In the late 2000s to early 2010s sci-fi the world of the Twilight Saga, written by author Stephanie Meyer took over the Young Adult genre by storm. The world of vampires and werewolves captivated young teenage girls everywhere, the ‘Edward vs Jacob’ ship war got people picking sides for who they wanted Bella with. In November 2012, the climatic finale, a culmination of over five years of books and movies, was released into theatres. Following Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Breaking Dawn: Part II was one of the many young adult adaptations turned into a two-part final movie. Was this split warranted… Perhaps not, but at least it made a really entertaining movie. For what it’s worth, Breaking Dawn is certainly a fun movie to watch, despite suffering from major screenplay issues, but the movie definitely never intended on being the next Citizen Kane. The movie is at least fun and entertaining enough to slightly overlook the rough script and awkward acting from the actors.

Following the first part of Breaking Dawn: Part II, the film takes place directly after Bella has given birth to her daughter, Renesmee (a combination of Renee and Esme) and subsequently turned into a vampire herself. She awakens after her traumatic birth and begins to experiment with her vampire superspeed. Edward soon realizes that she’s hungry and Bella almost devours a poor climber who cuts himself on the side of a cliff. Throughout the course of the film, the main antagonists of the movie, the Volturi, a powerful coven of vampires who live in Italy and enforce the laws of the vampire world, are upset due to the fact that they think Renesmee is an immortal child. Immortal children are outlawed because they are frozen at the age they are turned and thus have little impulse control; they are unable to keep their secret and must be destroyed. And so, most of the film then consists of the Cullen’s attempting to get different covens of Vampires to be on their sides and essentially vouch for them. It’s a slow build up, the first bit of the film is Bella acclimatizing to being a vampire whilst the rest of it is everyone trying to make sure the Volturi don’t murder them all. It’s an interesting enough plot, though maybe not executed in the best manner.

While Breaking Dawn: Part II is certainly fun, it comes at the price of a pretty weak script that ends up making the film fun. Of course, the source material certainly is not Pulitzer winning reading material, but the awkward lines of dialogue don’t give a lot of room for the actors to give compelling deliveries. Of course, they all try their best, but all hilted by a weak script and clunky, awkward dialogue. Most of the issues with the overall plot of the movie is, of course, issues with the original book. One of these being that Jacob imprints on Renesmee, which is acknowledged as weird for about 5 minutes (and contains probably one of the funniest lines in the entire series in the process), and then is never seen as weird again. Due to her being half-human, half-vampire, Renesmee ages very quickly and physically grows to that of an 8–10-year-old in the span of several months, leading to very little confusion from Charlie. Yes, he was told to not ask questions, but I would hope that he would seem at least a little confused at his granddaughter being a mere baby only months before. It’s little things like that, where if you think too hard about almost any part of the plot, you would go insane, but if you’re able to look at everything with a less serious manner and acknowledge that the script (and overall plot) is just… weird, then your overall experience gets better. 

From my remembrance (of having not read the book in about 15-years), Breaking Dawn: Part II is fairly accurate to the books. There are definitely differences, but there’s no major departure from the book bar, one section in particular. The ending of the movie opts to add some action into the film and decides to add a climactic battle sequence at the end of the movie, a culmination of years of buildup in tension between the two groups. Remembering back to when the movie first came out, and it was revealed that this was added to the movie in order to add an action sequence of some kind, thinking now, it’s a mixed bag. The battle certainly adds action to the film, which is mostly just fallout from the first movie and buildup to the meeting with basically zero action along the way, but it also doesn’t add very much, leading one to wonder why it was added in the first place. It was certainly not the worst scene they could’ve added to the movie, but upon watching it, one only ponders its existence in the film. 

However, in between the near campiness of Breaking Dawn: Part II and serious life-or-death-situations, there do lie glimmers of hope within the film. The actors are definitely… trying their very best with the material they are given (Billy Burke is actually probably one of the standouts with the limited screen time he receives). Given the circumstances, and the fact that we’ve seen most of the other actors fare better in much better projects, it’s easy to give them a pass here. One of the more interesting aspects of Breaking Dawn: Part II was definitely the introduction of all of the other vampire covens. Seeing the bit of world building made me wish that we were able to see and learn more about these covens in their time with us, more about their history and their cultures rather than just bringing them in solely to aid the Cullen’s. As well, the score is definitely good (Carter Burwell doesn’t miss here), but, like its predecessors, the music supervisor once again knocks it out of the park with the song selections throughout the film. Like the first movie, it is an unlikely movie with a killer soundtrack. 

Breaking Dawn: Part II was not aiming to be the next Lord of the Rings. I mean, it was about vampires who sparkled in the sun. The CGI is next to awful, the baby Renesmee is something of a nightmare (though certainly better than the doll they were planning on using), and the script is near awful. However, if you’re able to overlook that aspect of the movie and accept it for what it is, a campy mess of a film about vampires that sparkle in the sun plotted with some overdramatic lines and sequences, then you would be in for a way better time. Though the film is maybe not well made, or well written, there is entertainment value lying here in laughing at all the silly lines and the creepy CGI Renesmee, the unintentional humor might be better than all the intentional humor. Plus, it gave us the line, “You named my daughter after the Loch Ness Monster?!”, so the movie can’t really be that bad. It certainly won’t appeal to… most people, but the people that are able to watch it just for a laugh and pure entertainment value will find joy in it.