Last spring, the Twilight Saga became available on Netflix which led to me immersing myself into its fictional world. I recall watching the first four movies around five years ago, all in one night, but then sleep caught up to me; I lost interest by sunrise. Now that I’m an adult, and less likely to be confused by all the different elements that come into play with these movies, I tuned in again and instantly became obsessed. Although it can be cheesy at times, I’d argue that it’s what makes the Saga so iconic and timeless. I’ve decided to rank the movies from my most to least favorite (spoilers included because it’s been over a decade since it premiered).

1. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1

From the aesthetics to the actual plotline, this movie has zero competition. The wedding scene was beautiful, I expected nothing less from Edward Cullen and Bella Swan. No wedding from any other movie has outdone Breaking Dawn Part 1for me and the build up from the previous movies for that very moment makes the scene even better. It’s like the constant back and forth between Edward and Bella was finally over, or so we think. During their honeymoon, which was the beginning of the end for Bella, she stood true to her words of “I had never given much thought to how I would die, but dying in the place of someone I love doesn’t seem like such a bad way to go.” Throughout her dangerous and possibly fatal pregnancy, the viewers see a side of Bella that’s almost uncomfortable but still cinematic. More than anything, it’s the ending scene – Bella waking up with blood, red eyes – that solidifies it as my favorite movie of the Saga.

2. Twilight

This movie started off the entire Saga and easily became a classic. It lays the foundation for why Bella moved to Forks, Washington in the first place as well as what her bond with her beloved father, Charlie, looks like. It starts off as a seemingly normal movie, but it quickly states itself as a vampire romance fantasy when Bella gets sneaking suspicions that Edward might be a vampire. There’s a lot of back and forth between them because at first, Bella believed that Edward hated her. As the movie progresses, it’s clear that Edward was feeling quite the opposite – he found her irresistible. Still, he wanted Bella to stay far away from him because he viewed himself as a monster. Bella didn’t care for that, she was described as being addicted to him, even if it led her down a dangerous path. As a result of Edward, a vampire, hanging out with Bella, a human, she is put in grave danger that Edward must save her from. My favorite scene is Edward and Bella’s dance at the prom, it’s terribly romantic but still leaves viewers on a cliffhanger when it becomes apparent that the hunt for Bella is not over yet.

3. The Twilight Saga: New Moon

Starting off with the now 18-year-old Bella dreaming that she’s too old for her immortal boyfriend, Edward, this sets the tone for the rest of the film – Bella never wanting her time with Edward to run out. After nearly getting attacked by Jasper Cullen because of a papercut, and with the people of Forks becoming suspicious of the Cullen family, Edward ends things with Bella. While the scenes of Bella getting night terrors and becoming dangerously depressed because of Edward’s absence seem dramatized and unrealistic, it’s fitting upon realizing that vampires – looking at them and simply being around them – were addictive, like a drug; Bella was going through withdrawals. She leaned on Jacob Black, a werewolf and a friend she’s known for a long time, to get her through her slump. This film is low on my ranking because I was never Team Jacob, and Bella made it very clear she’d always choose Edward in the end. His love for her was immeasurable and such is clear when he became set on taking his life when he thought that Bella jumped off a cliff. The movie ends with them in Italy, where the Volturi – the vampire council – allow Bella to be transformed into a vampire. The only way Edward would do this for her was if she agreed to marry him, a good note to leave the fans on.

4. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2

I watched this movie for the very first time last spring and it had me on the edge of my seat the entire time. With Renesmee in the picture, Bella and Edward’s half-human half-vampire daughter, things quickly become complicated when the someone mistakenly tells the Volturi that she is an immortal child: a child who’s turned into a vampire and is unable to control their cravings, so they become a danger to humans. Later on, what looks like a devastating battle between the Cullens and their witnesses to testify for Renesmee vs. the Volturi is easily wrapped up as it was a mere vision that Alice had. I thought it was such a wonderful way to ultimately wrap the major conflict of the film up, it truly left me mind blown. Though I’m leaving a lot out from the nearly two-hour movie, I ranked as my #4 because it simply doesn’t compare to the buildup of Bella and Edward’s romance throughout the first four movies. It had an amazing plot twist, but the entire debacle of Jacob imprinting on Renesmee when she was a baby – canonically becoming her soulmate in the end – was unsettling and truly difficult to understand.

5. The Twilight Saga: Eclipse

The plot of this movie centered around Victoria, the antagonist from the first movie, and how she created an army of newborn vampires in order to get back at Edward for killing her lover, James. It seemed like a bizarre plot to me; it felt random and not as interesting as the other movies. This movie comes after New Moon, which was the start of Team Jacob for the fandom, so a lot of his scenes with Bella don’t particularly speak to me. Their chemistry felt forced, not as genuine as her and Edward’s chemistry. I’ve never been a fan of the love triangle trope, so to have Bella entertain Jacob in any way wasn’t very amusing for me. Further in the movie, not going too in depth into the heavy plot, I found the death of Bree Tanner – a young vampire killed by the Volturi – to be quite confusing. On the one hand, the death of a child (she was said to be around 15 years old) is always devastating and cruel but on the other hand, perhaps her death was a way of showing that the Volturi had no mercy when it came to putting vampires in their place – she was a steppingstone in the plot. She has her own book, The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner, which dives deeper into her life, so she was important enough to get her own story. Overall, it wasn’t necessarily a bad movie, but it doesn’t compare to the others.

Slowly but surely, I’d like to read all of the books Stephanie Meyer wrote for the Twilight Saga. I’ve always found that the books are better than the movies without a doubt, so I’m sure the books will hold more valuable information that’s crucial to the plot. Last spring was the perfect time to finally sit down and watch the movies because this past August it was announced that each movie would play in theaters from October 29^th to November 2^nd. It’s something I’ve been looking forward to since the day I bought the tickets and it only goes to show that even though it’s been over ten years since the first movie released, the fans of Twilight have never gone away. In fact, they’ve only grown in size.