With The Twilight Saga finally having reached its conclusion with Breaking Dawn Part Two, Liam, Dom and Rose sat down to have a chit chat about the tween-tastic capper to the fantasy series. There’s spoilers ahead, so read on if you’ve seen the film (or simply don’t care about having the plot ruined for you).
Liam We should probably start by giving our impressions of the entire saga thus far. So let’s each give a summary in five words or less, starting with the first Twilight film. Dom?
Dom Wanted… to like… Didn’t.
Rose Hated it at first, but have seen it probably eight times and I like it now.
Liam Cool. More than five words, but whatever.
Rose Sorry about that, I’m a verbose person.
Liam I thought: The Crow for chicks. New Moon?
Dom I thought that was stultifyingly boring. I really struggled to get through it.
Rose It was terrible, but still not as – Sorry, that was more than five words. Go on.
Liam New Moon made me angry. Eclipse?
Dom I liked some of the action in Eclipse. There was at least a sense of things happening, but again, didn’t engage.
Rose Eclipse is the one where I never really know what happens. That’s the one where he gets naked in front of the Volturi, right?
Liam That’s New Moon.
Rose REALLY!?
Liam Yep.
Rose What’s Eclipse then?
Dom It’s that one where that red-headed woman plans that werewolf-vampire battle.
Rose I… have… not… seen… Eclipse.
Liam Okay, Breaking Dawn Part One?
Dom I could not believe that was released in cinemas. To me, that was just total fan servicing protracted nothingness.
Rose It was definitely the worst out of all of them, I think.
Liam I agree, it was boring.
Rose I just remember them breaking the bed.
Liam And now, Part Two.
Dom Well, I had my expectations lowered to the point where I was simply there for professional obligation reasons, and I think just the fact that it was the culmination lent it a tiny bit of heft. Just the fact that it had all built up to this, the fan love had kinda seeped into me a bit and I didn’t want to deny anyone’s ability to like it. But the sense of finality, the culmination and the climacticness kind of helped it, I think.
Rose I agree. I must say, it did help that Part One did lower my expectations to the point of not expecting anything from this one. I did enjoy that there was a bit of action and I did read the Wikipedia synopsis of the book afterwards – it’s how I read all my books – and nothing happens in that whole book. Basically, they’re like,
And then they go to battle and then they’re like,
And that’s it!
Dom Does the big fake-out occur in the book?
Rose No it doesn’t. There’s no battle in the book.
Dom So Michael Sheen’s character believes her when she foretells that it’s going to end badly for him but we don’t go into great detail about it?
Rose Yep.
Dom Wow, what a nothing book. Does anything happen in it?
Rose No, nothing happens in it. But like I was saying, I enjoyed it because it was the end of a weird era. Twilight came out when I was 16 or 17, and at the end of the movie there’s this kind of emotional recap that should not have been there –
Liam I expected Boyz II Men to be playing in the background.
Dom I gotta say, that bit that you’re talking about where they go through the cast of all five movies – even the tiniest insignificant people – I never believed more in the power of Twilight than in that scene. I was like “Yeah, this is a thing. This is a thing that counts as a thing.” And I like that they did that. I like it when something that’s been going for ages shows due reverence for what’s come before it.
I never understood why people complained about the protracted ending in Return of the King. Some people might call the end of Breaking Dawn Part Two indulgent but I thought it was appropriate.
Rose And it also meant that you didn’t have to go back and watch any of the other ones.
Dom It’s funny this whole splitting books up thing. It’s such a new idea for years it should have happened, because people were adapting books that were too massive for one movie but it could never be justified financially. Now, studios are just like,
Which is such bullshit.
Liam And now we’re getting three Hobbit movies.
Dom Well… Rose and I were talking about this the other night. It’s one area where I think it’s all right.
Rose Major hypocrite. He yelled at me,
And I was like,
Dom To me, there’s so many appendices in Tolkien’s world that there’s lots of avenues to explore and I feel that was Peter Jackson’s call, not Warner Brothers’ call.
Rose One of the films is going to be map drawings: Looking at maps, drawing maps and enjoying maps.
Liam And then burning said map.
Rose Yeah, so obviously, what happened in Breaking Dawn happened to the last Harry Potter and it’s happening to The Hunger Games, which I have also read the Wikipedia synopsis for.
Liam I think the first ten minutes of Breaking Dawn Part Two grabbed me the moment Jacob is confronted because I couldn’t stop picturing him saying,
Rose That’s so weird! Because they totally don’t hide the fact that it’s gonna happen.
Dom They didn’t do a good enough job. They kinda acknowledge the weirdness of it but it’s still pretty weird.
Rose I just don’t get that it has to be a romantic relationship. Like, there’s that flash-forward with him and older Renesmee on the beach.
Dom They should have played that song “Young girl…”
But speaking of Renesmee, creepiest CGI baby ever! Creepier than the baby in Trainspotting.
Rose Creepier than The Polar Express.
Liam Creepier than any Robert Zemekis movie.
Dom I don’t know why they decided to make that baby CGI. Was it that important to have her do coo coo eyes at her mum? They could have found a brown-eyed baby somewhere.
Liam Yeah, but that baby was smiling and babies never smile.
Rose That’s what’s creepy about it. I don’t want a baby smiling at me and touching my face.
Liam Maybe they couldn’t find a baby that was happy in Kristen Stewart’s arms.
Dom I thought Kristen looked really good as a vampire. I didn’t hate her. She wasn’t as pouty. And apart from the end, I thought the best part was when she was discovering her powers.
Rose What are the rules with vampires? Is it X-men now?
Dom It totally felt like vampire X-men. Suddenly, different vampires had powers. I didn’t see that coming.
Rose And since when did a vampire from the Amazon have such straight, well-cut bangs? That’s what I can’t believe.
Dom Do they have vampire mind control going on in that universe?
Rose Dakota Fanning, she doesn’t have mind control but she can make you feel pain just by saying “Pain”
Liam Which is the douchiest power ever.
Rose That’s probably where I like Kristen Stewart more. She had her own power which gave her a bit more agency, an ability to actually do something.
Dom Instead of just being the damsel in distress, she got to do some stuff. But they never once, in all five movies, make them look anything less than completely ridiculous when they’re running through the forest. There were better special effects in the mid-90s Flash TV show.
Do you guys remember a weird film from the 80s called The Wizard of Speed and Time? It was a special effects guy who made a movie starring himself and it’s got heaps of scenes where he’s running around really fast and the camera’s below him and he’s a blur. That’s exactly what those scenes in Twilight look like.
Rose The effects are always really terrible.
Liam I think it was confusing how vampire Bella and Edward could have freaky vampire sex without breaking the bed this time, or the entire house for that matter.
Rose I found it really strange, how a movie that’s suppose to be for teenagers and tweens would have blunt sexual references like “Aww, you’ve already finished your sex marathon, eh?”
Dom Yeah, they made reference to a decade-long fuck-a-thon.
Liam I did like that part during the sex montage where Kristen Stewart whips her hair back and all those stars fly out.
Rose I know! I know! And all the young girls are like “What does this mean?”
Dom Vampire-gasm.
Liam I was impressed by that final battle scene too. I can’t remember the last movie I saw that had that many decapitations.
Dom I have to admit: I’m a sucker for a giant crack opening in the ground, which happened quite nicely. And also seeing the lava down the bottom, it’s kinda like the end of The Last Crusade, the idea of the bottomless pit that you’d fall into and die.
Liam Why was there lava?
Dom …because he went right down to the Earth’s core.
Liam So the Earth’s core is only like 100 metres deep?
Dom It was obviously very far away.
Rose It did not look that far away.
Dom It was a hypothetical sequence, the laws of physics do not apply.
Rose That’s true.
Dom Maggie Grace was terrible.
Rose Terrible…
Dom She’s a finger.
Rose A finger…?
Dom She’s featureless. The whole plot just hangs on her making a presumption.
Rose She deserved to – spoiler alert – die.
Dom I think we need to blame the success of Taken for her continued career.
Liam Now, you guys went to the première; I had to see it by myself on release day. But when the plot twist of bullshit happens, did everyone in the theatre laugh?
Dom No! A few people were like “Whoa!” But some were complaining about how some key characters didn’t actually die because they invested in the drama.
Rose A lot of people were clapping when they killed an evil person. Some of them laughed when it turned out to be a big hoax.
Dom That is quite a shameless way of trying to give your story a big finale is to add a hypothetical.
Rose BUT I’m glad for it.
Dom There was that one where they lifted from the mouth.
Rose That was really gross!
Dom It looked like something out of Hostel.
Liam That part was amazing!
Dom It was all over the place. It’s only worth considering because so many people love it. If you remove that aspect, it’s completely fucking ridiculous. It makes no sense and has no value.
Liam I think that too about Breaking Dawn Part Two, but after marathoning the entire saga this week, I think I just submitted to the finale. I’ll admit it: I liked it.
*Rose leans towards microphone
Rose In conclusion, I liked the movie but mostly for nostalgia reasons as being the end of the last thing I was legitimately allowed to enjoy as a teenager and into my…
…not teenage years.
Dom You grew up with Twilight, didn’t you?
Rose I did. I was 16 or 17 when Twilight came out.
Dom When Bella became a woman, so did Rose.
Rose I always maintained that I owned Robert Pattinson from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. My Bebo password was…
…I don’t want to tell you.
Dom What? DiggoryForever?
Liam Tell us.
Dom Tell us.
Liam Tell us.
Dom Tell us.
Rose …Cedric4Me
Dom You were right to be embarrassed about that.
Rose Please don’t put that in; someone will hack my Bebo and take all my precious information. But yeah, The Twilight Saga was the last thing I was allowed to be totally balls-deep into – excuse the really terrible phrase.
Liam Ovaries deep.
Rose Yeah, ovaries deep into.
Dom I think that’s a good point: I was always perplexed by not being able to get into this franchise because I loved similarly juvenile stuff. So it was nice to be able to access a bit of the insanity around it for the last one. Like you said, Liam, it kinda beat me into submission.
Liam I think I had Stockholm Syndrome to the point where I was like “I love you guys so much, don’t leave me!”
Dom Really!? You were that invested!?
Liam No, I wasn’t. I’m just playing it up for comic effect.
Rose You weren’t. You so weren’t.
