My friends, the time has come for the THRILLING CONCLUSION to the Twilight Saga review saga. This is the one where the most crazy shit happens, especially in a big deadly snow battle between all the characters. So I had fun. If you support me on Patreon thank you, if not thank you also but consider signing up some time if you can. Either way, more reviews coming soon and
GLITTERY VAMPIRES FOREVER
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Yes, this is really the most (intentional) fun part of the series. It still has that stupid romance stuff (As in “that particular romance stuff is stupid”, not “romance stuff is stupid in general”) and baby imprinting and other creepy shit, but this time it’s fun to see all those characters hang out and interact with each other. Not to mention the surprising coolness of the big battle! My main problem was that they introduce all these cool new supporting characters, who are in many cases played by really good character actors, but they only appear in a few scenes.
BTW, you think (fuck spoiler warnings, you either have already seen it or don’t care) the “it was all a vision of the future” twist is a cop out? I’ve been told that battle isn’t in the book at all! The big climax is that cute psychic vampire holds the hand of evil Volturi boss and he sees something in the future, that scares him so much, that he just goes home! We never find out what he saw! Now THIS is the biggest cop out that has ever been copped out, IMO. It’s even worse than “We cut away from the big Godzilla airport battle after an extremely suspenseful build-up, because they didn’t show the shark in JAWS!”. I never read a word that Stephenie Meyer wrote, but I doubt that she is the kind of brillant wordsmith, who can pull something like that successfully off.
Anyway, thanks for this as always damn entertaining series and making me feel special for being a “Patreon”. (I think. I still haven’t figured out if I am the Patreon, you are the Patreon or the Patreon has been inside our hearts all the time.)
The only part of Twilight I’ve seen (I haven’t even seen trailers) is the end credits of the last film as done in the vein of Predator. I can say Rachel Lefevre actually did make those credits, they showed both her and Bryce Dallas Howard as Victoria in seperate scenes.
I was about to inform all of you who have enjoyed/endured my epic rants about the toxic idiocy and relentless narrative chicanery of this wet fart of a series to be prepare for disappointment because I thought I’d forgotten every single thing about this exceedingly redundant movie, but then I was reminded that the entire climax was a fucking DREAM SEQUENCE, which is just taking this franchise’s supreme commitment to never depicting a single action with any consequences whatsoever to its most delirious heights. It’d be like RETURN OF THE JEDI ending with Chancellor Palpatine waking up in a cold sweat and realizing this whole Empire thing he’d been cooking up was a bad idea, and then we cut to elderly Anakin and Padme watch Leia make out with Chewbacca. Holy fuck, dudes. Let this series serve as the ultimate guide on how NOT to tell a story. Any kind of story. Somebody asks you how the traffic was on the way home from work, I trust you can spin a better yarn out of it than this.
About Taylor Lautner: I think he really found his calling in comedy. As probably the only person here who still watches Adam Sandler movies and admits it (while definitely agreeing that his 21st century output is mostly awful, yet with enough big laughs that make me keep watching his stuff), I have to tell you that he is the best thing about THE RIDICULOUS SIX and fully commits to his role as stupid redneck, in a way, that I never would’ve expected from the block of wood that he was in TWILIGHT and his other not-comedy roles. I even heard that he is really good in that british sitcom CUCKOO, but they only aired the Andy Samberg season over here, so I can’t confirm that.
I also thought he was funny in THE RIDICULOUS SIX. I also still occasionally watch Sandler movies. They’re never great but they’re amiable and good-natured. I’ll admit that the Chris Farley song in his recent standup special made me weep like a Twihard during the wedding sequence.
This was a fantastic series Vern. The first is the only one I’ve seen, but for reasons I no longer recall I once watched a DVD featurette about the robotic doll they originally wanted to use for the Renesmee character instead of a living human baby. After reading your review I kind of wish they’d gone with the doll.
Thank you Vern for writing these for us. A really well-observed series, I can’t wait for what’s ahead with your Patreon material.
One thing though…I was waiting for you to do a paragraph about Michael Sheen’s hammy performance, did I miss something or did you leave it unaddressed? Though I haven’t seen any of the Twilights, Sheen seems from the outside to be one of the most legit recognizable character actors to appear in it.
I laughed at the blurb you wrote about him in your Tron: Legacy review.
-P
To be fair about the final battle being a speculative What If? that never happened, from what I hear happened in the book, there wasn’t a final battle scene at all, just some talking and convincing the Volturi that starting a fight was a bad idea – for them. The film took it one step further and showed them exactly how it would play out.
They also had a lot fun with traumatising a lot of the book readers who were going OMG NOOOOOOOOO!!!! precisely because there wasn’t a scene like that in the books.
That IS hilarious to think about. I almost wish I suffered through this in the theater just to see that. I gotta give at least a little respect to the filmmakers for realizing they had to do SOMETHING with that damp squib of an ending.
Here’s some unsolicited advice to any storytellers out there: If you reach the climax of your tale and realize that everyone could just decide to say fuck it and go home and absolutely nothing would change, throw out every page and start again. You have fucked up on every level. No need to beat yourself up over it, just take it as a learning experience and do better next time. Give your characters motivations and antagonists with actual stakes attached to them. You’ll find that when you’ve done that, when you’ve built that kind of dramatic conflict into the story from the ground up, the “Fuck it, dude, let’s go bowling” ending will no longer be an option.
Most likely I will never watch these dumb movies, but this series has been an absolute blast. Thanks, Vern.
I’m kind of amazed at the career that Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart have had following these movies. Pattison smartly worked with some great directors after the Twilight films, but he also hasn’t been afraid of being cast as a supporting actor. And apparently France thinks that Stewart is the greatest actress since Catherine Deneuve.
Toss me a couple bucks a month, support the good shit, also get access to a bunch of exclusive writing. This is my primary source of writing money that has allowed me to cut down to part time at the day job. Thank you!
(NOTE: My ten year contract has passed on the Titan books, so I don't get residuals on them like I do WORM ON A HOOK and NIKETOWN, but I would love for you to read them because I'm proud of them)
EXTRA CREDIT: Review them on Amazon! That would really help me out. Unless you didn't like them, in which case forget I said anything.
December 13th, 2018 at 8:11 pm
This one is more my speed. I liked the vampire baseball in the first one but other than that this series hasn’t offered any food craziness… till now!
Creepy baby/kid, more unintentionally funny visual effects, and best of all: batshit insane climax with vampire heads just popping clean off.
Not saying the journey was worth the destination but I’m happy with the results!