The Twilight Reboot Series Should Ignore The Books, And Make Edward The Villain
If you're surprised by the fact that the "Twilight" series is the next young adult fantasy hit to get its own television adaptation, it might be because you're not paying attention. HBO made waves when they announced that they'd bring "Harry Potter" back to the screen — the small one this time — with a decades-long series on its newly named streamer Max, and now, the series that made sparkly vampires sexy is getting the same treatment. At this rate, we can expect a "Divergent" series reboot any second now, probably.
It's not at all shocking that after "Harry Potter," Stephenie Meyer's four-book series would get its own shot at a TV show. What could be shocking, though — and in the right way — is if the showrunners decided to abandon the basic premise of the books and original film series, and take Edward Cullen entirely at his word when he calls himself a "predator."
Yes, what we're trying to say here is that Edward, a vampire who is over 100 years old and falls in love with a teenage girl, should be the villain he was always meant to be. Make Edward the bad guy. Transform "Twilight" into Netflix's "You," but with vampires. Keep the concept the same, but change the lens we view it through, and turn this "Twilight" television adaptation into the scariest possible version of its original source material ... you know, one where a violent undead being stalks a young, innocent girl.
The character of Edward Cullen is, objectively, a flat-out supervillain
Let's examine Edward Cullen for a moment, shall we? Like his family of adopted vampire siblings, he's got a pretty messed-up backstory. Born in 1901, Edward and his birth mother contracted the Spanish flu while living in Chicago, and though his mom died, Edward was saved and turned into a vampire by his adoptive father Carlisle — a kindly vampire doctor! — at just seventeen. Trapped in a younger man's body, forever a teenager, Edward just kind of ... well, from his account, he mopes around for nearly a century, for some indiscernible reason wasting his time as a high school outcast, before the relatively unremarkable Bella Swan makes him want to be a better man.
Just ask Robert Pattinson, the teen heartthrob (turned extremely weird guy) who played Edward in the original movies. He once famously told Empire, "[The] more I read the script, the more I hated this guy, so that's how I played him, as a manic-depressive who hates himself. Plus, he's a 108-year-old virgin so he's obviously got some issues there" (via Gizmodo). As recently as 2022, Pattinson said to GQ that he could only imagine playing Edward as "emo," clarifying, "I also think that if I tried to play it lighthearted, the way I would do it would end up looking so wrong that I'd probably end up looking even more like a psychopath."
So, there you have it. Edward is a deranged immortal being, stuck in a 17-year-old's body. If that sounds terrifying, it's a sign that the "Twilight" reboot should steer into these scary elements instead of avoiding them.
Edward Cullen should spend the Twilight reboot hunting Bella
Come on. Admit it. The romance aspect of "Twilight" got lots of play in the books and movies, but realistically, this relationship has enough red flags to fit comfortably in communist China. For that reason alone, it makes complete sense that the series should be reimagined so that Bella is constantly running for her life while Edward mercilessly hunts her.
Edward, as he makes abundantly clear, is an apex predator; he's perfectly capable of murdering Bella in seconds flat, as is every other member of his family (and, frankly, any vampire that factors into the series at any point). He and his family are "vegetarians," meaning they only eat wildlife and don't feast on human blood, but that's... well, boring (really boring!). Edward is fast as lightning, can drain a living being in no time at all, and is basically magic in every single way, so he should just use his magic for evil, like most other vampires in fiction.
Think about scenes where Bella, who in this version will be maybe just a tiny bit smarter and with a few more self-preservation instincts, has to spend her days running from a thirsty Edward, who can track her every move. Those scenes would be infinitely more exciting than these two teenagers laying in a field, staring into each one another's eyes, and doing their kissing thing.
Twilight barely has to change to make Edward into the villain
The funniest and most plausible part of this entire proposition is just how easy it would be. To say nothing of the thesis statement of Edward and Bella's relationship being "so the lion fell in love with the lamb," well ... take, for example, the scene where Edward tells Bella he's a vampire.
He brings her into the remote woods. Nobody knows where she is, and nobody is around for miles. Edward gets her to say the word vampire, and then he ... takes his shirt off and shows Bella his sparkly, sexy, disco-ball chest. Wouldn't it have been a lot cooler if he just ate her? He also tells her said sparkle-skin is the "skin of a killer," which is hilarious in that context, but would be actually scary if he then, you know, tried to kill her.
Edward says and does a lot of villainous things to Bella throughout their relationship. He tells her that he might not be the hero, but the bad guy. He tells her never to "trust" vampires. He breaks into her room and watches her sleep every night. He refers to her as his "own personal brand of heroin." There's also the fact that, for whatever reason, Bella's blood just smells yummier to all vampires, meaning that Edward is constantly holding back an urge to kill her and drink it. He should stop trying and just give in to his inner monster, because it'd make a far more entertaining horror story.
Twilight needs to lean away from the romance and go full horror
The whole deal with "Twilight" is that it's basically "Romeo and Juliet," except that there's vampirism involved — but in case Meyer forgot, pretty much everyone in that play dies at the end.
Meanwhile, "Twilight" pulls its sparkly punches. Bella and Edward get their happy ending with their family and their weird kid Renesmee at the end of the books and movies. But what if the genre changed entirely, nobody gets a happy ending, and Bella spends her life fleeing from Edward's thirst? They could even still be weirdly attracted to each other, but then, they have to put that aside due to the fact that, for Edward, Bella is just a tasty snack, when all is said and done, and he's a predator (as he repeats, over and over).
It might be shocking for original "Twilight" fans to imagine how Edward and Bella could possibly be at odds, but the main conflict in the original series being Edward's fear of intimacy with Bella — in that he might lose control and kill her by accident — just isn't as cool as the idea that he thinks she's hot and wants to drink her blood.
Come on, you cowards. After all these years, make Edward Cullen earn that skin of a killer. Because otherwise, the whole idea of rebooting "Twilight" is about as pointless as a vampire who doesn't drink blood.