Guide to Twilight

Twilight Movies in Order: Cast, How Many Films and Where They Were Filmed

Five films, three leads and a rainy town that was mostly somewhere else

By Tori BooksUpdated November 20267 min readMild spoilers

Stephenie Meyer

The five Twilight films

What happens in each film, without big spoilers

Twilight: Bella moves to the small town of Forks and falls for Edward Cullen, a classmate who turns out to be a vampire. New Moon: Edward leaves to protect her, and Bella grows close to her old friend Jacob Black, who has secrets of his own. Eclipse: an old enemy builds an army of new vampires, and the Cullens and Jacob's pack must fight on the same side.

Breaking Dawn Part 1 covers the wedding, the honeymoon and a pregnancy nobody expected. Part 2 is about what Bella becomes and the confrontation with the Volturi, the ancient vampires who rule their world.

The main cast

Kristen Stewart plays Bella Swan, Robert Pattinson plays Edward Cullen and Taylor Lautner plays Jacob Black. The Cullen family are Peter Facinelli as Carlisle, Elizabeth Reaser as Esme, Ashley Greene as Alice, Jackson Rathbone as Jasper, Nikki Reed as Rosalie and Kellan Lutz as Emmett. Billy Burke plays Bella's father, Charlie.

Among the villains, Cam Gigandet is James. Rachelle Lefevre plays Victoria in the first two films before Bryce Dallas Howard takes over in Eclipse, and Michael Sheen and Dakota Fanning lead the Volturi as Aro and Jane. Anna Kendrick plays Bella's school friend Jessica.

How old were the actors?

When the first film opened in November 2008, Kristen Stewart was 18, playing a 17-year-old. Robert Pattinson was 22, playing a vampire frozen at 17. Taylor Lautner was 16, and he famously trained hard and gained a lot of muscle between the first two films to keep the role of Jacob as the character grows.

Where were the Twilight movies filmed?

Not in Forks. The first film was shot mainly in Oregon and southern Washington, around Portland. The town of St. Helens, Oregon, stood in for Forks and has Bella's house; the Cullens' glass house is a private home in Portland; Kalama High School in Washington played Forks High, and the beach at La Push is Indian Beach in Ecola State Park, near Cannon Beach. Multnomah Falls appears in the forest scenes.

From New Moon onward, production moved to Vancouver and British Columbia, which is where most of the later forests, houses and the final battle field were filmed. The Italian city of Volterra, home of the Volturi, was played by the hill town of Montepulciano in Tuscany. For Breaking Dawn Part 1, the honeymoon was shot in Brazil, in Rio de Janeiro and Paraty.

Is Forks a real place?

Yes. Forks is a small logging town on the Olympic Peninsula of Washington State, one of the rainiest places in the United States, which is exactly why Meyer chose it. The films were not shot there, but the town has embraced its fame, with Twilight tours, signs and an annual celebration around Bella's birthday on 13 September.

Will there be more Twilight films?

The five films complete the story of the four novels. Meyer later published Midnight Sun in 2020, the first book retold by Edward, which has not been filmed. Any new screen version would be a separate project, so the five films remain the whole saga for now.

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This guide discusses the whole plot, including the ending.