When I was 11 years old, I watched “Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 2” on cable, essentially spoiling the entire saga for myself immediately. Throughout the last ten years, I have fallen in love with this story, reading all the books four times, and watching the movies more than I can count.
Recently, I have been seeing a trend circulating online to watch the movies out of order. So I did. Here’s my take on it. Spoilers ahead if you’re late to the Twilight game.
The traditional order goes as such: “Twilight” → “New Moon” → “Eclipse” → “Breaking Dawn Part 1” → “Breaking Dawn Part 2.”
The new order goes as such: “New Moon” → “Breaking Dawn Part 1” → “Twilight” → “Eclipse” → “Breaking Dawn Part 2.”
When you watch in the traditional order, “Twilight” introduces Bella and Edward, and every subsequent movie builds on their relationship. The audience experiences everything as it happens. But here’s why the new order makes the saga more about remembrance, life, and connects the story together better.
We start in “New Moon,” the second film (chronologically). The first five minutes are absolute cinema as an introduction to the “Twilight” world. We see Bella running through Volterra amongst the red cloaks, it then cuts to the meadow scene where she has a nightmare about becoming old while Edward stays young forever.
Bella’s fear of ageing becomes a consistent theme, which makes this work as a great start.
There are minor callbacks to the first movie, but they can be later connected without needing to have watched the first movie. For example, Victoria searching for Bella is not a strong enough point in “New Moon” that it needs to be fully addressed.
While this is the second movie chronologically and the characters are all introduced in the first one, there’s not much of a need for a backstory for them, nor do we need the backstory of how Bella and Edward met for this to work.
It’s not too hard to grasp who people are and how they fit into the “Twilight” world. In terms of thematics, “New Moon” is a strong entry point.
Immediately you’re met with the theme of grief. Bella struggles to find herself after losing the losing the one she’s “… irrevocably and unconditionally in love with.” So instead of starting with the first movie where girl-meets-vampire-and-falls-in-love, we see how Bella tries to rebuild her world, that was once emotionally consumed by Edward. She does this through resuming normal high school activities and spending time with Jacob.
This movie continues with Bella saving Edward in Volterra, and introduces us to the Volturi, the oldest vampire coven who kill vampires who expose their secret to humans. The Cullens did this with Bella, but narrowly miss a similar fate after Alice vows that Bella will become a vampire in the near future.
“New Moon” ends with Edward proposing to Bella, and this is the perfect segue into Breaking Dawn Part 1, which starts with their wedding.
“Breaking Dawn Part 1” is the first movie where I feel the actors are becoming comfortable in their roles, and the characters begin to mature.
However, assuming you watch the series for the first time in this order, you don’t know much about Edward at all. However, we await Bella’s transformation as he promised her vampirism with marriage. The Volturi scene in “New Moon” is fresh in our minds, so we know she will be turned at some point.
In this movie, we have the wedding and the honeymoon which leads to the impossible pregnancy. She endures a grueling pregnancy, and in childbirth, Bella dies. We see glimpses of how it began in a blue-filtered montage, which tie in perfectly to the next movie, in this order: “Twilight.”
OK, so Bella is dead. “Twilight” opens with her saying “I’ve never given much thought to how I would die.” That’s insane to me.
I never knew I could feel such a way about a transition from one movie to another. In this sequence, “Twilight” is meant to act as a movie about flashback memories. She is reliving how she met and fell in love with Edward as she is dying in Breaking Dawn Part 1. It makes so much sense to me why “Twilight” has that blue/green hue in the movie, if we think of it as a dying memory.
Obviously, “Twilight” gives us much more context into Edward and Bella’s relationship. We know how it ends: marriage, a child and a life together forever — but we get to see how it happened in the first chronological movie.
Not only does this movie give us the beginning of forever, but it shows us how Victoria ties into their world. Bella is attacked by James, who is Victoria’s partner, but Bella is saved by the Cullens and James is killed.
The movie ends at prom, with Victoria overlooking Edward and Bella, foreshadowing her eventual revenge for James. This is a better transition into “Eclipse,” without experiencing “New Moon” and Edward leaving Bella.
We know from “New Moon,” however, that Victoria was still seeking Bella for attack, but jumping from “Twilight” to “Eclipse” is just as good as jumping from “New Moon” to “Breaking Dawn Part 1.” It follows the original storyline without major gaps. By “Eclipse,” we already know the relationship has survived the unfolding conflicts of the series.
“Eclipse” would still be considered Bella’s dying memories: it shows her wrapping up her human life. I think this movie serves as a way to tie up the loose ends and explain what had to be resolved in between the proposal and wedding.
Bella is graduating in this movie, but not before Victoria attempts to get revenge for James’ demise. She bands with a coven of newborns, which are new vampires, to try to kill Bella.
Edward and Jacob protect Bella, and this movie not only wraps up the Victoria issue, but also Jacob and Bella’s love… thing? We know Jacob loves Bella, but “Eclipse “wraps up the whole scandal, and as we know, she marries Edward, who is the love of her life.
I think what makes the transition from “Eclipse” to “Breaking Dawn Part 2” so effective is because of the Volturi. We saw them in the end of the newborn battle saying “The Volturi doesn’t give second chances.” This is an omen not only to Bella’s transformation, which we already know to be true, but also ties into “Breaking Dawn Part 2.” It also retains a seamless flow into the final movie, both chronologically and in this order, without being broken up by the wedding.
“Breaking Dawn Part 2” is truly a masterpiece, and the pinnacle of the saga. Bella and Edward’s daughter Renesmée is a human/vampire hybrid who is ageing rapidly. The Volturi is notified of her existence, but under the false pretence that she is an immortal child — a human child turned vampire.
Immortal children have long been permitted not to live, under the order of the Volturi, because they cannot control their hunger as a child. This poses a threat to the discovery of vampires to humans.
The Volturi makes plans to kill Renesmée and the Cullens for this, so the Cullens gather witnesses from across the world to prove to the Volturi of Renesmée’s true nature. While this happens, we see Bella transforming into her new self, which really is a shell of who she used to be.
Jacob has imprinted on their daughter, which not only gives us the iconic “You nicknamed my daughter after the Loch Ness Monster?” line, but also gets Jacob’s wolf pack to join the fight.
The high point of the movie is the legendary fight scene between the Cullens and their companions, and the Volturi, which all ended up being a vision Alice gave Aro showing the Cullens victory. They prove that Renesmée isn’t a threat to vampires, and everyone returns home safe.
After knowing her daughter is safe, will stop ageing at maturity and be happy with Jacob, Edward and Bella sit in their meadow and she shows him a vision of their love story.
She says “Nobody has ever loved anybody as much as I love you,” and that’s the end of the start of forever.
I think this order ties movies together way better, and is worth the watch. I never thought of watching it this way, but now that I have, I believe you should too, whether you’ve seen it a million times or for the first time.