Sadly, I hate knowing that it comes from such trash as “Twilight”.

Heart.

If they don’t like the female director enough to keep her on for the whole franchise, you can’t really say it was a brilliant step in her career, and definitely not a bold step forward for women directors everywhere.

Gab’s answer is great, (and I think Ruth is right on about her assessments as well) but I’d like to add my two cents…

Bella has no “goals” until she falls in love with her dreamboat Edward. Then, her goal in life is to become undead, so they can be together for all eternity. He does try to encourage Bella to go to college (and have a life other than him) although he insists that they get married if they are going to be together. Other than him being the ultimate hottie, there aren’t a whole lot of details in the series as to why Bella loves him, and that is a bad thing.
Skip forward to how she gets knocked up with a half-human-half-vampire demon baby. Until she gives birth (the baby slowly kills Bella during the pregnancy, and actually does kill her during the birth, which results in Bella finally becoming a vampire to save her “life”) she was unsure about what to expect. As soon as Bella has the baby, her thoughts become a torrent of how the baby is the bestest, most important thing ever blah blah blah.

I read the first book because so many people I know loved it. I thought it was an entertaining love story with a new twist on vampires, literary candy instead of a nutritious meal. I’ve read the whole series, and the books did just get worse as they went along. The last one especially made me start to really analyze what I had read, and the impressions that the books would be leaving upon the millions of young girls reading them and I have since become more and more perturbed over it all.
Also, yes I did go see the movie and it was not great cinema. I could go on in greater detail about this, too, but maybe another time…

But anti-feminism isn’t the only problem I have with Bella. She is also very disrespectful to pretty much every authority figure in her life, from her mom to her dad to her dad’s friend(s). Further, she emotionally uses another male character later in the series, and completely knowingly: she admits she’s “feels guilty” about it but keeps doing it. I don’t want to spoil things too much, but I believe you’re aware that Edward is kind of creepy/abusive. Well, theirs isn’t the only relationship like this in the series, and sexual assault is even encouraged at one point: while the female involved has a decently acceptable reaction, her own father basically tells the guy to try harder next time, making her feel guilty for her anger at the man that took advantage of her and encouraging the guilt-complex many victims (female OR male, by the way) of sexual assault feel. And Bella has no real respect for anyone around her, including her friends- and no, not even Edward, for I think she so idolizes him that respect is replaced with reverence.

From the feminist perspective, Ruth put it nicely, but to reiterate why the books are a problem: they have a target audience that is highly impressionable but (for the most part) not mature enough to understand the situations and themes brought up in the series; so they may get the wrong idea and think it’s ok to be stalked or forced to comply sexually.

From a simple moral perspective, it’s trash (see above).

There *are* some good things, but not enough to make up for the bad. I’ll admit I read a few bits that I thought were genuinely funny or sappy (but not to the point where I tasted syrup), and some of the imagery was well-done; but still, even thinking only of how Bella treated others in the books gives me reason enough not to like them, and if you add to this the penchant for douchebaggery and selfishness some of the other characters had, the answer is a mess of assholes and n00bcakes able to outweigh the non-jerks by enough to make the scale fall over. And again, this doesn’t take problems with plot and character development (which is a separate issue from the assholific personalities- they’re all so flat), nor the terrible assault on the English language, into consideration. I can enjoy a fluff piece, but I don’t think this series was good enough for it: it was badly conceived and poorly written. But yeah, I read them so I could justly say I didn’t like them and why. While I’m good enough at looking dumb on my own, I’m at least smart enough to avoid getting into a debate without knowing what I’m up against and without having solid evidence to back what I have to say up. So I read them. Also, I did hope they’d improve (but as Ruth said, no dice), so I kept going. That, and I do find vampires/werewolves/etc. appealing; so they gave me a bit of guilty pleasure in that I was reading *something* about vampies (which may have been why I held out).

I’ll quote Weird Al on this one. His subject matter is a certain daytime television show, but his similes are fitting for how I and a lot of people feel about the _Twilight_ saga*:

“It’s totally useless, like a bad check
“It’s like a train wreck
“Don’t wanna stare but you can’t look away.”

*And calling it “saga” rather irks me, for the word “saga” has always had connotations of merit in my mind. But that’s what it seems to be called in reviews and stuff… Gag me.