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Twilight is a 2008 American romantic-fantasy film directed by Catherine Hardwicke and based on the novel of the same name by Stephenie Meyer. The film stars Kristen Stewart as Bella Swan, a teenage girl who falls in love with vampire Edward Cullen, portrayed by Robert Pattinson. The project was in development for approximately three years at Paramount Pictures before it was put into pre-production by Summit Entertainment. The novel was adapted for the screen by Melissa Rosenberg in late 2007, shortly before the 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike. The film was primarily shot in Washington and Oregon in early 2008. Twilight was released in theaters on November 21, 2008,[5] and grossed $35.7 million on its opening day.[6] As of April 23, 2009, the film has grossed $379,912,947 in worldwide box office[4] and $127,962,468 in North American DVD sales.[7]
The soundtrack was released on November 4, 2008.[8]
Contents [hide]
1 Plot
2 Cast
2.1 The Cullens and the Swans
2.2 Nomadic vampires
2.3 Humans
3 Production
3.1 Development
3.2 Casting
3.3 Filming and post-production
3.4 Music
4 Comparison with the book
5 Release
5.1 Box office
5.2 Critical reception
5.3 Home media
5.4 Awards
6 Sequel
7 References
8 External links
Plot
See also: Twilight (novel)
Seventeen-year-old Bella Swan moves to Forks, a small town on Washington state's rugged coast, to live with her father, Charlie, after her mother remarries to a minor league baseball player. She is quickly befriended by many students at her new high school, but she is intrigued by the mysterious and aloof Cullen siblings. Bella sits next to Edward Cullen in biology class on her first day of school; he appears to be disgusted by her, much to Bella's confusion. A few days later, Bella is nearly struck by a van in the school parking lot. Edward inexplicably moves from some feet away and stops the vehicle with his hand. He later refuses to explain this act to Bella and warns her against befriending him.
After much research, Bella eventually discovers that Edward is a vampire, though he only consumes animal blood. The pair fall in love and Edward introduces Bella to his vampire family, Carlisle, Esme, Alice, Jasper, Emmett, and Rosalie. Soon after, three nomadic vampires—James, Victoria, and Laurent—arrive. James, a tracker vampire, is intrigued by Edward's protectiveness over a human and wants to hunt Bella for sport. Edward and his family risk their lives to protect her, but James tracks Bella to Phoenix where she is hiding and lures her into a trap by claiming he is holding her mother hostage. James attacks Bella and bites her wrist, but Edward, along with the other Cullen family members, arrives before he can kill her. James is destroyed, and Edward sucks James's venom from Bella's wrist, preventing her from becoming a vampire. A severely injured Bella is taken to a hospital. Upon returning to Forks, Bella and Edward attend their school prom. While there, Bella expresses her desire to become a vampire, which Edward refuses. The film ends with Victoria secretly watching the pair dancing, plotting revenge for her lover James' murder.
Cast
The Cullens and the Swans
Kristen Stewart as Bella Swan, a seventeen-year-old girl who moves to the small town of Forks, Washington from Phoenix, Arizona and falls in love with a vampire, Edward Cullen. Her life is put in danger after a sadistic vampire decides to hunt her.[9]
Robert Pattinson as Edward Cullen, a 108-year-old vampire who was changed in 1918 and still appears to be seventeen. He is Bella's love interest and has the ability to read minds, with the exception of Bella's, along with superhuman speed and strength.[9][10]
The Cullens: (from left) Kellan Lutz , Nikki Reed, Elizabeth Reaser, Robert Pattinson, Peter Facinelli, Ashley Greene, and Jackson RathbonePeter Facinelli as Carlisle Cullen, a compassionate 300-plus-year-old vampire who looks to be in his mid-20s. He serves as the town's physician and is the father figure of the Cullen family.[11]
Elizabeth Reaser as Esme Cullen, Carlisle's vampire wife and a mother figure to the Cullen family.[12]
Ashley Greene as Alice Cullen, a vampire who can see the future based on decisions that people make.[12]
Jackson Rathbone as Jasper Hale, a member of the Cullen family who can manipulate emotions. He is the newest member of the Cullen family, and thus has the most difficulty maintaining their feeding only on animals rather than humans lifestyle.[12]
Nikki Reed as Rosalie Hale, a Cullen family member described as the most beautiful person in the world. She is incredibly hostile toward Bella throughout the entire film.[13]
Kellan Lutz as Emmett Cullen, physically the strongest vampire of the family.[12]
Billy Burke as Charlie Swan, Bella's father and Forks' Chief of Police.[14]
Nomadic vampires
Cam Gigandet as James, the leader of a group of nomadic vampires which intends to kill Bella. He is Victoria's mate and a gifted tracker, due to his unparalleled senses.[13]
Rachelle Lefèvre as Victoria, James' mate who assists him in finding Bella.[13]
Edi Gathegi as Laurent, the most civilized member of James' coven.[15]
Humans
Sarah Clarke as Renée Dwyer, Bella's mother who lives in Arizona with her new husband, Phil.[15]
Matt Bushell as Phil Dwyer, Bella's stepfather who plays minor-league baseball in Florida.[16]
Taylor Lautner as Jacob Black, an old childhood friend of Bella and a member of the Quileute tribe.[17]
Gil Birmingham as Billy Black, Jacob's father and a friend of Charlie.[15]
Solomon Trimble as Sam Uley, a member of the Quileute tribe.[18]
Christian Serratos as Angela Weber, one of Bella's new friends in Forks.[15]
Michael Welch as Mike Newton, one of Bella's new friends who vies for her attention.[13]
Anna Kendrick as Jessica Stanley, Bella's first friend in Forks.[9]
Gregory Tyree Boyce as Tyler Crowley, another one of Bella's classmates, also vying for Bella's attention. (He nearly hits Bella with his van.)
Justin Chon as Eric Yorkie, another one of Bella's classmates who vies for her attention.[9]
Ned Bellamy as Waylon Forge, one of Charlie's friends at the police station; this character is not featured in the novel.[16]
José Zúñiga as Mr. Molina, Bella's biology teacher at Forks High School; in the novel, this character's name is Mr. Banner.[16]
Stephenie Meyer makes a cameo appearance as a customer in the diner where Bella and her father frequently eat.
Production
Development
Stephenie Meyer's paranormal romance novel Twilight was originally optioned by Paramount Pictures' MTV Films in April 2004, but the screenplay that was subsequently developed was substantially different from its source material.[3][19] When Summit Entertainment reinvented itself as a full-service studio in April 2007, it began development of a film adaptation anew,[20] having picked up the rights from Paramount (who coincidentally had made an unrelated film with the same title in 1998) in a turnaround.[21] The company perceived the film as an opportunity to launch a franchise based on the success of Meyer's book and its sequels.[22][12] That summer, Catherine Hardwicke was hired to direct the film and Melissa Rosenberg to write the script.[23]
Rosenberg developed an outline by the end of August, and collaborated with Hardwicke on writing the screenplay during the following month. "[she] was a great sounding board and had all sorts of brilliant ideas.... I'd finish off scenes and send them to her, and get back her notes."[24] Due to the impending WGA strike, Rosenberg worked full-time to finish the screenplay before October 31.[24] In adapting the novel, she "had to condense a great deal." Some characters from the novel were not featured in the screenplay, whereas some characters were combined into others.[25] "[O]ur intent all along was to stay true to the book," Rosenberg explained, "and it has to do less with adapting it word for word and more with making sure the characters' arcs and emotional journeys are the same."[26] Hardwicke suggested the use of voice over to convey the protagonist's internal dialogue[24] – since the novel is told from Bella's point of view – and she sketched some of the storyboards during pre-production.[27]
Casting
When they told me Rob was probably the one, I looked him up and thought, "Yeah, he can do a version of Edward. He’s definitely got that vampire thing going on." And then, when I was on set and I got to watch him go from being Rob to shifting into being Edward, and he actually looked like the Edward in my head, it was a really bizarre experience. [...] He really had it nailed.
—Twilight author Stephenie Meyer[19]
Kristen Stewart was on the set of Adventureland when Hardwicke visited her for an informal screen test which "captivated" the director.[3] Hardwicke did not initially choose Robert Pattinson for the role of Edward Cullen, but after an audition at her home with Stewart, he was selected.[3] Pattinson was unfamiliar with the novel series prior to his screen test but read the books later on.[28] Meyer allowed him to view a manuscript of the unfinished Midnight Sun, which chronicles the events in Twilight from Edward's point of view.[29] Fan reaction to Pattinson's casting as Edward was initially negative; Rachelle Lefèvre remarked that "[e]very woman had their own Edward [that] they had to let go of before they could open up to [him], which they did."[28] Meyer was "excited" and "ecstatic" in response to the casting of the two main characters.[30]
Peter Facinelli was not originally cast as Carlisle Cullen. "[Hardwicke] liked [him], but there was another actor that the studio was pushing for."[11] For unknown reasons, that actor was not able to play the part, and Facinelli was selected in his place.[11] The choice of Ashley Greene to portray Alice Cullen was the subject of fan criticism to some extent due to Greene being 7 inches (18 cm) taller than her character as described in the novel. Meyer had also stated that Rachael Leigh Cook resembled her vision of Alice.[31] Nikki Reed had previously worked with Hardwicke on thirteen, which they wrote together, and Lords of Dogtown. "I don't want to say it's a coincidence, because we do work well together, and we have a great history. I think we make good work, but it's more that the people that hire [Hardwicke] to direct a film of theirs [have] most likely seen her other work."[32]
Kellan Lutz was in Africa shooting the HBO miniseries Generation Kill when the auditions for the character of Emmett Cullen were conducted. The role had already been cast by the time that production ended in December 2007, but the actor who had been selected "fell through"; Lutz subsequently auditioned and was flown to Oregon, where Hardwicke personally chose him.[33] Rachelle Lefèvre was interested in pursuing a role in the film because Hardwicke was attached to the project as director; there was also "the potential to explore a character, hopefully, over three films"; and she wanted to portray a vampire.[34] "[she] thought that vampires were basically the best metaphor for human anxiety and questions about being alive."[34] Christian Serratos initially auditioned for Jessica Stanley, but she "fell totally in love with Angela" after reading the books, and successfully took advantage of a later opportunity to audition for Angela Weber.[35] The role of Jessica Stanley went to Anna Kendrick, who got the part after two mix-and-match auditions with various actors.[36]
Filming and post-production
Principal photography took 44 days,[37] after more than a week of rehearsals,[38] and completed on May 2, 2008.[39] Similar to her directorial debut thirteen, Hardwicke opted for an extensive use of hand-held cinematography to make the film "feel real".[11][40] Meyer visited the production set three times, and was consulted on different aspects of the story;[41] she also has a brief cameo in the film.[42] Cast members who portrayed vampires avoided sunlight to make their skin pale, though makeup was also applied for that effect, and wore contact lenses: "We did the golden color because the Cullens have those golden eyes. And then, when we're hungry, we have to pop the black ones in," Facinelli explained.[11] They also participated in rehearsals with a dance choreographer and observed the physicality of different panthera to make their bodily movements more graceful.[11][31][43]
Scenes were filmed primarily in Portland, Oregon.[13] Stunt work was done mainly by the cast.[44] The fight sequence between Gigandet and Pattinson's characters in a ballet studio, which was filmed during the first week of production, involved a substantial amount of wire work due to the fact that the vampires in the story have superhuman strength and speed.[43] Gigandet incorporated some mixed martial arts fighting moves in this sequence, which also involved chicken and honey as substitutes for flesh.[45] Bella, the protagonist, is unconscious during these events, and since the novel is told from her point of view, such action sequences are illustrative and unique to the film.[28] Pattinson noted that maintaining one's center of gravity is difficult when doing wire work "because you have to really fight against it as well as letting it do what it needs to do."[28] Lefèvre found the experience disorienting since forward motion is out of one's control in such work.[28]
Instead of shooting at Forks High School itself, scenes taking place at the school were filmed at Kalama High School[46] and Madison High School.[47] Other scenes were also filmed in St. Helens, Oregon,[48] and Hardwicke conducted some reshooting in Pasadena, California, in August.[37][49] The studio intended to create a series of at least three films based on Meyer's books,[9] and Summit had optioned New Moon by October 2008.[50] Twilight was originally scheduled to be theatrically released in the United States on December 12, 2008, but its release date was changed to November 21 after Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was rescheduled for an opening in July 2009.[5] Two teaser trailers, as well as some additional scenes, were released for the film, as well as a final trailer which was released on October 9.[51][52] A 15-minute excerpt of Twilight was presented during the International Rome Film Festival in Italy.[53] The film received a rating of PG-13 from the Motion Picture Association of America for "some violence and a scene of sensuality".[54] It is rated 12A in the United Kingdom and Ireland.
Music
Main article: Twilight (soundtrack)
The score for Twilight was composed by Carter Burwell,[55][56] with the rest of the soundtrack chosen by music supervisor Alexandra Patsavas.[57] Meyer was consulted on the soundtrack, which includes music by Muse and Linkin Park, bands she listened to while writing the novels.[58][59] The original soundtrack was released on November 4 by Chop Shop Records in conjunction with Atlantic Records.[8] The soundtrack debuted at number 1 on the Billboard 200 for the chart week of November 22.[60]
Comparison with the book
The filmmakers behind Twilight worked to create a film that was as faithful to the book as they thought possible when converting the story to another medium, with producer Greg Mooradian saying, "It's very important to distinguish that we're making a separate piece of art that obviously is going to remain very, very faithful to the book.... But at the same time, we have a separate responsibility to make the best movie you can make."[61] In order to ensure a faithful adaptation, author Stephenie Meyer was kept very involved in the production process, having been invited to visit the set during filming and even asked to give notes on the script and on a rough cut of the film.[62] Of this process, Meyer said, "It was a really pleasant exchange [between me and the filmmakers] from the beginning, which I think is not very typical. They were really interested in my ideas,"[63] and, "...they kept me in the loop and with the script, they let me see it and said, 'What are your thoughts?'... They let me have input on it and I think they took 90 percent of what I said and just incorporated it right in to the script."[62] Meyer fought for one line in particular, one of the most well-known from the book about "the lion and the lamb", to be kept verbatim in the movie: "I actually think the way Melissa [Rosenberg] wrote it sounded better for the movie...but the problem is that line is actually tattooed on peoples' bodies... But I said, 'You know, if you take that one and change it, that's a potential backlash situation.'"[62] Meyer was even invited to create a written list of things that could not be changed for the film, such as giving the vampires fangs or killing characters who don't die in the book, that the studio agreed to follow.[62][63] The consensus among critics is that the filmmakers succeeded in making a film that is very faithful to its source material,[64][65] with one reviewer stating that, with a few exceptions, "Twilight the movie is unerringly faithful to the source without being hamstrung by it."[66]
They could have filmed [the script developed when the project was at Paramount] and not called it Twilight because it had nothing to do with the book... When Summit [Entertainment] came into the picture, they were so open to letting us make rules for them, like "Okay, Bella cannot be a track star. Bella cannot have a gun or night vision goggles. And, no jet skis...."
—Twilight author Stephenie Meyer[19]
However, as is most often the case with book-to-film adaptations, differences exist between the movie and original source material. Certain scenes from the book were cut from the film, such as a biology room scene where Bella's class does blood typing. Hardwicke explains, "Well [the book is] almost 500 pages — you do have to do the sweetened condensed milk version of that.... We already have two scenes in biology: the first time they're in there and then the second time when they connect. For a film, when you condense, you don't want to keep going back to the same setting over and over. So that's not in there."[67] The settings of certain conversations in the book were also changed to make the scenes more "visually dynamic" on-screen, such as Bella revealing that she knows Edward is a vampire in a meadow in the film, as opposed to in Edward's car in the novel.[67] A biology field trip scene is added to the movie, in order to condense the moments of Bella's frustration at trying to explain how Edward saved her from being crushed by a van.[61] One of the largest changes was the introduction of the villainous vampires much earlier in the film than they appear in the book, with Rosenberg explaining that, "you don't really see James and the other villains until to the last quarter of the book, which really won't work for a movie. You need that ominous tension right off the bat. We needed to see them and that impending danger from the start. And so I had to create back story for them, what they were up to, to flesh them out a bit as characters."[24] Rosenberg also combined some of the human high school students, with Lauren Mallory and Jessica Stanley becoming the character of Jessica in the movie, and a "compilation of a couple of different human characters" becoming Eric Yorkie.[25] About these variances from the book, Mooradian stated, "I think we did a really judicious job of distilling [the book]. Our greatest critic, Stephenie Meyer, loves the screenplay, and that tells me that we made all the right choices in terms of what to keep and what to lose. Invariably, you're going to lose bits and pieces that certain members of the audience are going to desperately want to see, but there's just a reality that we're not making 'Twilight: The Book' the movie."[61]
Release
Box office
Twilight grossed over $7 million in ticket sales from midnight showings alone on November 21, 2008.[68] The film is third overall on online ticket service Fandango's list of top advance ticket sales, outranked only by Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith and The Dark Knight.[68] It grossed $35.7 million on its opening day, the biggest opening day gross for a non-sequel and non-summer movie.[69] For its opening weekend in the United States and Canada, Twilight accumulated $69.6 million from 3,419 theaters at an average of $20,368 per theater.[70]
As of April 23, 2009, the film has made $191,465,414 in the United States and Canada, and a further $188,447,533 in international territories for a total of $379,912,947 worldwide.[4]
Critical reception
Based on 187 reviews collected by Rotten Tomatoes as of February 14, 2009, the film has received an overall "Rotten" rating of 49%, with a weighted average score of 5.5/10.[71] In describing the critical consensus, it stated: "Having lost much of its bite transitioning to the big screen, Twilight will please its devoted fans, but do little for
