Second Sun Rising

The Twilight Saga finale, Breaking Dawn – Part 2, is due to hit screens and already wild rumours of a reboot are circulating. But one plausible 'remake' has come and gone. Lars von Trier's 2011 arthouse film, Melancholia, is surely a skewed Twilight. It has the depressive ('emo') heroine in Kirsten Dunst's copywriter, Justine; dysfunctional family, bizarre love triangle (with a rogue planet instead of a vampire), OTT wedding, melodrama, premonitions and astrological references. What The Twilight Saga (TTS) lacks is cultural cred – although Grimes is a celebrity fan, as is James Franco.

Breaking Dawn – Part 2 – like Part 1, directed by Bill Condon (Gods And Monsters, Dreamgirls) – picks up from Book Three of the fourth and final volume in Stephenie Meyer's teen fantasy series. Isabella 'Bella' Cullen (Kristen Stewart) has survived the birth of her baby, the human/vampire hybrid Renesmee (Mackenzie Foy), and is now a 'newborn' vamp herself – stronger than her husband Edward (Robert Pattinson). However, another vampire mistakes Renesmee, whose development is advanced, for an immortal child (a child made, not born, a vampire), dobbing in the Cullens to the ruling Volturi, led by Michael Sheen's Aro. The Volturi deem such a creature a taboo. Bella must prove Renesmee's legitimacy – and save her. 

BD2 could perhaps be the weakest narrative of the franchise. It centres, not on romance, but family. Meyer faced a reader backlash with Renesmee's very introduction. In the book, the Cullens' final battle with the Volturi is waged psychically – and so Condon has heightened the action. Meyer and screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg even changed the ending – radical since, with the exception of Catherine Hardwicke's surprise 2008 box office hit, Twilight, the movies have adhered faithfully to the texts.

The TTS films have, like the books, copped it from every quarter. Movie reviewers – typically male – deride them as chick flicks with sparkly vamps and shirtless wolves, tagging fans 'Twihards'. Feminists have condemned Bella's 'abusive' relationship with Edward, as well as her passivity, overlooking the saga's narrative arc. Some religious types consider TTS too sexy (Meyer is a Mormon).

Feminists especially have missed the figurative aspects of TTS. If anything, it critiques the cult of perfection – and the belief that women should embody everything. Ultimately, Bella's problems are solved by her dying – well, becoming a vampire. She'll be forever 18, never ageing. Not even childcare is a concern. In this way, TTS has generated a subversive post-feminist mythology – parodic, if not ironic. Meyer's work belongs to a tradition of often ambiguous female gothic novels that includes Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

As with Justine's death planet in Melancholia, Edward could actually be a mere illusion of a lonely, displaced adolescent girl. A fantasy within a fantasy. Regardless, the dynamic between Bella and Edward shifts so dramatically in BD2 that she might be TTS's most powerful vampire – providing she conquers the Volturi. 

While TTS has transcended its teen demographic, a new YA (young adult) subgenre, paranormal romance, is prospering. US author Rachel Caine (aka Roxanne Longstreet Conrad) is headed for Australia to promote Bitter Blood, the 13th instalment in The Morganville Vampires series, her cerebral protagonist Claire Danvers likely to charm those irked by Bella's emo-isms. The TV adaptation of The Vampire Diaries, loosely based on L J Smith's writings, is onto its fourth season. For adults (and, apparently, dudes), there's the supernatural Americana of True Blood. And, far from promoting Mormon-style abstinence, TTS inspired E L James to pen the fan fiction that became Fifty Shades Of Grey, Christian Grey originally a 'human' Edward. The popularity of Fifty... has, in turn, engendered a boom in women's erotic fiction, one new tome Eve Sinclair's genuinely blasphemous rewrite, Jane Eyre Laid Bare.