires and werewolves. On the one hand, it solved the love triangle situation with Bella, Jacob and Edward. Even after she got married, he was still pining for her. But the whole imprinting on a baby... yeah, I'm still a little grossed out about that. 

Probably the best part of this movie was seeing Kristen Stewart completely uninhibited as Bella. That awkwardness is gone and she's totally comfortable in her own skin and confident. It made me wish that there was a way to me to get that degree of confidence and just hold onto it forever. I feel like it comes and goes in bursts and I'm in my 30's now. At the same time, as much as I wish I were more extroverted... it gets exhausting after a while. 
This movie was definitely her best showing as this character. Bella gets dumped on a lot, but I think a lot of it was because of the movies. In the books, she has some humorous moments that get lost in translation from book to movie. Also, she never cooks. Except in the previous movie and it's the last proper meal she has as a human. 
I also love when she gives some other characters hell. First Jacob... it probably horrified a lot of Team Jacob fans, but I freaking loved her giving him grief over the imprinting and the nickname for Renesmee. In the book, EVERYONE used it and she kept referring to it as the infurating/annoying nickname. Then at the end, she even says it, but she got caught up in a moment. 
Then she and Emmett having an arm wrestling contest. That was a big part of the book a lot of us Twi-hards were looking forward to. The context in the movie didn't do much lead up, unfortunately. In the book, she challenged him because if she won, he would promise to stop making inneundo jokes about her sex life around her dad. A college football game was going on when he came over and his comment among others "it's about time someone scored in this house"... yikes... 

So after the imprinting drama, there was dealing with Charlie. The initial plan was just to tell him that Bella died so the Cullens can just disappear. But since Jacob imprinted, he doesn't want them to leave, so he takes it upon himself to make sure Charlie finds out she's alive. Edward said something like "don't pretend that you did this for anyone but yourself." The scene in the movie was pretty hilarious because it looks like Jacob is doing a striptease thing for Charlie, but he's just showing him how he phases into a werewolf. 
Without telling Charlie about the vampire thing (because secrecy is HUGE in their world), he does find out that Bella had changed because her life was in danger. He's really good with the "need-to-know" subtext. 
The end result is great. Bella not losing that part of her human life. But yeah, Jacob was an idiot for taking it upon himself to do that. 
I didn't really get it from the book, but we see a bit more of Charlie and Sue Clearwater and it's clear that they're becoming a couple. Nice for Charlie so he isn't completely alone. (They kept bringing up how he couldn't fend for himself with cooking, lol)

The middle... we get our major conflict in the story... Irina (who was upset with Bella over Laurent's death) witnesses Jacob and Renesmee in the woods and she thinks that she's an immortal child. In the vampire world, they're taboo because if a child is turned into a vampire, they don't have the maturity necessary to keep the vampire. So she reports it to the Voluturi, who use this as an excuse to visit. 
It was interesting reading about this in the book. So much happens and I only read it through twice before. But one of the vampires they recruit to help them, he was a former member of this ancient clan of vampires... he talks about how the Volturi like to collect vampires with gifts and how their covens suspiciously get implicated with a crime and they're the only ones spared and get recruited. 
After the events of New Moon, Aro (the leader of the main trio) meets Edward, Alice and Bella and wants them to join him. Especially Alice because she can see the future. 
The only terrible thing about this part of the book... Alice disappears with Jasper and is gone for much of the book. I hate when characters go away for long periods in these books. But I was fairly convinced that they'd come back at some point. Edward, on the other hand, I really did feel like he left. 
I was half thinking with the Volturi thing... I want to say it's all Edward's fault because he was the one who sought them out to commit suicide after he thought Bella had. Sure, they probably would have found out about Alice eventually. But still... although I could really blame the publishers for pushing Stephenie to write New Moon and Eclipse because they didn't want this series to end too quickly. 

Oh, before I forget... Bella and Edward get a cottage in the woods for her birthday. I love in the book how she not only realizes how bad she is with surprises ("was I really that bad?") when only Alice comes for the big reveal. And she says how they could change some things around and Bella whispers "don't knock my house." Kinda like how she was so protective of her truck, she has a soft spot for old things. The cottage in the woods was like a Kinkade house from one of his painting. Gorgeous! Love it!

My ranting and raving aside... 
they have to recruit other vampires to witness that Renesmee is going and maturing and she's not a danger. They're from various parts of the world. The Denalis are "cousins" to the Cullens because they both eat a vegetarian diet on animal blood. Irina is their sister. Two others also live with them: Carmen and Elezear (who was with the Volturi previously). A couple from the Amazon. A trio from Irelend (they didn't really go into them that much). A bunch of nomads. One of them, Garrett, was from the Revolutionary War and later takes a shine to Kate from the Denali coven. Another, Alistair, is very suspicious of authority.
Then there's the Egyptian coven. Amun, their leader, is very protective of their secrecy and his mate, Kebi is subserviant to him. Kinda true to that culture. He created Benjamin and Tia was his girlfriend. 

Yeah, Benjamin is played by Rami Malek... everyone knows who he is by now :P I've seen his face on a couple of YouTube themes of "actors you forgot were in Twilight" videos. And it was really cool seeing him in this role, now that I've gotten to know him from Bohemian Rhapsody. He's so exotic looking that he was definitely the right person for this role. 
Hollywood is so into inclusivity nowadays. Stephenie Meyer and the Twilight film crew people were inclusive of other people and cultures before it was "in" and they don't get any credit for that. 

Two more vampires later show up and they're from Romania. They weren't invited, but they're excited at the prospect of the Volturi being taken down. Since their coven was originally in charge of the vampire world and was all but decimated. They made a fair point, though. As much as they loved the power, they were honest about who they were. They never "put on white hats and called [themselves] saints"

Meanwhile, Alice leaves some clues for Bella because her mind is still unreadable to Edward (and by extension, Aro) and she sets some contingency plans in place. Which is where J. Jenks comes in. In the book, there was a lot of runaround about finding out what this was about. And I kinda liked the lead up to this. Also, Bella had no idea going in what his business was. In the movie, he just had the fake ID's ready to go for Jacob and Renesmee to make a run for it. The book version showed Bella a little more in authoriative role. Also, J. Jenks was scared of dealing with the Cullens because he dealt with Jasper and he used fear as motivation. They didn't really show that side of the story here and I kinda missed that. 

And then the final part is the final confrontation... 
Even after watching the behind the scenes extras (when they said that fans would be disappointed if this build up was anti-climatic), I'm still a bit annoyed that they turned it into this big battle scene where people died that weren't supposed to. None of it actually happened... but I still remember being in horror and disbelief at the movies during those 9 minutes, thinking that they either ruined the book or I'd read a different book than this movie. 
Reading it again, there was a little hostility from Jane and Alec that Bella helped with her newfound powers. Edward couldn't read her mind when she was human and she finds out from Eleazar that she's a "shield" and she learned how to extend it beyond herself. So she used it to protect the others from their debilatating gifts. 
The battle was cool in some aspects where certain characters teamed up to take others down that were particularly annoying and threatening. 

In the end, the only person that really dies is Irina. Because she gave false witness to the Volturi. 
And we find out that there is another vampire/human hybird. He's 150 and reached full maturity at age 7. The book went into more detail about his creator doing this to a bunch of other women and he has sisters and none of them are venomous. 

It's so sad to me that all the drama is finally over and the movie is over... I could have used another 20 minutes like we had in the beginning. 

But the last 10 minutes or so... what an ending... first we get to reminsce about Bella and Edward's relationship... then we get a curtain call for all of the cast members past and present. And "A Thousand Years" by Christian Perri plays in the background.
I was kinda annoyed that they made a big deal about this song with the previous movie with it being on the radio, but it wasn't until the end of the credits. At least the Bruno Mars song you hear the music briefly... although the song doesn't really make sense in the confines of the movie. "If you walk away, every day it will rain"... nobody was leaving anybody in this movie. 
Also, I wondered why the lyric in "A Thousand Years" is "I have loved you for a thousand years"... it would make more sense if it was "I WILL love you for a thousand years"... that's just always bugged me.
But man, what a tribute. I loved this so much.

And of course I get to the end and I want to start it all over again. 

I'm also glad Mackenzie Foy got to be in the Nutcracker movie last year so she didn't completely disappear like a lot of the cast members of these movies did. She was so good as Renesmee. It was crazy how they did CGI to put her face on the younger versions of her character. And they may have found the solution to working with babies in movies and getting them to look in the right direction. Except there's still some work to be done because it doesn't quite look natural. 
In the extras, the casting director said how she doesn't read comments but she followed through on the suggestion from a lot of Twi-hards to cast her in this role. She really got that right. 

Also, Jackson Rathbone appeared as a guest judge on Halloween Wars last week... I'd been annoyed for years that they had the actor who played Sam on, but none of the vampires. Finally on a vampire challenge, they got him. And it was great to see him cut loose and be humorous. Jasper doesn't allow him that luxury that often. 
I'm just glad that not everyone has shied away from this franchise. Really didn't see much of anyone but Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart.... and Booboo Stewart who played Seth got to be in the Disney Descendants series. And Peter Facinelli was in Supergirl as a recurring role, but not a really good guy. 
And Rami Malek, who played an Egyptian vampire in one movie that could manipulate the elements... he won a Golden Globe and an Oscar... 

omg, Mia Maestro was in a Prince video! 
I was just going through some other cast members to see if they did anything else of note. Zafrina was in the Heroes reboot, but I don't remember much about her character. I think she looked familiar when I saw her.
But yeah, Mia Maestro was in "Te Amo Corazon" as his love interest. I guess I'll have to see that video again now... not that I need an excuse ;) 
Lee Pace (Garrett) was Ronan in Guardians of the Galaxy

and I think that's finally it... so much to this movie and franchise... and now it's over :(