Why Twilight Could Work Better as a TV Series?
The first Twilight Saga movie was released in 2008, and despite its limited budget for a teen fantasy movie, it was a box office hit and launched a massive film franchise. It became one of those increasingly rare phenomena that were everywhere you turned, either in stores, on billboards or on people’s clothing. This incredible success meant that it was only a matter of time before an executive somewhere decided it was time for another go, especially given the nostalgia-driven culture of remakes we’re currently living in.
There was a lot of work in the original series of movies, as is evident by the love it received from fans. Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson were a seemingly perfect choice for the central pair, and the soundtracks compiled interesting, out-of-the -box selections that helped these movies stand out — it’s not often that you hear Radiohead in something like this. However, if there is going to be a new TV series adaptation of the story, this does provide a chance to rectify some of the poorer decisions made the first time around.
Television provides a long-form opportunity for storytelling. Where most of the Twilight movies stood at around two hours, the miniseries format offers four times that amount. With this extra time and the benefit of hindsight, here are some reasons why Twilight could work better as a TV show.
The first movie was directed by Catherine Hardwicke, so she was the director with the most influence over the look and feel of the series as a whole. Originally, she was keen to diversify the main characters, which, in the book, are all white , besides the Native American characters. In an interview with IndieWire, Hardwicke says, “I had all these ideas. And [Stephenie Meyer] just could not accept the Cullens to be more diverse, because she had really seen them in her mind.” Hardwicke eventually succeeded in casting a few actors of color in smaller roles, but perhaps in the time since this original casting process, Meyer will have loosened up her Eurocentric view of the Cullen family.
Moreover, even with Hardwicke’s good intentions toward diverse casting, they still ended up casting Taylor Lautner, a white man, in the role of Jacob, who is Native American. So, the fact that even someone who wasn’t written as white originally ended up being cast incorrectly goes to show that there’s a huge amount of room for improvement in that department. If the upcoming TV reboot improves upon the source’s lack of diversity, with the extra hours afforded in a series, there can also be more time given to exploring the way their dynamics and stories may shift after these updates.
As mentioned, Hardwicke is arguably the most responsible for how the first movie turned out and the success it became. She understood the source material and the audience she was speaking to, playing into the odd elements of the story that might have been smoothed out by a less tuned-in director. So, when she was unable to return for the following movies, it was a loss for the series. With the upcoming TV series, it could be a chance to rectify the mistake of letting her go.
