Breaking Dawn, Part 2 (2012)

Breaking Dawn, Part 2 (2012)  Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson

Rated PG-13 for sequences of violence (apparently vampires have the same neck structure as little Lego men.  Who knew?) including disturbing images (I consider CGI babies disturbing), some sensuality and partial nudity (Don’t worry… mostly what you see is their wedding rings.)

I am not performing a review of all of the Twilight movies at this time.  I promised that I would review this one, because it came out after the launch of the Facebook page, so I am reviewing this one. 

I will tell you truthfully, and my friends know this about me, that I have a lot of bias against the Twilight stories.  I know I’m not alone, but I also want it made clear that I keep giving them a chance to be great, and I keep feeling like they came close and then fell short.  So my dislike of the Twilight stories is not for lack of trying.

So I went into watching this movie with a very loud “LOOK FOR THE MESSAGE!” in my head.  A lot of pressure.  I kept watching the story meander towards something brilliant and then meander back away from it.  I should, I suppose, have just watched it for the fun of it and then let the message come to me, which it did several days later.

Quick Synopsis

In this chapter of the Bella/Edward/Jacob saga, Bella has come back to life a vampire after a terminal childbirth.  Bella is a newborn vampire, so she spends a while getting her vampirey adjustment out of the way. The baby Renesmee is fine, except for a serious case of being computer generated. Jacob has imprinted on Renesmee, so she has a dedicated wolf guardian (and by extension, the rest of the wolf pack) for the rest of what could be an eternal life.

            “Nessie? You nicknamed my daughter after the Loch Ness Monster?!”

Unfortunately, the governing body of the vampires, the Volturi, get wind of Renesme’s existence and mistakenly believe her to be an immortal child (a vampire who was turned as a child) which is apparently incredibly dangerous, and set out to destroy the Cullen family.

SPOILERS FOLLOW

The Cullen family finds itself in need of friends and allies in order to save Renesmee and combs the world for people who will understand. Carlisle has friends in countries all over the place.  Vampire friends with superpowers.  (How are the Volturi still in charge here? Is it really  just the black capes?) They try to convince their friends to join them, promising that while they intend to amass in force with the help of werewolves, they are not, in fact, intending to fight the Volturi.  And oh, by the way, Renesmee is not an immortal child as she would appear, but something completely new and different in fact. 

Everywhere they go, their friends react with fear and disbelief.  Then little girl Renesmee uses some kind of psychic truth touch to make vampires see clearly how not a threat she is and win them over to their cause.  When Renesmee touches the cheek of her … um… not victim… potential ally, they see something that makes it all come clear. The only time we see what it is, she is doing it to her mother, showing her the first memory she has of her.  I imagine that particular memory wouldn’t be enough for most of the SuperVamps, so she must be imparting the truth to them some other way. Whatever that is, they are sure that Renesmee is what Bella says she is, and that defending her is the right thing to do.

So that by the time they get to the showdown, they have an X-Men-like cadre of gifted vampires and an ever-increasing pack of wolves at their backs. 

                        “Lot of red eyes around here...”

Meanwhile, the head of the Volturi sees this ‘immortal child’ crime as the loophole he has always needed to break the Cullen family apart. With the Vampire Code of Conduct on their side, the Volturi buys out every black cape store in Europe and shows up in force as well.  Duhn Duhn DUUUUUUUUHN.

Renesmee is given the chance to impart her special knowledge to the head of the Volturi, who knows instantly that she is not an immortal child. With that leg kicked out from under him, he has to inspire his people with fear of the unknown instead. 

            Maintaining our secret has never been more imperative.

Their response seems largely to be “Yeah, okay, sure. Grr” so I don’t know that he had to wax quite as eloquent as he did.  But it shakes his foundation enough to allow Psychic Future-Seer Alice to show him a lego-head popping vision of the next few hours of his life if he goes forward with his attack of the Cullens.

And having seen that grim future, he waxes eloquent again and his people retreat forthwith.

(Btw… what did that look like to his people? SPEECH ABOUT KILLING THE UNKNOWN… quick vision from Alice… SPEECH ABOUT EMBRACING THE UNKNOWN. Why didn’t they think he’d been brainwashed?)

Setting that parenthetical aside…  

Fear and Lies often come to us in giant armored cars. Truth often comes to us in the form of something small and fragile. It’s not really about which one has the most big guns behind it, although that is the way history tells its stories.  The reason Lies have to be surrounded by strength and power is because there is an inherent weakness in their structure that cannot be defended.  Lies fall apart.  Truth survives.  However the epic (largely ignored by the authorities) battle on the white rock had ended, the truth that Renesmee was not an immortal child could not have been destroyed. No matter what the Volturi did to the Cullens, they would never have become right.

            “A truthful witness saves lives, but one who utters lies is a betrayer.” Proverbs 14:25

If he had proceeded, in the few minutes of the battle, Aro’s whole empire would have fallen apart due to the indestructibility of the truth, and the utter fragility of his eloquent lies. And even if it didn’t fall apart then, it would have fallen apart eventually. The trouble with leading with fear is that you have to keep making people afraid. And people grow numb, over and over again.

And as for our SuperVamp/Wolfpack team of Freedom Fighters?  Smaller in number and led by their own motivations, they had amassed behind the weakest kind of creature.  A child.  And yet the strongest kind of banner, the truth.

            “and a little child shall lead them.”  Isaiah 11:6

I will NOT draw Christ parallels to the Breaking Dawn story.  I will not.  Because it doesn’t work anyway. I tried. They walk too far away from the self-sacrifice and just go into epic battle before that can happen, which derails the Christ parallel.   (SEE? So close to brilliance and then *poof* suddenly gone)

But I will say this.

We will follow with fear a leader who inspires us with fear.  But we have it in us to stand fearlessly against an unbeatable foe if we know that truth is on our side.  Because the distance between “We are strong enough to win, right or wrong” and  “Regardless of the outcome of this day, we will still know that we were right” is… well… infinite.

Maybe that is why when it came to all of our salvation, the truth came to us in the form of a soft, warm, terribly fragile and yet somehow unbreakable infant.