Whether this brings tears of sorrow or tears of relief, the highly anticipated conclusion of “The Twilight Saga,” “Breaking Dawn — Part 2,” opened in theaters Nov. 16. In the United States, it reaped an impressive $71.2 million on its opening day and another $141.1 million on its opening weekend. Globally, it grossed $340 million its opening weekend. It is currently totaling about $600 million worldwide. This caps the entire “Twilight” saga with a franchise worth $2.8 billion. Let that sink in and sting a little.
In this PG-13 installment of the vampire franchise, Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) and his newly turned bloodsucking wife, Bella (Kristen Stewart), rally together their vampire friends and werewolf allies to confront the violent inquisition of the merciless Volturi (Michael Sheen, Dakota Fanning) after hearing that the Volturi have received false information about Bella and Edward’s human-vampire hybrid daughter, Renesmee.
Like the rest of the series, the beginning of “Breaking Dawn — Part 2” reminds you of why you absolutely love (if you’re a “Twi-hard” fan) or absolutely hate (if you have an ounce of dignity) the entire series. Everything about it, from the sappy script to the melodramatic music and the sparkly sculpted bodies, just oozes with the cheesiness of an overdone, highly cliched romance. Just the first opening scenes of Bella and Edward clasping each other had you facepalming yourself on why you had even bothered with these two.
However, if you did manage to force yourself to sit through the rest of the movie, you will definitely find yourself extremely surprised. “Breaking Dawn — Part 2” is actually a pretty decent movie. Director Bill Condon and screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg’s interpretation of the book highlighted the light, fun side of the vampire life, sprinkling cheeky punchlines here and there that even drew out a few chuckles from this Twi-hater. By the time the big climactic fight came, I found myself totally rooting for Bella and Edward. I even booed, cheered and almost (almost!) cried along with the Twi-hards in the room, and I was equally mindblown by Condon and Rosenberg’s sneaky deviation from the book.
Pigs are flying or the zombie apocalypse might finally be here, but “Breaking Dawn — Part 2” might have actually made a Twi-hard fan out of me. Yikes.