The Twilight saga is one of the most widely recognized franchises of the past decade. When Stephanie Meyer originally penned the books, she had no idea they would blow up into such a pop-culture phenomenon.
The series has accumulated a massive amount of passionate fans, and even those who aren’t exactly fans are aware of the famous movies. After the books turned into blockbuster films, Edward and Bella were nearly inescapable.
Not only are people torn over Team Edward or Team Jacob, but there are people who argue that Twilight is awful altogether. The saga has always been either heavily loathed or adored, and people are usually very vocal about which side they are on.
While some believe that the story is the height of romance, others believe it’s ridiculous and full of flaws. Even some of the actors have been known to make fun of their own characters.
Haters are quick to explain all of the issues they see with Twilight in detail. Even big fans have to admit there are some problems with their favorite movies and books. It’s clear that there are a lot of flaws to discuss.
From horrible special effects to unexplained romantic attractions, here are the 20 Things Wrong With Twilight We All Choose To Ignore.
20. Edward can get Bella pregnant
One of the biggest mysteries in the Twilight saga is how Edward manages to impregnate Bella during their honeymoon.
A human and a vampire shouldn’t be able to create a baby.
Apparently, the basic rules of biology don’t apply to Edward and Bella. Edward is essentially a walking corpse with venom coursing through his veins.
If all the fluids in his body are venomous, he shouldn’t be able to create life. The movie never does explain how it’s possible, just that vampire/human babies are only produced in extremely rare cases.
The entire plot of Breaking Dawn never should have happened, but fans just have to accept that Bella is magically able to have Edward’s child.
19. Jacob imprints on Bella’s Daughter
In Eclipse, Jacob explains to Bella that werewolves sometimes imprint on someone who will one day be their mate. Fans were accepting of the concept until he creepily imprints on Bella’s infant daughter.
While she’s a baby, his feelings are more protective than romantic, but fans were weirded out to think that one day Jacob could romantically be with Renesmee.
No matter how Jacob spins it, when the baby is eventually of age, he will be in love with her.
There are so many potential endings that Meyer could have chosen for Jacob. While it seems like the Cullens all eventually accept the concept, a lot of fans had to ignore this disturbing aspect of the final book.
18. Vampires sparkle
Vampires are supposed to be entrancing. They are supposed to look threatening, alluring, and romantic.
There are a lot of vampire books and movies that accomplished this in different, believable ways. In Twilight, however, Stephanie Meyer chose to make her vampires sparkle. That’s not very intimidating or dangerous.
Most vampires burst into flames in sunlight, but Edward’s skin turns to glitter.
That fact has turned into one of the biggest jokes about the Twilight series. People were quick to tear it apart.
Edward acts like sparkling is something to be embarrassed about, and it seems he was right.
A lot of fans just ignore how stupid the sparkling is and accept it as part of the story.
17. Bella is unreasonably irresistible
In both the books and the movies, Bella is seemingly irresistible to all of the men around her. In the first film, Eric and Mike can’t stop flirting with Bella and competing to ask her out.
This continues into New Moon, when Mike and Jacob begin fighting over her.
Her blood is also alluring to vampires, for reasons unknown. Edward is originally attracted to her because her blood smells so great - so great, in fact, Jasper almost takes her life because of it.
It simply doesn’t make sense that no man can resist her when she’s an average, quiet teenage girl who dresses extremely plain and doesn’t make an effort to flirt with anyone.
It’s also never clear why exactly her blood smells so good. It’s just another detail fans have to overlook.
16. Bella names her child “Renesmee”
Fans can overlook a lot of small details in Twilight, but one that they can never forgive is the naming of Bella and Edward’s daughter. “Renesmee” will haunt fans for the rest of their days, even decades after the movies.
The awful combination of the names “Renee” and “Esme” is one of author Stephanie Meyer’s biggest regrets about the Twilight saga.
While naming your daughter after the two most important women in your life is sweet, it would have made more sense to make one a first name and the other a middle name.
While Jacob’s nickname for her, “Nessie,” is slightly better, fans simply can’t accept the name and at this point, they never will.
15. Edward is possessive and controlling
While many people view Edward as a modern day Prince Charming, a lot of his supposedly “romantic” behaviors are actually controlling and possessive. He’s extremely manipulative, selfish, and he even scares Bella at times.
He even goes as far as to have his sister, Alice, kidnap Bella to keep her from visiting Jacob, as well as breaking parts of her car so she can’t drive.
Edward also stalks Bella throughout the first film and watches her sleep without her knowledge of it.
Despite how messed up this kind of dominating, possessive behavior is, Bella brushes it off like it’s no big deal.
None of his actions are chivalrous or romantic, they’re creepy and borderline abusive.
14. Bella completely ignores her friends
While it’s normal to spend a lot of time with your significant other, it’s not healthy for him to cut you off from your entire life.
In Twilight, once Bella meets Edward, she starts to ignore all of her close relationships.
In the first film, she’s shown being introduced to people are her new school and making a solid group of friends. However, in the movies after that, they are seen less and less.
Bella’s whole life suddenly revolves around Edward.
Even when she becomes good friends with Jacob, Edward does all he can to keep her away from him. Bella continues to be okay with all of it.
While her boyfriend is important, her friendships should be too.
13. Jacob’s nice-guy syndrome
A lot of Twilight fans wish that Bella would have ended up with Jacob, despite her choice to marry Edward.
While Edward had his issues, Jacob was far from perfect himself. On the surface, he may seem nice and understanding, but he was sort of whiny and possessive at times.
He would be sweet to Bella until she reminded him that she was loyal to Edward, and then he would storm off in a fit of anger.
Much like Edward, he would emotionally manipulate Bella to try and get his way.
Bella never owed Jacob anything but her friendship, but he always tried to make her feel bad for not wanting to be with him romantically.
12. The major lack of chemistry between actors
For a romance movie, Twilight sure has a major lack of passion between the lead actors. Despite dating for a while in real life, Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson lacked chemistry as Edward and Bella.
While the pair was supposed to be in love, interactions between the characters often felt forced and even cold, making that love hard to believe.
Even their first kiss was awkward to witness.
The same can be said for Taylor Lautner and Stewart. He was supposed to be in love with Bella, and she was supposedly harboring some feelings for Jacob, but the actions between the pair weren’t as charged with sexual tension as people would have expected for a love triangle.
11. The papercut scene
There are a lot of scenes from the Twilight saga that stand out. One of the most infamous, however, is the paper cut scene from the beginning of New Moon.
Bella cuts her finger while opening her birthday card, and Jasper loses it, trying to attack Bella.
It’s dramatic enough that Edward decides to leave Forks for Bella’s safety.
While it’s been explained that Jasper has the least amount of self-control around blood, the scene seemed over-the-top and ridiculous.
He goes to a high school where minor accidents such a paper cuts, scrapes, and nosebleeds probably happen regularly.
Not only that, but Edward is the youngest vampire. If he can control his bloodlust, why can’t Jasper?
10. The horrible CGI of Renesmee
While the entire concept of Bella getting pregnant with Edward’s baby and then naming her Renesmee is crazy enough, the movies didn’t do the entire plot any more favors. The CGI they used was awful.
Because Renesmee was a quick-growing baby with special powers, the producers wanted to her to look more expressive than the average newborn.
While she was meant to look extremely mature and intelligent, the result was haunting and creepy.
They superimposed a teenage face on a baby’s body. It was extremely unnatural and simply didn’t work.
A normal baby would have been more believable and would have worked just fine. Fans have never been able to get over the horrible CGI.
9. Edward watches Bella sleep before they’re a couple
While some view Edward as incredibly romantic, a few of his behaviors are borderline abusive and just plain creepy. Some of these behaviors even started before they were dating.
While gazing over at your significant other while they’re still sleeping can be sweet, breaking into the room of the girl you have a crush on to watch her sleep without her knowledge is weird.
Not only did Edward do that, but he was also constantly fighting the urge not to bite her neck and drink her dry.
He even tells Bella he used to do this, and rather than be freaked out, she finds his stalking, intrusive behavior flattering.
Apparently a guy you just met watching you sleep is romantic.
8. Bella has remarkable self-control as a newborn
At the end of Breaking Dawn Part 1, Edward turns Bella into a vampire in order to save her life after giving a violent birth to their daughter, Renesmee.
While most newborns go a little crazy and have a hard time controlling themselves, Bella manages to be a remarkably in-control vampire.
In Part 2, Edward starts to freak out as Bella catches the scent of a human nearby, but she resists the urge to attack him completely on her own.
Supposedly, this is unheard of for newborn vamps. All of the Cullens are amazed by her self-control, but it’s never really explained why she’s not off-the-rails.
It just doesn’t make sense for Bella to be so calm and collected.
7. Bella and Edward are extremely codependent
Edward and Bella aren’t quite the perfect picture of romance that some fans seem to think they are. While they are very much in love, that love is dangerously codependent.
Bella is ridiculously attached to Edward, to the point that she feels like she literally cannot live without him.
When he leaves her in New Moon, she drops into a deep depression and won’t do anything.
Edward isn’t much better. In the first film, he tells Bella “you are my life now.” Bella seems to be the reason he wants to stay alive.
It’s important for your significant other to be a major part of your life, but not to the point you cannot function without them or feel they’re the only reason to stay alive.
6. Charlie is constantly pushed to the side
In the Twilight series, Bella talks about how important Charlie is in her life. While she talks about him a lot, her actions don’t really match her words.
She drops everything in her life, including her own father, to make everything about Edward. She leaves Charlie out of any major decisions and doesn’t go out of her way to spend any time with him.
Despite this, Charlie is always there for her, particularly during her depression in New Moon.
He always has Bella’s best interest at heart and tries to be a voice of reason, but she ignores him most of the time.
Obviously Edward is important, but she should pay her blood relatives a little more attention.
5. Bella’s depression when Edward leaves
In New Moon, Edward decides to leave Bella for her own protection. He tells Bella, however, that he simply doesn’t want her anymore.
Although they hadn’t been together too long, as soon as he leaves, Bella drops into a deep depression and is completely unable to function alone.
While her depression is romanticized and supposedly illustrates her undying love for Edward, it’s extremely dramatic and proves their relationship was dangerously codependent.
She doesn’t see life as worth living without him by her side.
Overall, this is far too intense for a teenager. She should be hanging out with friends and focusing on her schoolwork, not desperately pining for a guy she just recently started dating who said he didn’t even want her.
4. Edward has to go all the way to Italy in order to perish
In New Moon, Edward believes Bella has lost her life and decides he doesn’t want to live anymore. Rather than pursue much easier means of ending his life, he chooses the most dramatic way possible – traveling to Italy to anger the Volturi.
In order to do that, he has to take off his shirt and shine like glitter in the sunlight, exposing himself to humans.
There are so many other believable and less ridiculous ways he could have accomplished his goal.
Victoria was already out to get him. He could have picked a fight with her.
Regardless of the method, going all the way to Italy felt a little unnecessary, particularly the scene in which he’s removing his shirt in slow motion.
3. Jasper can somehow manipulate Bella’s emotions
Part of Edward’s initial attraction to Bella is that he can’t read her mind. He’s absolutely baffled by it.
Not only that, but Aro can’t read her and Jane’s pain ability doesn’t work on her.
It seems that she’s immune to everybody’s powers. That is, except for Jasper’s.
He’s still able to manipulate her emotions despite the fact she can’t be affected by anyone else. If her mind is closed off, how has he been able to calm her in the past?
There’s no way to explain it that makes any sense, although Meyer has tried to say he affects the physical body by controlling her pulse rather than her mind.
Fans just have to ignore this blatant inconsistency and pretend that this minor detail doesn’t matter.
2. Bella and Edward’s age difference
No matter how romantic Edward and Bella may seem, there’s no ignoring their major age difference. It doesn’t matter how you spin it– she is way too young for him.
While Edward may look like a teenager, he is actually over 100 years old. That’s an incredible difference from Bella’s age of 16.
A small age gap in high school isn’t really a big deal, but a large age gap spanning decades is predatory and weird.
Because he is handsome, charming, and arguably romantic, a lot of fans ignore this detail or try to spin it in a way that is romantic, like Edward simply had to wait for the right girl to come around.
1. The ending is too happy and anticlimactic
For four books and five movies, fans waited to see what kind of ending their favorite series would have.
Despite the build up to a massive fight with the Volturi, a lot of people thought the ending was incredibly anticlimactic and cheesy.
Clearly, the people working on Breaking Dawn: Part 2 thought the same thing. They had to fabricate an entire fake fight that existed in Alice’s vision of the future in which multiple people lost their lives. It was all really intense.
It ends up, there is no fight and everyone lives happily ever after.
While a romance does need some sort of happy ending, it just seemed like a waste of a build up throughout Breaking Dawn.
Some sort of fight should have occured. —
Can you think of any other things wrong with Twilight that we all choose to ignore? Sound off in the comments!
