The Twilight Saga wasn’t as bad as many make it out to be. However, it did suffer from some weaker performances and writing. The characters should have been more fleshed out with clear desires and reasoning to back up those desires.
The Twilight Saga is a book series that was adapted to film and features a story that spans over the course of 5 movies mainly centering around a love triangle between three unlikely people. Bella the human, Edward the Vampire and Jacob the Werewolf. While Twilight is largely known for having a fair amount of flaws, it was very successful for a reason.
Story
In the first film, we are introduced to the three main characters. Bella moves from Phoenix to Forks, Washington and soon after arriving begins to develop feelings for a mysterious outsider at her new school, Edward Cullen. The more she talks to Edward the more she realizes that there is something different about him and she soon discovers that he was a vampire. Their relationship grows and all is well until a new trio of vampires unknown by the Cullen family come into town and start conspicuously killing people, risking drawing attention to the peaceful Cullen family. The trio agrees to leave but then one of the members, James, realizes that Bella was a human and decides he wants to kill her. The Cullen family protects her and manages to kill James first. James’ girlfriend Victoria is angered by this and she along with the surviving member of the trio (Laurent) leave town for now.
New Moon is the second film and the franchise and for the majority of the film focuses on Jacob and Bella’s relationship instead of Edward and Bella. After a mishap involving blood thirst at the Cullen household, Edward decides that it is not safe for he and Bella to be together. He along with the rest of the Cullen family leave Forks and it destroys Bella. Bella begins spending time with lifelong family friend Jacob Black to help get her mind off the departure of the Cullen family. As Jacob and Bella spend more time together they begin to have feelings for one another though despite Jacob’s efforts (and ridiculously toned abs) she refuses to pursue a relationship with him claiming that at 16 years old, he was too young for the 18-year-old Bella (ironic considering Edward is 100s of years older than Bella). Jacob seems to become sick and Bella stops seeing him. Shortly thereafter she discovers that he is actually not sick, but is now a werewolf and spends most of his time with his pack. Around this time Laurent reappears and tries to kill Bella as a favor for Victoria though he is killed by the Werewolf pack. Bella, in an attempt to feel alive again after losing her boyfriend and best friend, jumps off of a cliff into the ocean. Edward finds out about this and decides to get the Volturi (basically the vampire government) to kill him. Alice Cullen finds Bella still alive and brings her to Edward so that the two of them can stop Edward from killing himself and they do so at the last minute. They return home to Jacob being angry that Bella is with Edward again. Jacob and Edward fight but are then stopped by Bella and Jacob storms off.
The Twilight Saga: Eclipse. The third film and the franchise begins with Victoria (now played by Bryce Dallas Howard) setting in motion or final attack on Bella and the Cullen family. She turns a boy named Riley into a vampire and sends him out to create an army of newborn vampires. It is also at this point that we learn newborn vampires are significantly stronger than older vampires. Bella goes to see Jacob after not having seen him for a good while and he confesses his love for her only for it to not be reciprocated. Throughout the movie, Edward and Jacob are fighting for Bella’s affection and she seems to be falling in love with both of them. Alice then has a vision of the oncoming newborn vampire attack and the Cullen’s ask the werewolf pack to team up with them to help defeat this common enemy. The werewolves reluctantly agree and Jasper hosts a training session on how to fight these extra strong newborn vampires. Prepared for Victoria’s newborn army the Cullens along with the wolfpack manage to kill all of their foes although the Volturi arrives right after the battle is done and the wolves are gone. They are intrigued by how a small family was able to defeat this many newborns on their own, this makes the Volturi suspicious of the Cullen family, though they leave. Jacob is hurt during the battle though still alive, he is unhappy about Bella’s decision to stay with Edward but tells her that he will stay out of their way.
In the first part of the epic conclusion to the Twilight saga, Breaking Dawn, we begin with Bella and Edwards wedding. The wedding goes smoothly until Jacob finds out that Edward and Bella plan on having their honeymoon and making love while Bella is still a human. This angers Jacob because he believes that Edward will be unable to control himself and will kill her. During their honeymoon, Edward does manage to control himself and keep Bella uninjured. All seems perfect until Bella realizes that she is two weeks late for her period and is, in fact, pregnant with Edward’s vampiric baby. The baby rapidly grows and causes a multiplicity of health issues for Bella. When the werewolves find out about the baby they decide that they must kill it because they don’t believe it will be able to control it’s urges like the rest of the Cullen family. Jacob along with Seth and Leah decide to protect Bella and help the Cullen’s stay alive. The baby is born but it kills Bella in the process. Jacob and Edward try there best to resuscitate her though it is unsuccessful, Jacob decides to kill the baby for what it has done to her though once he sees her he imprints on her and can’t bring himself to harm her. He convinces the other werewolves not to harm her because he had imprinted on her. Meanwhile, Edward was successfully about to bring Bella back as a vampire.
Here we are now, the fifth film and the finale to the Twilight saga, Breaking Dawn Part 2. It begins exactly where the previous left off with Bella waking up as a newborn vampire and beginning to learn how to cope with her new found strength and abilities. The first half of the film shows the life of the Cullens’ and Bella while her daughter, Renesmee, rapidly grows to be a young child. While out playing with Jacob and Bella in the forest, Renesmee is seen by Irina who was sent by the Volturi to see the Cullens. Irina thinks that Renesmee is an “immortal” which is a vampire who was turned as a child and is stuck at that age lacking the ability to learn self-control. Irina heads back to the Volturi to warn them of this creature and convince them that something must be done. The Volturi decide that they will bring an army and head to Forks to kill the child.
Alice warns her family of this plan and the Cullen’s get together a bunch of their vampire cousins from around the globe and convinces them to help the Cullens’ fight the Volturi. When the Volturi army does arrive they realize that the girl is not an “immortal” but decide that she must die anyway. This sparks a fight, Cullens & Company against the Volturi army. There are a shocking amount of main character deaths and all sorts of violence leading up the death of the Volturi leader’s death. We then are snapped back to the talk before the battle and find out that it was just a vision that Alice was showing the Volturi leader, essentially saying he will die if he starts this fight.
The Volturi decide to back off and leave the fight and the Cullen’s and company are safe. In the end some years later we see that Renesmee is now fully grown and in love with Jacob, Edward and Bella are still together and they all live happily ever after.
Characters
When it comes to the characters of this saga, most of the characters were rather static and didn’t have that many dimensions to them or at least their personalities didn’t shine through as much as I wish they would have. Another aspect of the characters that was a hit or miss from person to person was their wants/desires. In screenwriting, when writing characters the most basic thing they must know about each character is what that character wants and why they want it. Each character has some sort of goal that they are working towards and I found that you can’t always tell what character’s wanted in this film. I do want to talk about some of the characters in particular though.
Bella Swan
Of course, we need to talk about the main character Bella Swan. It was her being the object of monsters’ affection that propelled this story for five films. The most notable thing about Bella (especially in the first two movies) is that she was a rather noticeable lack of emotions. This can be said for all three of the title characters honestly but it is most accurate with Bella. Nearly every scene she’s in involves her with a blank face and emotionless eyes. This may have been done purposefully to help show that she is a social outcast or maybe to allow the audience to imagine what emotions Bella may be feeling themselves. Whatever the reason for this choice may have been, it seemed rather off-putting. Although Bella does have a dynamic character arc throughout the course of the five films.
She starts off being unhappy with life and wanting nothing more than to become a vampire, by the time we get to Breaking Dawn she seems to be rather content with life and even with being a human. We also see a larger range of emotion with her character smiling much more often and letting her emotions be known not just based off of context but also from subtle changes in her facial expressions. While I was happy to see that her character shows growth, one thing that did bother me about Bella was that her desires were unclear from the start.
Going back to the idea that every character must have a want, with Bella it is unclear what exactly it is she wants. Instead of having a noticeable motive, like Sebastian from La La Land who’s goal is to own a successful jazz club or Killmonger from Black Panther who’s goal is to end racial oppression, it seems as if Bella’s only desire is to be with Edward. If that is her goal that is fine, it makes sense for a love story though my issue is that it is unclear and can only be assumed instead of inferred. I say this because to infer this goal you would need some sort of evidence to back up the idea. There would be reasoning present that leads you to understand why this is that character’s desire. I found that this was absent in the case of Bella. If being with Edward was actually her want, I could understand that though I am not sure what her reasoning behind wanting to be with him is. If there was more evidence given about her thoughts or her past life to help give reasoning for her want, it would have created a stronger overall character.
Edward Cullen
Much like Bella my issue with Edward mainly comes from the lack of reasoning behind Edward’s want, though we will come back to this. Overall, Edward seemed to not show a ton of emotions though there were certainly more present with him than with Bella. He, in the beginning, would often act weird around Bella though it was mostly justified in that Bella was one of the few people whose minds Edward could not read and because he didn’t want this girl whom he found attractive to figure out that he was a vampire. Once Bella discovers his secret he then stops acting as odd and becomes far more open throughout the franchise. He is also a very family oriented character and seems to care deeply about the well being of the other members of the Cullen family. One thing that I was especially appreciative about in this character was that his want was crystal clear. Shallow, though clear. He wanted to be with Bella or at least for her to be happy, nearly every decision his character makes throughout all five movies seems to have that thought in mind. While it is nice that this is a noticeable desire, I wasn’t sure what the purpose of this desire was. What was it about this particular girl that made him care about her so much, he is a vampire that has lived for hundreds of years though he decides that this girl is the girl he is meant to be with though we have no reason for why this is. Knowing this would not only strengthen his character but also the overall plot of the films as well.
Jacob Black
Jacob was my personal favorite character throughout the films primarily because he had the most characterization out of all the characters. Jacob also was the only character to not only have an overall dynamic arc throughout the movies but an arc in the individual movies as well. I am a firm believer of the idea that if a main character didn’t change from the beginning to the end of the film then their journey was almost pointless. Where I took issue with Bella’s lack of a true goal and Edward’s lack of reasoning, Jacob had both clear and present. With each movie, you can see that Jacob changes from the beginning to the end and why he does so. In the first movie, Jacob and Bella see each other again for the first time since they were young. In the second, Jacob spends far more time with Bella comforting her in Edward’s absence. In the third, Jacob realizes what it is he wants and decides to act on it. In the fourth, he puts aside his feelings in order to protect Bella and keep her alive. In the fifth, he overcomes his love for Bella and finds that he is destined to be with someone else. Jacob goes from having such a minor role in the first film to being absolutely crucial in the end.
Going back to the idea of the character wanting something, we can see both Jacob’s want and the reasoning behind his want from movie to movie. To the best of my understanding, his want is the same as Edward’s (though it does change slightly from movie to movie), he wants to be with Bella. With this being a romance movie, I have no problem with that being the motivation for a character, though what makes Jacob a far more compelling character is that we actually know the reasoning behind his want. We see his infatuation with her in the first movie, we witness Bella and Jacob spend time together and slowly fall in love with one another and then in the third movie we see him actually admit that he does love her. Instead of having a character who has suddenly and without reason fallen head over heels for this random girl like with Edward, we actually watch the relationship between Jacob and Bella grow over time. I don’t have to ask the question “Why her?” because it was shown to me throughout the first three movies. That is the type of reasoning that I wish was present for the other two main characters.
Villains
The last couple characters I would like to talk about are the two main villains of the franchise. Aro and Victoria. For the first three movies, Victoria was the main villain (well in the first one she was one of two main villains) with her motivation being to kill Bella and get revenge on the Cullen family. I have always found revenge and money to be just about the weakest most boring desire for a villain to have. Though that is exactly what Victoria is after in the first three films and we know this for certain. The want and the reasoning behind that want are both clear, I just wish that the want was a bit stronger than revenge. Also while talking about Victoria, I do have to mention that I was very thrown off when the actress from the first two Twilight movies was replaced with Bryce Dallas Howard in the third. It had me all sorts of confused for a moment.
While I found Victoria to be a disappointing villain, I was far more interested in the Volturi leader Aro. I found this character to be compelling for two main reasons: he acted slightly insane and nearly all of his actions seemed justified. Essentially the purpose of the Volturi’s existence is to keep the vampire race alive and they believe that the best means of doing this is to stay hidden. It seemed to me that every decision made by Aro, every action that he took had that interest in mind. While at times those decisions were not in the favor of the Cullen’s they were generally justified in that it would be more beneficial for the greater good of the vampire race.
Because his actions were so understandable I found his character to be more interesting than that of Victoria. Also, Aro just acted plain weird, he was off-putting in every scene that he was in. It was odd but it also made the character somewhat more entertaining. Moving on from characters the next thing I would like to cover is the visual style and effects.
Throughout the movies, you can definitely tell that they are twilight movies purely based off of how it looks, while that does give it points for style it doesn’t necessarily mean it was a good thing. In the first movie, the entire film was overexposed and overly white, it made everyone look incredibly pale and it was just weird looking, I didn’t understand what the purpose of it was and it, unfortunately, made the movie just look bad. Even the 4K version of the movie was tainted by this choice. The upscaled higher quality picture was canceled out by the overly bright visuals. However, scenes in the forest or other scenes with a fair amount of color looked pretty great while they lasted. After the first movie, they got rid of the exposure and it made the remaining films look significantly better. Although there was still an odd contrast between light and dark that made a fair amount of the scenes look washed out but not nearly as bad as the first film so it was acceptable.
There was also the issue of special effects, there were many times that green screen shots were obvious and sometimes there isn’t much you can do about that so I don’t want to complain about that. Though there were also many times where the vampires would be doing their super speed run and the actor was very obviously running in place which took away from the believability. The actor or actress would look as though they were doing a light and bouncy jog though clearing moving at an incredibly fast speed and it was just odd looking. If the actors were to have taken more of a runners stance and moved their arms more than it would have been far more believable and some of the actors did do this, and it was much better than the awkward jog. The werewolf transformation effects looked fine, a little underwhelming but the CGI was good.
The sparkle effect on the vampires looked pretty bad, and there were many times that a vampire would be in direct sunlight but would not sparkle. It was as if they only sparkled when it was convenient.
While watching these films I found that the majority of them were rather cringy. Many lines were clunky and awkward, decisions characters made didn’t seem to make sense, world rules created in the movies were often broken shortly after the rule was made, etc. These are just some of the common occurrences I noticed. The writer Melissa Rosenberg has worked on other really well-done shows and films such as Jessica Jones, I don’t attribute the awkward characters to her writing. Though I do think the decision making and could have been better if we had a better understanding of what the characters wanted or if the writer kept that at the forefront of her mind while she was writing. While I did find that these movies weren’t the best when I got to the third movie I found myself enjoying it more than I did the previous two. I figured that having watched them in rapid succession I was just more invested in the story though when I got to the fourth one I didn’t enjoy it anywhere near as much as the third. I found that the third was just a better movie than the other four. I began to try to understand what made the third better than the others.
Each Twilight movie was directed by a different person (except for Breaking Dawn part 1 and 2 which were directed by the same person). The third movie was directed by David Slade who was most notably the director of 30 Days of Night as well as Hard Candy. He specializes in horror films and tends to make above average ones at that. His inclusion may have contributed to a better overall film. The third iteration was also the pay off to the previous two movies build up of romances. The first film built up the romance between Edward and Bella while the second film built up the romance between Bella and Jacob. The third was also the first time that we saw the dramatic tension between these three characters and Bella really begins to think about who she wants to be with. Lastly, in this movie, we get more backstory from some of the other members of the Cullen family learning more about who they are and how they got where they are now. These backstories helped to make the characters more than just the siblings of Edward, they helped make the characters round and introduced the opportunity for character growth.
Overall:
The Twilight Saga wasn’t as bad as many make it out to be. However, it did suffer from some weaker performances and writing. The characters should have been more fleshed out with clear desires and reasoning to back up those desires.
