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All five Twilight movies have returned to Netflix, and once again, viewers can’t get enough of these alluring vampires. What can we say? We adore nostalgia, revel in camp, and cherish absurdity, and Twilight provides all three in abundance.
If you were a middle school girl in the late 2000s, you either read Stephenie Meyer’s hugely popular vampire romance book Twilight, or you made the conscious choice not to. But when the first Twilight movie, directed by Catherine Hardwicke, hit the screens in 2008, the sultry tale reached new heights. Robert Pattinson stars as Edward Cullen, an alluring, glittering, 108-year-old vampire who inexplicably chooses to spend his eternal years in a public high school in Forks, Washington, where he falls for a human student named Bella, played by Kristen Stewart.
Understanding the massive hype surrounding this movie is crucial. Stephenie Meyer’s 2005 novel Twilight was the biggest phenomenon since Harry Potter, with every 13-year-old girl possessing a copy. This was serious stuff. However, looking back, the movie is an unintended comedic masterpiece, screaming camp. Catherine Hardwicke, formerly recognized for her acclaimed indie teen film Thirteen, tried to blend her artistic vision with the trashy romance of the book, creating a strange, melodramatic, and absurd blend. Yet, if Twilight has anything going for it, it’s that it never bores. Here are some of the most amusing, peculiar, and downright absurd moments from the first Twilight movie.
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Edward smelling Bella for the first time:
Photo: Summit Entertainment Talk about a meet-cute: Bella, a new student at the school, gets seated next to Edward in biology class, and, as anyone who’s seen the movie knows, she smells irresistible to the vampire. But taken without context, the scene plays out like Edward is so disgusted by Bella’s body odor he’s going to vomit right on the desk. Edward then proceeds to spend the rest of class just glaring at Bella, which is made doubly hilarious by the fact that Hardwicke framed this shot to give Pattinson tiny little angel wings. Now that’s what I call camp.
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“Bella, look. It’s a worm.”
Photo: Summit Entertainment My personal favorite of the Bella’s human friends at school is Eric, played by actor Justin Chon. Though he can’t have more than five minutes of screen time, Chon has gone down in Twilight fandom history for delivering one of the saga’s most inexplicably hilarious quotes: “Bella, look. It’s a worm.” It’s an extremely accurate portrayal of high school boy humor in the year 2008. Is Twilight actually a teen movie masterpiece? Only time will tell.
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Bella doing her vampire research:
Photo: Summit Entertainment Twilight was not the first, nor the last, movie guilty of a cliché Google research montage. And yet, the close-up of the word “speed” in Papyrus font gets me every time.
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“How you likin’ the rain, girl?!”
Photo: Summit Entertainment Not only does Mike (played by Michael Welch) shake his gross, wet hat all over Bella, he does it while exclaiming, “How you likin’ the rain, girl? Better get used it, girl!” That’s two “girls” in the span of 30 seconds. Again, this movie really gets just how annoying and weird teen boys can be.
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The super-speed slo-mo walk:
Photo: Summit Entertainment The indisputable high point of any Twilight rewatch, especially if there’s alcohol involved, is the vampire baseball scene. Accompanied by Muse’s “Supermassive Black Hole”—written for the film, and arguably one of the best things these movies produced—this scene is pure fun. But the part that always makes me laugh out loud is the end of this sequence, when the bad vampires—played by Cam Gigandet, Rachelle Lefevre, and Edi Gathegi—crash the party by strolling through the forest on what seems to be a people-mover. I think of this scene every time I’m on a moving sidewalk at the airport.
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“You better hold on tight, spider-monkey.”
Yes, this infamous moment is real. This line of dialogue—which was not in the book—is uttered by Edward to Bella before he carries her through the trees. It has plagued the Twilight fandom for over. What even is a spider-monkey? When we heard this in the theater, we know it was all over for us.
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“My monkey man.”
Photo: Summit Entertainment I’m starting to think the Cullen family has a thing about monkeys, because Rosalie utters this line after witnessing her husband, Emmett, climb a tree to make a spectacular catch during the baseball scene. It’s not just the phrase here, it’s the delivery from actor Nikki Reed. She makes it very clear that her monkey man will be getting some tonight.
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The sparkle reveal:
Photo: Summit Entertainment Perhaps the most ridiculous scene in the movie is the one where Edward finally fesses up to being a vampire. There’s a lot to cringe at here, like “Say it. Out loud,” or “How long have you been 17?” (Don’t blame Hardwicke—these lines of dialogue come straight from Meyers’s novel.) But the worst is when a very serious, very tortured Pattinson bites out, “This is what I am,” rips open his shirt, stands in the sunlight and… sparkles. And no, the CGI is not good.
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Every scene with Charlie.
Photo: Summit Entertainment Actor Billy Burke, who plays Bella’s dad Charlie, was the MVP of the Twilight movies. He steals every scene with his impeccable comedic timing, and never fails to make me laugh. And the best part? We’re actually supposed to be laughing.