Amara Zulfa Claudia Izzak

English Literature/2211419031
American/British Studies: Final Exam

The Twilight Saga: An American Franchise So Bad It’s Good

The Twilight Saga is a hit series based on the romance fantasy novel first released in
2005 titled “Twilight” written by author Stephenie Meyer. The series revolves around
a brooding teenage girl named Bella Swan and her recent move to a small town of
Forks where she met the mysterious, unnaturally pale, national heartthrob back in the
days, Edward Cullen. Conveniently, the aforementioned boy happened to be a 104-
year-old “vegetarian” vampire with a sharp jawline and a net worth of over $100
million living in his family’s mansion in the middle of the forest. The perfect formula
for people to dismiss any problematic aspect that might have not been overlooked had
Edward was depicted as a homeless guy with uneven beard. However, The Twilight
Saga managed to have half the world population from preteens (including myself) to
middle aged soccer moms in a choke-hold when it was first released and so many
people are trapped in a weird love-hate relationship with the series to this day.

There are many, many reasons of why a lot of people dislike this series and yes the
first one is of course the fact that Edward was 87 years older than Bella when they
first met and fell in love. Their relationship dynamic was laced with power asymmetry
where Edward consistently used his century-long earned “wisdom” to subconsciously
engrave in Bella’s mind that he knows better than her and eventually gain control over
her. The lack of consent throughout the series and the course of their relationship was
concerning to say the least. In the first film, Edward constantly stalked Bella before
they even properly met yet and even went as far as creeping up to her bedroom and
watched her sleep.We can now safely conclude that Edward was grooming Bella and
the series successfully romanticized that.

Another reason is the over-glorification of the vampire boyfriend trope which only
applies now since back when Twilight came out everyone was obsessed and nobody
seemed to mind the fact that there had been an odd wave of obsession towards the
supernatural genre involving vampire, werewolf, angel, demon, and mythical
creatures alike. There is nothing inherently wrong about this but its very overused and
sometimes the stories become aggravatingly irrational for the sake of the supernatural
plot to move forward. For example, notice how the dialogues in The Twilight Saga
feel like it was written by a middle-aged person attempting to imitate teens caught up
in a vampire v. werewolf battlefield thus creating lines that are so out of touch with
reality it borderline sounds comedic.

Despite the chaotic cringe-fest The Twilight Saga was, it is miraculously still relevant
to this day. Without justifying the fact that Bella and Edward’s relationship began
with a lack of consent, it is fascinating how this series is one of the most timeless
movie franchise that went through wild phases from people going crazy over
#TeamEdward or #TeamJacob, to facing major backlash and criticism, to finally
becoming a cult-classic that people love to watch both ironically nor unironically,
make memes of, and you can even bring up old scenes like the infamous baseball
scene and everyone would start feeling nostalgic.

The cause of this phenomenon is maybe linked to the way Stephenie Meyer was able
to build such a universe that is so fantasy-filled yet still felt “close” and relatable in
one way or another that it managed to grab the attention of millions back in 2008, but
it is also just the right amount of hilariously bad that the series stuck around for many
years later. Additionally, The Twilight Saga is one of the many ways to reminisce the
simpler times.