Fitting ending for 'Twilight' saga

AS NIGHT FALLS at last on the "Twilight" saga, let us pause for a moment to bow before one of the most demented pop-movie franchises of all time.

As cinema and/or art, the installments were never really that formidable, and all 600 minutes will probably pass without a single noteworthy Oscar win.

On the other hand, nobody ever fell asleep during a "Twilight" screening. The movies found lively space between earnest romance and bloody gothic fairy tale - the later element accentuated in the insane conclusion to "Breaking Dawn Part 1," a bloody living-room Caesarean section marked by emergency vampire conversions and the extraction of a human-vampire baby, imprinted upon by a werewolf midwife.

I'd take that over a "Transformers" sequel any day.

"Breaking Dawn Part II" picks up where "Part 1" left off, weirdness-wise.

Bella (Kristen Stewart) emerges from her ordeal and a long sleep as a full-fledged red-eyed vampire, newly stylish in a short blue slit-up-the-thigh dress. Edward (Robert Pattinson) approves. They go hunting; thirsty Bella kills a cougar.

Minutes later, Taylor Lautner strips to his undies in front of Bella's dad. This is somehow essential to Jacob delivering the good-news/bad news that Bella is alive, but "changed."

There is good news/bad news, too, about "Breaking Dawn Part II." The prologue picks up where the nutty "Part I" left off, but that's about it for the next hour and a half.

The bloated midsection of "Part 2" is tedious and uneventful, devoted to dreary exposition about the morphology and meaning of Bella and Edward's halfbreed child, Renesmee.

She may pose a threat to vampire law, administered by a Euro-hierarchy of super-strict vampire clerics (Michael Sheen, Dakota Fanning), who mean to have an inquisition, possibly a war.

Meanwhile, Edward and Bella settle in as newlyweds. It's not a good look for them. Bella in particular seems out of place as an expensively dressed Tiger Mom - Stewart was more at home as a slouchy, noncommittal teen, perpetually dithering over two suitors.

Her new Bella, like the star of a "Real Vampire Housewives" TV show, lives in a posh house and brags about her "gifted" and fruitily named child, who grows 6 inches per month and learns the piano in 10 seconds.

No wonder the Volturi want to get rid of them.

The good vampires, the Cullens, want peace. They round up all the friendly vampires in the world to "witness" before the Volturi. They intend to avert a bloodbath by testifying that Renesmee is no threat to world order.

This is a worthy message, and novelist Stephenie Meyer is a good literary citizen: She's cleverly managed to build a mammoth best-selling series around chastity, marriage, tolerance and pacifism.

But it's dead end for a filmmaker who wants to send the series out with a bloody bang, something on the order of "Part 1."

Give peace a chance, by all means, but could we not also tear the heads off a bunch of vampires?

Yes, say screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg and director Bill Condon, who come up with an ending that honors Meyer's intentions and sets new standard for decapitation in a PG-13 movie.

This is entirely warranted. A proper ending for the "Twilight" movie franchise should have some teeth in it.

Blog: philly.com/KeepItReel