Ooo, boy. This is it, (probably) the final time I will have an excuse to talk Twilight on the blog. Breaking Dawn Part 2 came out last weekend, and while I wasn’t first in line (or even present) at a midnight showing, I did go see it on Sunday to limit my chances of any big twists being spoiled for me via Twitter.

If you haven’t seen the movie yet (and are planning to), now is the time to stop reading. The spoilers are coming! I’ve written a full review for Geek Speak Magazine, which will be up later this week, but now I just want to talk about exactly what I loved, and what I hated.

The third chunk of Breaking Dawn was my favorite of the book series, but I still found the first part of the movie pretty painful to watch. They tried to throw a lot of elements and important scenes into half an hour (not including the heinously long opening credits sequence) and it felt really disjointed. Couple that with bad acting and I was worried I’d leave the movie feeling let down and disappointed.

Kristen Stewart was never able to portray any real motherly feelings for Renesmee, CGI’d baby Renesmee was insanely creeping looking, and Emmett went from being the hunky brother to another pale, shell of an attractive guy.

Once the main conflict showed up and we got into seeing the various vampires and their abilities, I was willing to let all of this go and just get lost in the story. All of the vampire abilities and training scenes translated really well on screen and it was easy to enjoy the lead up to the final battle.

Now let’s talk about that battle. Anyone who has read the books knew that the battle never actually happened in the original story, but we’d all seen the trailers with some epic looking fights and Edward falling into the abyss. I’d assumed that they’d been willing to stray from the original movie to make for a more dramatic ending to the series. What I wasn’t expecting was for Aro to literally rip off Carlisle’s head and have his lackeys burn the body. Quite a few people in the theater literally yelled at this point, and it was all downhill from there as. Jasper, Leah and Seth all met messy ends as well. Edward and Bella eventually dispatched Aro, but the price was high. My heart was racing through this whole scene because I had no idea what to expect.

Then! It was revealed that the whole battle scene had been one of Alice’s visions. She had been showing Aro how things would play out if he decided to push for a fight. The theater let out a collective sigh of relief. I thought it was awesome! I know a few other reviewers have said it was a lame way out of a boring ending, or an obvious ploy but I definitely didn’t see it coming. I supposed if I’d spent some time thinking it through it might have been apparent, but just sitting there lost in the movie… it was great!

The movies did a great job of staying true to the books (even with its faults), and I think the ending was great. I’m done with Twilight for awhile, but if I ever feel the need to revisit Forks it will be with a movie marathon instead of another reread.