True story, but the only Twilight movie that I’ve seen start to finish is the first one. It was hilariously dumb but I understood completely why tweens and teens loved it. It was a silly high school drama with sparkly vampires, what’s not to love? Anyway, Twilight: New Moon was the second film, and it came out in 2009, so this is the 10-year anniversary. While the first movie was a resounding success, New Moon solidified the “cultural phenomenon” that was the Twilight franchise. It also solidified Robert Pattinson as a full-blown heartthrob and teen-girl idol. Pattinson became the sullen, sparkly first boyfriend of every girl’s dream. The spotlight on him was enormous, and he hated it. Looking back on that era, he carried that remarkably well but yeah, he made no secret of the fact that the Twilight era was not a happy or pleasant time for him. A decade later, and Rob has grown and matured and, as he told USA Today, he actually has some fond memories.
On Twilight’s impact: “It seems like with younger people in their late teens, early 20s, it’s sort of become quite a hip thing to like. It’s a fascinating second wave of people appreciating it, which is kind of cool. I think when anything becomes a massive phenomenon, there’s always people who get annoyed because it’s just everywhere. But now it seems like a retro thing: the soundtrack, the fashion. It’s like, ‘Oh, that’s so late 2000s.’ ”
He recently re-watched New Moon: Pattinson says he watched part of the second movie, 2009’s “New Moon,” on TV “just the other day, and it genuinely does have an incredibly good soundtrack. I completely forgot, but the soundtracks were quite ahead of their time.”
He’s happy to not have that spotlight at the moment: “It’s lovely now that the mania is not so intense. People come up (to me) and just have very fond memories of it. It’s a really sweet thing. I think the only scary part was right in the thick of it all, when it was very, very intense. Now the intensity has died down and it’s just very warm memories.”
[From USA Today]
I looked it up – New Moon’s soundtrack included Thom Yorke, The Killers, Bon Iver & St. Vincent, Lykke Li, OK Go and more. I seem to remember hearing one particular Florence + the Machine song (which I had never heard before) in a Twilight movie too. He’s probably right – this was ahead of its time. No one ever had issues with the Twilight music! We just had issues with the acting and the stories. But it’s nice that Sparkles can now look back on that time with fondness. He was part of one of the biggest pop culture extravaganzas of the past twenty years.
Photos courtesy of ‘New Moon’ and Backgrid.
I discovered Muse through Twilight and has been a big fan since then. Supermassive Black Hole from the first movie is 10/10
I really loved that song! I think all of the twilight soundtracks have pretty decent music. I still listen to them sometimes.
That song was awesome!
I play the soundtrack from the first movie all the time. My daughter and I are both Team Edward. Lol.
I was already a Muse fan when Twilight came out (had a friend who was super into music and he’d shared their stuff with me) and it definitely made me like the movie more than I think I otherwise would have. Rob is right – somehow the Twilight soundtracks were VERY good, not just for the first movie but for all of them.
I LOVED the Twilight books, and then I saw the first movie and it ruined the books for me, lol. I went with friends who were like, “the dialogue was so bad!” and I said yes but it was word for word from the books in some parts…..so maybe we just overlooked a lot of the flaws in the books, ha.
Oh well, it was all enjoyable (relatively) and something fun to read/watch, so I’m glad he is able to look back on it and not be as bitter about it as he seemed to be for a while.
I always had a lot of problems wth the books. Him watching her, uninvited, while she sleeps. Bossing her around. Her being the most feelingest teenager to ever feel and constantly putting her life in danger because she was sad she got dumped. Yet I really enjoyed seeing the movies. They were terrible but my bff always made a production of going on opening night. We’d have drinks, sneak in expensive candy. I haven’t seen them past that first viewing though, so they may be unwatchable without the booze.
I loved the books but I didn’t think about them really, lol. I read them in law school so they were a complete and total diversion for me. If I think about them – the stalking, the control issues, etc. – they’re just….not representations of a healthy relationship.
Honestly the only song from twilight I remember is this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7maJOI3QMu0
Great song!
ETA: Oh and another poster mentioned Muse.Twilight introduced me to them as well.
The first movie was the best one- Catherine Hardwick is an incredible director. She did the best she could with the material that she had. It was SO fucked up and sexist that the second movie was taken away from her because the first one was such a huge hit. She was labelled ‘difficult’ because she… cried one day on set. Didn’t throw a tantrum or sexually assault someone or belittle anyone. Just shed one or two tears.
ITA! The first movie was so haunting with lighting and mood and I truly hated the second one. I wished they’d bring her back for Eclipse but obviously that didn’t happen. I also preferred Rachelle Lefevre as Victoria. No offense to BDH but her Victoria just wasn’t as intense.
Yes, the first one is the best and the only one I’ll rewatch.
Ah! I came to say the same thing, her direction and vision made the first one the best one. The make up was believable instead of comically bad, and the music went perfectly with the scenes and acting. My favorite song from the whole series is one Robert Pattinson actually sang, Let me sign, it’s beautful.
I hated on Twilight for years but I caught it on tv one day and got sucked in. I have no shame about it, it’s an escape from reality, so whatever, lol.
I like some of what Catherine did with the film, but if only she had kept her actors from making so many audible pauses! Seriously every line starts with “Uh”… I think it was an acting tic that one of them must have used and then it became catchy. There are entire conversations with dozens of these noises. If it were a drinking game to drink every time it happened no one would survive!!
Obviously I have feelings about this (more than I should!) but it seriously ruins the movie for me. Once you hear it, it can’t be ignored!! And Catherine should have noticed and told them to cut it out. ::end rant::
Crap, now I have to watch it again and see this! I didn’t notice it but I’m sure I will now, lol.
She was good, but I was actually more impressed with New Moon. He managed to take a boring book and make it good. I thought the 360 camera around Bella as the seasons go by was stunning.
I rewatched the first 2.5 movies this winter on Netflix and they were enjoyable. The villains in the first three movies were so terrible though, I had trouble taking the movies seriously (and it’s weird that I thought that was the worst part lol). And all the hair was terrible. Tons of bad wigs and dye jobs.
I watched the first one on video and saw the second one in the theater with my friends and it was quite an experience. The audience seemed to be primarily soccer moms and gay men. So much laughter at parts that were not meant to be funny.
I didn’t watch any more after New Moon, knowing the ridiculousness was only going to increase with each one. I had read the books at the urging of the friends I saw the movie with and by the last one I was hate reading it pretty intensely, lol.
In an unexpected turn of events RPatz is filming Christopher Nolan’s next IMAX blockbuster next month, I guess he’s back to being A-lister again?
He’s been doing a lot of fantastic work in indie films. Nolan’s movie will be the first blockbuster he’s done since Twilight days, but his film resume is pretty sharp at this point.
I love all things fantasy. Been watching monster flicks since I was a kid, probably longer than most posters here lol! But I never watched the Twilight movies because I knew exactly what they were and that I probably couldn’t stomach the lead characters. When what’s-her-name popped up in any films I viewed, she always carried this mouth-agaped restricted range of acting which made me cringe lol. I didn’t want to sit through movies with that or with the normal shovel headed brooding vampire. All three movies showed up on Hulu recently, so I watched with my 13yo. I gave 100% effort to not eyeroll every millisecond for my son. But we both agreed. The best thing about them was the soundtrack. My lists always include Muse and Florence, and I actually had Lykke and OK Go on my YouTube list as well so we enjoyed that part fer sure.
Saying that they were ahead of their time is a bit of a stretch.
Someone made good music choices (which is about the best thing that anyone could say for the books or the movies), and I’m glad that people may have discovered bands via the soundtracks, but a lot of these bands had already been putting out music for a while and were already known and it isn’t exactly a new phenomenon to create soundtracks like this.
I’ll give him this – I’ve always loved soundtracks and thought it was a good way to discover tracks from bands that you might not ordinarily hear, so I always appreciate when someone curates a good one.
Agreed. I laughed when I read that. I feel like he was trying really hard to say something positive about the films.
One of my favorite soundtracks from that era, or slightly before then, is from Garden State.
Yeah. The soundtrack was very of its time. Twilight came out in 2009? Let’s see-
Thom Yorke – we all been knew Radiohead by then
The Killers – debut album on which they blew up came out in ‘04
Bon Iver – started blowing up in 2007
St. Vincent – same as Bon Iver. she started coming up in the MySpace days
Death Cab – love them but OLD NEWS
I feel like if the leads had been better looking, it would be easier to stomach…
If you’re going to have a bad movie (bad acting, bad lines, bad everything.) then you need to compensate somehow.
I always imagined vampires to be otherworldy beautiful. Robert isn’t it.
Bella (?) was supposed to be plain, I think, so that was accurate casting but still…her bad acting and mouthbreather expression just made things worse.
I guess that’s a matter of opinion because I found him to be pretty darn beautiful. But I do agree that the casting of his family members fell very flat compared to their descriptions in the book.
Right? And not just his family, I mean Jasper was laughable in appearance but Jacob? He was supposed to be towering, like 6’5.
I know, lol. They came off as such a motley crew, almost cartoonishly awful, instead of the amazingly beautiful, otherworldly beings they were supposed to be. I remember thinking Peter Facinelli might have been the worst, lol.
I thought Edward and Alice were well cast, but the others not so much. Jasper was awful, he was supposed to be a tall, military looking guy, not a short tortured emo with horrible hair. Don’t get me started on Rosalie.
The movies are terrible because the 4 books are bad
the story into itself is stupid and Stephenie Meyer so much wanted to modernized the vampires and the wolves -garous that she has managed to render the two most fascinating myths of bland and boring literature. Add to this that the secondary characters are more interesting than the main characters.It would have been difficult to succeed in making the films correct or a cinematic masterpieces.
Then they made their job difficult by their choose a horrible casting , the young actor was just bad, especially that of Kristen Stewart . The only ones for me that they were good are Billy Burke, Anna Kendrick, Michael Welch, Justin Chon, Christian Serratos, Gil Birmingham and Jackson Rathbone. In conclusion the only thing that was good in this saga was the BO especially that of New Moon and Fascination. The two directors who managed to do a decent job are Catherine Hardwicke and David Slade.
Totally agree about how the ‘bad’ is exponential because it extends back to the books. I’ll probably get boo’d here, but if I were a teen, it would’ve been nearly impossible to top Vampire Diaries regarding entertainment value lol. I know I know I know. It was a guilty pleasure.
Heavy in Your Arms was the Florence + the Machine song, and it introduced me to her! Absolutely loved the soundtracks for all the movies and they’re still in rotation for me today.
Yeah, say what you will about the movies themselves, but the soundtracks were fantastic, especially the first movie.
I’m pretty sure Robert’s leaving the Derelicte show in those photos….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVscQYjuq_s
He looks like the best dressed hobo ever.
I was only in high school when the movies came out and I ate them up. I look back and cringe a little but the soundtracks were great. They were partially influenced by playlists for the books that Stephenie Meyer had on her website (although those had a lot more late 90s/Early 00s alt jams). I caught those soundtracks and playlists at just the right time for them to be super influential on my developing taste in music, there are bands I listen to now as an adult that I can trace back to that period.
Love RPatz! He never disses twilight while acknowledging it wasn’t exactly Oscar worthy. He also doesn’t to be a huge db after the huge success it was, he just embraced it for what it was and lived his life. He actually is a pretty good actor and seems like a decent guy. I always thought he was far too good for Kristen “I bite my lip and call it acting” Stewart.
Agree, he always seemed baffled why it was such a big deal, but really found the humor in the whole experience (which is probably why he didn’t go off the rails with the massive fame that came so fast). And in contrast to Lautner, he didn’t tow the studio line and pretend it was a masterpiece. I loved the movies and all the promo/interviews, it was silly and escapist fun. I have remained a Rob fan, and it’s great to see where his career is going and the success he has earned the past few years.
It had a good soundtrack, but wasn’t ahead of its time. I remember some early superhero movies like the original Spider-Man and The Punisher having AWESOME soundtracks. And I’m sure there were plenty of others before them, too.
A friend who I thought well of loooved the twilight books so I read them because of her. I still loved her afterwards, but didn’t take her book recommendations as highly. I thought they were bad, but also charming and easily readable. When new moon came out, we started a tradition of four of us going to the midnight opening and laughing our asses off. We did that until I moved across the country and I’ve still not seen the last movie. I have a tween girl who is probably just about the right age to watch them, but I’m also hoping she’s independent enough to think he’s a creepy stalker on her own.
And I agree with @Mabs above. The vampire diaries (or at least the earlier seasons) was superior to twilight.
My daughter is 11 and asked to watch them, she said “Edward is kind of mean and if he wasn’t cute she would’ve called the police by now because sneaking into someone’s bedroom is creepy” lol. She still enjoyed the movies but she did a great job recognizing his controlling nature, I was so proud.
RPatz was right. Those soundtracks kill.
Alexandra Patsavas was the music supervisor for the movies, and she’s incredible. You’ll recognize her sound from Grey’s Anatomy (early days of that show the music helped propel it to the stratosphere), the O.C., Gossip Girl, even Mad Men.
She’s the real deal and I’m a huge fan.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandra_Patsavas
Huh! Thanks for pointing me towards Alexandra Patsavas…I *loved* the music from the OC and GG. Never a huge fan of MM and GA, but they have great soundtracks, too. Maybe she has a Spotify playlist or two…
That all sounds very of their time to me.
No he looks like Elijah Wood in Lenny Kravitzs giant blanket scarf 😉
He’s right tho… I still listen to the soundtracks, tho I’d die of embarassment if anyone noticed the name “Twilight” in my playlist 😉
I agree that the Twilight movies (and books) sucked, but had great music. I actually walked down the aisle at my wedding to Turning Page by Sleeping at Last from Breaking Dawn.
I was listening to “indie christmas” on pandora this past season and for some reason it kept hitting on Twilight soundtrack music. Which, I actually LOVED. I loved the soundtracks more than the movies. I still love Iron & Wine after they were on the soundtrack.
Love that he said this. He seems like such a sweet guy.
I’ve thought this since they came out. Say what you want about the movies (hot garbage) but the soundtracks are fucking incredible. Just a ton of beautiful songs all in a row.