Breaking both dawn and sanity, Twilight fan Jared Richards heads to the cinema to watch all five films for the 20th anniversary of Stephenie Meyer’s vampiric bestseller
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t is about 4am on a Saturday morning and a delirious energy is emerging at Randwick Ritz’s dusk-to-dawn, 12-hour marathon of the Twilight Saga. The cinema has the airs of an airport terminal after significant delays; at this point, people no longer care how they look and are doing anything they can to stay comfortable.
We’ve reached the night’s 30-minute “breakfast break”, which means we are three of five films into the romantic tale of clumsy, quiet teen Bella Swan, who moves to the foggy forest town of Forks, Washington and falls for Edward Cullen, a (permanently) 17-year-old vampire.
The Ritz’s Twilight Saga screening – which ran from 8.30pm Friday and ended with dawn truly broken at 8am Saturday – is among the first of many being held across the globe to mark the 20th anniversary of the books by Stephenie Meyer. While the books have sold more than 160m copies and the films have grossed more than US$3.6bn worldwide, Twilight’s enduring power is impressive – evident in the 150-strong who have lasted three films and are now splayed across the Ritz’s 660-capacity main theatre, either napping on the floor or lying across multiple seats.
