Top 5 Things That My 15-Year-Old Self Would Have Loved About The Twilight Movie

Posted at 5:00 AM Nov 21, 2008

By Andrea Grimes

I watched the Twilight movie here in Austin last night with the film's director, Catherine Hardwicke. Apparently she's a Texas native and wanted to see her live-action vampire romance with a bunch of Lone Star Staters. At least, that was the explanation given for the 45-minute delay in starting our "midnight" showing--Hardwicke had to make the rounds to every theater inside the Alamo Drafthouse on South Lamar to say hi. Hi, can we start the movie already?

It's after 3:00 a.m., so there's little time for commentary. All's I know is, I walked out of the theater feeling thoroughly ambivalent, which came as a surprise considering I found the books thoroughly addictive. I think I know why: I am the wrong age for this movie. At 25, I neither fantasize about unattainable true love, as I did in my teenage years, nor do I yearn for my teenage years wherein I fantasized about true love (which explains the Twilight moms phenom). While suspending disbelief was easy reading a book, it was disturbing to see the bizarre Bella/Edward romance played out on screen. Too ... real.

And so I'll try to travel back in time one decade and give you the top five things my 15-year-old self would have loved about Twilight. After the cut, for you spoiler-phobes!

5. Heaving chests

Nevermind the fact that Edward doesn't actually need to breathe, what with being undead and all. His chest heaves with the burden of passion, just like Bella's. Up. Down. Up. Down. Doesn't matter which idyllic setting they find themselves in, they just can't keep their rib cages in check. My 15-year-old self is sure this is a metaphor for something. My modern self wants to offer them an inhaler.

4. Edward's sun skin

Ain't nobody involved in the production of this film going to be winning any awards for special effects, especially not for the glittering diamond vamp-i-dermis debacle that is Robert Pattinson as Edward Cullen in the sun. My 15-year-old self would have completely overlooked technical difficulties and willed her brain to fall even more deeply in love.

3. Parental ineptitude

Bella's mom runs off with a minor league baseball player, Bella's dad drinks beer and watches sports on television when he's not completely ignoring her. Bella talks to her mom like a two-year-old and babies her dad similarly by preparing food for him, before behaving like a toddler herself and storming out in a fit of feigned rage. My 15-year-old self knows that parents just don't understand. But my 2008 self knows that this is just straight up crappy parenting, and we're looking at years of therapy, not an eternal life of hot vampire sex.

2. Having a boy so desperate to be with you that he spends every night outside your window watching you sleep

Do I really have to explain this one?

1. No sex!

Oh my god, there she is in her panties, and there's Edward, in her bedroom, and oh my god, they totally kiss and she's going to straddle him and OH MY GOD HE CAN'T HANDLE IT SO HE STOPS GIRLJIZZZZ. The 15-year-old Christian youth group member in me sighs a sigh of wanton frustration and complete understanding. The modern me is just all, hey, do you have a garlic condom or something?