Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart: Breaking Dawn Part 2 Completes Twilight with a Laugh

Culture

I couldn’t decide why the audience laughed at every other scene throughout the film — the audience being males and females anywhere from ages 12 and up. Some were on dates (that much I didn’t understand), others were groups of four or five guys (were they there to swoon over the incredibly awkward and dull Kristen Stewart, or did they genuinely enjoy the books?) and of course there were the teeny-bopper girls wearing “Team Jacob” or “Team Edward” shirts. I might add, though, that virtually every seat in the theater was in fact filled. Does this mean that the beloved Twilight franchise perseveres even four years later? The laughter from the crowd coupled with my own thoughts and the comments I overheard post-movie suggest the opposite; people were essentially there out of curiosity to see , once again, how the movies didn’t do the books justice and to make fun of the slightly ridiculous acting and story line. The only time the laughter changed into an impressed, shocked sound was at the end when the Volturi came to Forks and the director fooled its audience ... but I won’t spoil the ending for those of you that still plan on seeing it.  

As each Twilight film consecutively released its preview, I was one of those people who marked the date in my phone. My friends and I read those books religiously in middle school, I even knew people who had life-sized cardboard cut-outs of Edward Cullen. The obsession over Twilight, in my experience, came from the fantastical characters Stephanie Meyer created. There was so much hype from the wonderfully compelling books that people felt they owed it to themselves, and to Meyer, to see how the movie would reflect (or not reflect) the story they loved so dearly. The Twilight installment truly was the original vampire tale. All things vampire today, TV shows, short stories, book series, and the like, were created afterwards, and almost made everything less original and legitimate about Twilight. Shows like the Vampire Diaries made the vampire stories of Twilight commonplace.  

This realization, combined with the fact that movies simply did not put adequate images to the text (perhaps excluding the original Twilight film which was the best by far in terms of its freshness and accurate depiction of the book) catalyzed its downfall. Adding to it, I must admit, is the unfortunate casting of Kristen Stewart as Bella. Sure, she was shy in the books, but Stewart is a flat out drag who has no business playing a character that had so many expectations. She was the one that girls across the nation envied for being with Edward, and they cast the monotone and horrendously awkward Stewart.  

The acting in the latest installment of the Twilight series was comical, mostly because of the intensely sappy way Edward and Bella’s love was portrayed. The opening scene is comprised of the two of them sprinting through the woods with “deep” pauses punctuated by Edward and Bella just staring at each other. As for their daughter Renesme, it's not until late in the movie that she finally stops looking lik an alien-child — an obvious side effect of her being digitally created.

The verdict it that the movies have gotten increasingly worse. That said, if another book existed and another movie were to be made people would probably go out and see it. Laughing or not, people paid for a ticket for a reason. Perhaps that reason was not for the impeccable acting, but instead for the breathtaking story the books first gave us.