When it comes to watching movies, my curiosity almost always gets the better of me. Out of pure curiosity, I have ended up watching films like Wild Wild West, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and American Ninja, among so many others. Therefore, the 2008 film adaptation of the book, Twilight, is the most recent movie I ended up watching just to satisfy my curiosity. For years now, I have known about the Twilight films. Not only did they do exceptionally well in the box offices around the world, but over time they developed a reputation for being absolutely terrible. Twilight and its sequels are from roughly the same era as “Baby” by Justin Bieber, Hannah Montana and Wii Sports. To me, this movie is a relic from the past. The film was a huge deal at some point, but now in 2020 no one seems to talk about it anymore. Other blockbusters, such as The Dark Knight, Avatar, and Transformers, are discussed a lot more. At least it seems that way. Is it possible that a bad reputation ruined Twilight’s longevity? I was curious to see what the movie had to offer. Plus, it was an iconic movie that I had never seen before.
I remember I turned on the original Twilight movie.
In Twilight, seventeen-year old Bella Swan, played by Kristen Stewart, relocates from Arizona, to live with her cop dad, Charlie, Billy Burke, in a small town called Forks, Washington. Upon her arrival at the new high school, Bella draws the interest of a notorious member of the Cullen family, Edward Cullen, Robert Pattinson. Edward puts off a mysterious vibe that most students shy away from. Why the Cullen family is so different is not clear to Bella at this time. While Edward tries to a make a genuine attempt at pursuing a relationship with Bella, he manages to act strange. At one point, Bella finds herself nearly colliding with a car, at which Edward seems to have magically appeared and uses superhuman power to halt the vehicle with a single hand. With more questions than answers, Bella is taken aback when Edward prevents her from hanging out with a family friend, Jacob black, who is a Quileute Indian tribal. Additionally, he later tells her that the Cullen’s and Quileute Indians have a long-standing hatred toward each other. As Bella’s curiosity grows, she conducts some research and unveils the shocking truth that Edward and the rest of the Cullen family are all vampires.
She discusses it with him, and in return, he confesses to her that he is a vampire. A romance blossoms between Bella and Edward, and as a result, she meets her husband’s family. Some of them treat her with courtesy while others worry that she might break their little secret to the world. There are bigger fresh to fry, however, as there are aggressive, human-killing vampires that have come to Forks and started killing people. The two vampire groups engage in an epic battle, and by the movie’s conclusion, we see Bella and Edward attending ‘senior prom’ together.
It’s very hard to like this film, and I feel that writing another review bashing it might make it easier for me. But I cannot give Twilight that much praise. A loud mouth, and a breath of fresh air;, now that is very awkward, amusing but annoying at the same time. And that is precisely what describing twilight should be like. Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson offer virtually no chemistry together; their performances are dull and wooden. Towards the rest of the cast, the feelings that I possess do not tend to do much better than that. In fact, very few of the characters come across as likable at all because less than half of them do. The most lovable character has to be Bella’s dad, who utterly is confused on not being able to figure out what is happening. The direction choices are off, and the script is a mess. Most of this film was simply bad, and mediocre so to speak. The cringe-worthy silence moments and the lurking awkward feeling left the choices questioned. Painting everything a dull white-gray, making the film sleepy and The color palette of the entire film is white-gray and pale gray-blue.
In many ways, this is not a boring movie, but if someone does not really care much for the love story between Bella and Edward, then it may get boring for them pretty fast. You also cannot go into this movie expecting some epic vampire fights – all of the action scenes are super dull and the CGI is at times amusingly pathetic. This is likely meant to be a movie that teens are meant to watch, but I honestly think that most of my peers would not like this if it came out now, even though it was a huge blockbuster movie in 2008. I guess realistically, this is a film that should be appealing to young teenage girls (typing that out does not fill me with pride for watching it) so I guess I understand that the bar for any type of technical quality is much lower compared to just hoping that there is a captivating love story between the two leads, but still: Twilight is not a good movie.
The thing about this movie that intrigues me is not the film itself, but the film’s impression over the years in culture.
While the Harry Potter saga can be credited with having kickstarted the trend of YA films, it was indeed Twilight that set it in motion. There is no telling whether movies like Divergent or Hunger Games would have gained a similar level of success without the existence of Twilight. But it’s safe to say that this film and the series did set the bar for popularity of that type of film. One thing to point out is that the production rate of that type of movie has dropped significantly; the YA film trend in comparison to other genres took a dip in the mid-00s to early 2010s, and we all know how Twilight let off the steam. One other thing is that this movie helped take Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson into a new level of fame, along with a relatively lower level of Taylor Lautner, but I guess the later movies in the series gave him more exposure. Since then, Stewart has starred in some more recognized films, however, she is still largely known for her character in Twilight. As expected, the same can be said about Robert Pattinson, but he does seem to be on a quiet career resurgence in slightly more sophisticated low key films now like The Lighthouse and Good Time, and is set to appear in the new Christopher Nolan movie Tenet.
Taylor Lautner has presided over the Hollywood space for a considerable period of time, but now he seems to be out of the limelight. It’s understandable since none of the protagonists of the series into films with as much appeal as Twilight, which kind of defeats the purpose of the fans discussing the franchise. The Twilight saga was and still is very popular, but it is almost overlooked at the present time in comparison to Harry Potter or The Hunger Games. For a film with such great reach and that contributed towards a genuine shift in Hollywood, it is surprising that this film is hardly discussed at this point. The lack of attention could be due to the fact that well…it is really not that fabulous a film to begin with.
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