Twilight
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Twilight is a 2008 American romantic fantasy film based on Stephenie Meyer's novel of the same name. Directed by Catherine Hardwicke, the film stars Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson. It is the first film in The Twilight Saga film series. Twilight premiered in Los Angeles and was theatrically released on November 21, 2008. With the film was released, it received mixed reviews by critics, but was extremely negative reviews from audiences. Nevertheless, it performed decently at the box office, grossed over US$393 million worldwide and was later cult following. It was following sequel, The Twilight Saga: New Moon, which also did not improve over this film and had a negative reception, was released on November 20, 2009.
Plot
High-school student Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart), always a bit of a misfit, doesn't expect life to change much when she moves from sunny Arizona to rainy Washington state. Then she meets Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson), a handsome but mysterious teen whose eyes seem to peer directly into her soul. Edward is a vampire whose family does not drink blood, and Bella, far from being frightened, enters into a dangerous romance with her immortal soulmate.
Bad Qualities
- Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson's performances are so wooden and lifeless to the point where they look like robots. Kristen Stewart has almost no emotion and has been known to constantly stutter her lines, while Robert Pattinson's attempt to cover up his British accent is laughable. To sum it all up, they did a terrible job for portraying them, respectively.
- The film's dialogue is very corny and laughable, notably "I can read every mind in this room, apart from yours. Money. Sex. Money. Sex. Cat. And then you? Nothing. It's very frustrating." and "I dream about being with you forever."
- Bella and Edward share no chemistry at all. Edward is an abusive partner, while Bella only fell in love with Edward all because of his looks and not for what he is.
- Edward is an unlikeable character. Edward literally stalks Bella and eavesdrops on her conversations. He also abuses and controls her.
- Also, Edward only loves Bella because she smells good. Yes, you read that right, he's only in love with her because she smells good!
- Bella Swan is extremely unlikable and uninteresting. She has barely any character development throughout and has almost no personality as well as being selfish, uncaring, spoiled brat, idiotic, and incredibly whiny. She is also super naive and is super dependent on Edward without logic or reasoning.
- On top of that, neither Bella nor Edward have any character development at all!
- Also, Edward abuses Bella throughout their relationship, yet she still loves him!?
- Horrible morals, such as "It's okay to abuse your partner", "It's okay to become completely and blindly dependent on someone else without regard for logic or mental health", etc.
- It lacks the charm of the original book.
- It is complete insult to vampires folklore. For example, vampires don't sparkle when they walk in the sun. They turn to dust (mostly in modern media) or temporarily lose their powers according to older folklore, which is contracted.
- Terrible special effects.
- Pointless scene where they play a game of baseball, which feels like a filler.
- The author who wrote the book is racist to the point where any black person who played a character in this movie had to play a role as a villain.
- Given that these movies are based off books of the same name that were already bad to begin with, they were doomed from the start based off that fact alone.
- Pointless direction of Catherine Hardwicke, who is a female director at least.
Good Qualities
- The film has a rather good grasp on the source material. Heck, Bella and Edward's actors even look like how Stephanie Meyer envisioned her characters.
- Beautiful and gorgeous cinematography.
- Peter Facinelli has the best performance in the movie, playing Carlise Cullen, Edward's father. Billy Burke, who plays Bella's father, Charlie, also ranks up there.
- Some unintentionally funny moments.
- Amazing alternative rock soundtrack by Carter Burwell. Especially with songs like "Decode" by Paramore, "Supermassive Black Hole" by Muse and "Leave Out All the Rest" by Linkin Park.
Reception
Twilight received mixed-to-extremely negative reviews from critics and even audiences, but was praised by the fans of the book series. Based on 219 reviews collected by Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a rating of 49% and a weighted average score of 5.41/10. The website's critical consensus reads: "Having lost much of its bite transitioning to the big screen, Twilight will please its devoted fans, but do little for the uninitiated." On Metacritic, it has a weighted mean score of 56 based on 37 reviews from film critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews.". On IMDb and Letterboxd, the film collected the score of 5.2/10 and 2.7/5.
Chris Stuckmann gave the film an F.
Videos
Trivia
- It spawned the "Still a better love story than Twilight" comments on any YouTube videos, and an Internet meme.
- This was the only film in the Twilight Saga that didn't get nominated for a Golden Raspberry Award.
- It said that the Twilight series incorporated elements of Mormonism, as Meyer is a member of the LDS church. For example, the idea of an eternal marriage with Edward and Bella.
- Stephenie Meyer's paranormal romance novel Twilight was originally distributed by Paramount Pictures' MTV Films in April 2004, but the screenplay that was subsequently developed was substantially different from its source material. When Summit Entertainment reinvented itself as a full-service studio in April 2007, it began development of a film adaptation anew, having picked up the rights from Paramount (who coincidentally had made an unrelated film with the same title in 1998) in a turnaround. The company perceived the film as an opportunity to launch a franchise based on the success of Meyer's book and its sequels.