DrowZ: Twilight Certainly Happened
The year is 2008; you're in middle school. Iron Man released, there's a new Grand Theft Auto game, and it's been two years since the last Harry Potter. Oh, also Obama's just won the United States presidential election - you know how big of a deal that is, but you lack the insight to understand what makes it such a big deal. Whatever the case - things are good, and there's no lack of cool things to look forwards to. These continuous, long-running series keep your mind swirling with possibilities and excitement - every day is a test of patience that will reward you and your fandoms with a whole new influx of activity.
Then something happens - the kids in class are talking about something different - the popular kids, even. Eventually, your friends fill you in - Twilight, a romance movie that has vampires with sparkling skin.
"That's dumb," you say - and you continue to say it the next year, and the next year, and the next year. But you say it differently each time - the first an easy dismissal. The movie sounded dumb, like one of those Disney Channel original movies that you definitely don't watch. The second time, you say it with a tinge of disbelief; there were now two Twilight movies - you figured it would end there.
They, like many other things, were tossed into a pile of "lame things that we make fun of," like Justin Bieber and One Direction. They were popular and only around because young girls were into them, not like Iron Man or Dragon Ball Z, and you were okay with that.
Late one night, several years later, you catch the trailer for the fourth movie in the Twilight series: Breaking Dawn part one, during a commercial break between reruns of The George Lopez Show. You pay it no mind- it's past midnight, and you have class in the morning. You go to bed.
You wake up nine years later; the Marvel Cinematic Universe is revving up for the fourth phase of movies- touting titles like Black Panther 2 and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. You don't really care- you've seen the better part of 22 Marvel movies at this point, and you have more other things occupying your mind. Namely the realization that you're not you, you're me: with your BA in communications, the second "once in a generation recession" in your lifetime, over 100,000 Americans dead from the Coronavirus, and the continued fight against police brutality and systematic racism (ACAB, by the way).
With your daily internal crisis behind you, you reach to the nightstand for your phone and check Twitter. Yes, the world is still burning- but those fires are a little bit hotter today.
Stephenie Meyer has just released a new Twilight novel.
Normally you wouldn't care, but you want clicks. Finally, you decide to figure out just what happens in Twilight.
A quick Edward and Bella doodle by my friend Superbork, whose idea it was to watch these movies.
A lot of people know about Twilight, it's that melodramatic movie/book series with the sparkling vampire, penned by a Mormon woman from Connecticut. There was a time in the late 2000s and early 2010's where they were a sizable part of the cultural zeitgeist- regardless of how people remember it. The year the first Twilight movie was released, it raked in over $160 million domestically, placing it at 8th for the whole year. The following year, Twilight's sequel would pull in even more at over $284 million domestic, beating Avatar for the fourth place position and only losing to UP, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Not a single movie placed outside of the top ten.
But why? Were the movies good? What kept people coming back year after year?
After doing some light digging, evidence and experience both point towards the Twilight series' target audience being girls between the ages of 12 to 30, with some crossover with boys due to the way the films were marketed.
The commercials depicted Twilight far more epic than it is.
The focus is more on all of the action- the romance is showcased, but it takes a back seat to all of the vampire violence and special effects. The commercials are a version of Twilight that doesn't exist - especially the first movie. It's marketing that makes the movies sound like they're the next Harry Potter when in actuality, more than half of the movies are just glorified staring contests where nothing happens.
It makes sense why they were popular - Twilight was marketed like a boy's movie, but for girls. It didn't matter how good they were - it was a cool thing with a main character that girls could identify with; they were represented.
As a black boy in the same year, my representation was Hancock.
Hancock sucks. I was just happy that Will Smith was a superhero because that was like I was a superhero. Hancock sucks, but at least I was represented.
But that's my read on the phenomenon as a whole: I didn't watch all five movies for no reason. Now begins the review and synopsis portion of this post.
"Hold on, spider-monkey"
The first Twilight movie is iconic in how dull it is. I can count the number of things that happen on one hand. So, High-school junior Bella Swan, played by Kristen Stewart, moves to a rainy, small town in Washington state, living with her father. At school, she meets Edward Cullen, played by Robert Pattinson, who is a member of the mysterious Cullen family.
For some reason, Edward is interested in Bella. We know this because he refuses to stop staring at her. It's obscenely creepy.
Bella obviously gets suspicious of him, and even more so after Edward saves her from a convenient near-death incident in the school's parking lot. It turns out, Edward's a vampire. He refutes this but then continues to hover around Bella for some reason. There's a lot of melodramatic "You shouldn't know, you can't know, you should know" type dialogue that really doesn't make sense for someone who's 100 years old. But yes, Edward is a vampire, and he's interested in Bella because she's the only person whose mind he cannot read.
Why can't he read Bella's mind? You'll have to wait through four movies to find out.
Edward and Bella fall in love throughout some scenes- there's the legendarily bad spider-monkey scene, and basically, most of the movie is them getting to know each other, and then Edward's family.
Some essential things. Edward's father is a vampire doctor, and one of his sisters, Alice, can read anyone's future (She reads the future of their decisions- if you change your mind, you change your future. It's still insanely overpowered).
The Cullens don't prey on humans, but other vampires do. Taylor Lautner's also in this movie as Jacob. He's friendly to Bella. And there's been a string of mysterious vampire murders that are trickled through the movie to ramp up to the climax, the victim of one of these attacks is a friend of Bella's dad, who is easily the only individual who this movie series tortures more than its audience.
The Cullens invite Bella to watch them play the world's worst game of baseball, where all the Cullens throw directly over the plate. This bugged me a lot because it's framed to me like "Oh the vampires are so strong and fast you can't get a ball past them." But since vampires are also the pitchers- the only limit would be that they have is the durability of their equipment. But also they hit the ball with steel bats so hard that it sounds like thunder and the ball is just fine- I'm nitpicking but also they should be better at pitching.
Anyways, they're interrupted by a trio of vampires, some guy, Laurent, and Victoria. (It's also fun to note that the cast of Twilight is so light-skinned because Meyer demanded it- they had to fight to get any people of color in the main cast, and it's Laurent because Meyer would only accept casting a black person as a villain.) They smell Bella and get curious but are ultimately fended off by the Cullens, without a fight.
Only the hunter guy wants to kill Bella because he's into that stuff- so the climax is them protecting Bella from him; only they can't and Bella gets kidnapped, but Edward saves her.
The end.
The verdict: Nothing happens, Bella and Edward get together. He's a vampire. Dad's down one friend. The movie is boring and also blue. The effects are comically both bad and overused. Edward opens a door, and a symphony of woosh noises accompanies it.
Next movie.
Sharkboy with painted on abs.
Nothing happens in this movie.
Jacob's a werewolf, like every Native American in this movie series (Taylor Lautner has distant Native American relatives, apparently?). Edward leaves because people are getting suspicious. Bella cries for 40 minutes. The bad vampires come back, trying to kill Bella. Jacob kills the only black person in the cast.
Edward thinks Bella's dead, so he tries getting the Vampire Illuminati to kill him by revealing himself to the public (and flying to Italy to do so.) Bella's alive. The vampire Illuminati know Bella's human, order them to make her a vampire eventually (But like, when they feel like it). Bella wants to become a vampire, Edward says no.
Also, the werewolves don't like vampires but have a treaty with the Cullens because they don't kill humans. Another one of Bella's dad's friends dies by a vampire-induced heart attack.
The end.
The verdict: A waste of time. This is the single least enjoyable movie in the series. I don't know a single person who's ever said Taylor Lautner was hot. The best thing about this movie is the poster I found, because it looks like Jacob looks he's about to whisper some slurs about some off-screen minority into Bella's ear.
Also, Edward is over 100 years old, you really think he would have a better grip on himself after all that time, but he doesn't.
Also, yes, it's weird how all of the Cullens are over 100 years old, and they all live in the same house and still go to high school. It's extremely weird and creepy. 3/10, next movie.
The Cullens are overpowered and there is no threat.
Edward tells Bella that he will turn her into a vampire if she marries her. Bella says yes, but after graduation.
Victoria, the last of the evil vampires from before, raises an army of newborn vampires to try and get revenge on the Cullens. It doesn't work, Alice dies. The Vampire Illuminati show up afterward to go and say, "Nice fight lmao."
That's the whole movie.
So, some details: Many vampires have powers, but none are shown to be as effective as Edward's mind-reading and Alice's future sight. The leader of the Vampire Illuminati has the power to read people's memories, but only if he touches them. Edward does not need to touch you to read your mind and can do this from an indeterminate distance.
Meanwhile, Alice can read the future of people continents away. If she's focused on you in a fight, you cannot touch her because she will see your move coming every time. You cannot keep your plans secret from her, and the only thing you can do to throw her off is not think about the thing you're going to do, which means you're thinking about not the thing you're going to do.
In the movie, her answer to this is to make her decision to join the rest of her army a last-minute decision- which means that they still know about the army, and they'd just have to account for one additional vampire.
The verdict: Not as bad as the last one, still pretty bad. 5/10.
Vampire Baby.
This movie is cursed.
If you're going to watch a Twilight movie, watch this one, you will regret it.
So, graduation's here, and Edward and Bella are getting married. Bella is 18 in this movie, and that's still weird. This also means that her dad now lives alone and only has one remaining living friend.
After the wedding, Edward takes Bella to an island off the coast of Rio de Janeiro for their honeymoon. There, Edward and Bella have sex for the first time (Stephenie Meyer is Mormon). The actual scene is both way too tame and extremely hilarious when you consider Edward's vampire strength and the damage he does to the bedroom.
Several days later, Bella's pregnant with Edward's baby.
This is where I was wondering, "If Edward has no blood, how can he have an erection?" To which, Stephenie Meyer has said that while vampires do not have blood, they have a replacement fluid in their bodies that can emulate the functions of a normal human body - this includes carrying genetic code.
The other question I had: "Shouldn't a vampire baby stay as a zygote because vampires do not age?" has no answer in the movies.
So, Bella's pregnant, and she wants to keep the baby, but the baby is growing too fast. She goes from the first to third trimester within a manner of days. It's like Edward ordered a pre-built computer online, and UPS is mailing it through Bella's womb.
There's some drama with the werewolves not wanting another vampire in the area, Jacob helps protect it.
Bella dies during childbirth, Edward spends the end of the movie reviving her via-vampire bite. Meanwhile, Jacob "imprints" on Bella's baby.
For context, imprinting is a concept that was poorly explained throughout the movies, but basically, werewolves can form a bond with another person. The example used is one of Jacob's siblings being married to a woman he imprinted on- yes, it too is extremely creepy.
Bella is revived, but she's a vampire. The end.
The Verdict: This movie is hilarious; it is the best Twilight movie. Fire it up with your friends, 8/10.
The epic finale where nothing happens.
So, the baby is born, Edward and Bella are now parents (Bella is still 18, by the way), and Bella is now a vampire. The movie opens with Bella exploring her new vampirehood, and we learn a couple of things.
One, Bella's power is apparently "restraint," so that she doesn't constantly feel the need to suck blood from humans, and also that their child, Renessmee, is growing alarmingly fast. Within hours, the baby has a full head of hair, and within days, she is able to speak. It's absurd, but whatever.
Eventually, a cousin catches wind of the child and runs off to report it to the Vampire Illuminati because apparently vampire babies are taboo because of how destructive they can be.
But, the vampire baby isn't a vampire baby, it's a half-vampire baby. Unlike vampire babies, half-vampire babies age and aren't blood-hungry. The Cullens could have told them this, but the cousin ran away before they could speak.
So, the Vampire Illuminati is now after the Cullens to kill them for the baby. Alice tells the other Cullens about the oncoming danger, and then promptly leaves- taking the most powerful Cullen out of the scenario. What follows is an Infinity-War like roundup of family and friends from around the world. This is also just about the most world-building these movies do.
This is when we finally, after four movies, find out why Bela is immune to so many vampire powers, and that is because Bella is what is known as a "Shield." There is no further elaboration upon this. She practices using her powers with some of the other vampires.
One of which is a vampire who can control the elements, like fire. This immediately places him as the second or third most powerful character in the universe, just below Alice's future sight, and one of the Vampire Illuminati's members, who has the power to make you feel crumble in pain with just a look.
So, the Vampire Illuminati rolls up to the Cullen's lawn and they have what feels like a 20-minute talking scene full of mid-shots. Within five minutes, the Illuminati is convinced that the baby is not a vampire, making that whole plotline feel pointless. The rest of the scene is a bunch of back and forth over whether the child should live, when Alice finally shows up.
Alice tells the vampire leader that the child will not be a threat in the future - which I'm just now realizing is a weak explanation because it's been established before that she can only read the future of people's current paths, and that the child could just suddenly decide to become evil, changing that future, but whatever. I've already thought about this too much.
Alice also sees that she cannot change the Vampire Illuminati's mind, so they all fight.
Only they don't, because the fight was part of Alice's prediction and she shows it to the vampire leader to make him back down.
He backs down and goes home to continue ruling the vampire underworld. Bella and Edward go make out, the end.
The Verdict: Also a waste of time- I came into this movie with high expectations, only for this to be a movie that's regularly bad as opposed to hilariously bad. 5/10.
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And that's every Twilight movie reviewed. Was it enjoyable? No. But Stephenie Meyer has just released a new book, Midnight Sun, which is the events of Twilight but from Edward's perspective.
People told me to read the book; being frank, you'd have to pay me.
https://ko-fi.com/thecementmixer
$400 total donated to the blog before Halloween, and I will read Midnight Sun. That's two months and change from when this post goes up.
Next week, I will be tackling another side of Twilight - the fandom and extended universe.
Thanks for reading. I hope you've enjoyed it!
If you have something you want me to cover, whether it be your project or someone else's, be sure to contact me either on twitter or by emailing TheCementMix@Gmail.com!
Go support my friend Superbork, they drew a bunch of little mushroom people while watching these movies. They're great. https://www.instagram.com/p/CEIGFIjJ8_-/
And as usual, here's a invite to The Cement Mixer discord: https://discord.gg/x4vvzeu
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