The Twilight franchise features a lot of plot holes throughout its five movies, but the series does actually offer an answer as to how the Cullens manage to hide their extravagant wealth. Beginning with Lords of Dogtown director Catherine Hardwicke’s Twilight in 2008, the Twilight saga was a series of blockbuster romance movies that adapted the paranormal young adult publishing sensation of the same name to the big screen to the delight of young fans and the horror of many critics.
Frequently derided by reviewers (and even by series star Robert Pattinson himself), Twilight was nonetheless a massive hit with its target audience. The story of Bella Swan, a small-town girl who falls for brooding teen vampire Edward Cullen, the Twilight saga soon broadened its scope to include endless byzantine backstories for its characters, some added werewolf lore, and questionable representations of the real-life Quileute tribe.
However, as popular as the Twilight movies were, the series and its source novels were nonetheless plagued by problematic plot holes from time to time. Some were easier for fans to ignore, such as the question of how the Cullens managed to never be outed as vampires despite not always avoiding the sun (in fairness to Meyer, she did at least research which part of the continental US receives the least natural sunlight). But the question of the Cullen clan’s vast wealth, and more importantly how they hide it, only has a satisfactory answer for viewers who are willing to delve into Twilight lore not included in the movie adaptations. The Cullens are as rich as most fictional vampires, but despite adding to the wish-fulfillment appeal of Twilight’s escapism, this story element does derail some of the franchise’s narrative. There’s an answer to how Twilight’s vampire family hide their riches, but it’s not one featured anywhere in the movie adaptations.
The real-life town where Twilight is set, Forks, is not a well-off area, something that its depiction in the Twilight movies makes clear. So, how are the Cullens able to hide their outsized affluence so easily in a small community with few McMansions like their palatial home? With a mansion outside the town, it’s clear that the Cullen family are incredibly well-off to anyone visiting, and even though the family attempt to avoid sparking new friendships to keep their secrets from being exposed, the existence of their house alone is something of an obvious tell. However, while readers of the Twilight saga may know that Alice’s visions allow her to manipulate the stock market for financial gain (which is a whole other Twilight plot hole of its own), but as far as the external world knows, Carlisle and Esme are the only employed Cullens. Carlisle and his wife Esme are the only family members working, and his job as a local doctor and her work as an occasional architect can’t possibly account for all the wealth required to put five children through school and still own a lavish abode. And that’s without even getting into some of the more expensive belongings of the family and the antics of its member.
Late in the action of Twilight’s first sequel New Moon, there’s a throwaway moment wherein Alice bribes an Italian police officer, and despite the scene being a minor inclusion, its action speaks volumes to the franchise’s strange attitudes toward the riches of the Cullen clan. Alice Cullen pays off a police officer with a thousand dollar bill and without a second thought, but the problem with this New Moon moment is that bill itself is a now-rare piece of currency that hasn’t been in circulation for decades even in the US. Wouldn’t this decision draw more attention to her criminal activities? Where does the cop hope to cash this money in without arousing suspicion? Why does Alice carry around money that isn’t in circulation when she can’t buy anything with it at home?
The Cullens own a private island, but the remoteness of this extravagance means it could conceivably be hidden from the prying eyes of neighbors (if not the IRS). But the clearest indicators of the family’s immense wealth is their collection of sports cars, a string of purchases that would look suspiciously excessive for a movie star or Hall of Fame athlete and seem impossible for a small-town doctor like Carlisle Cullen to cover up. There’s a Porsche Turbo for Alice, an Aston Martin V12 for Edward, Carlisle’s own Mercedes AMG, and a BMW 3 for Rosalie — which equates to somewhere between half a million and a million dollars spent on cars alone in a small-town small family during the worst financial crisis in living memory (as the Twilight movies begin in 2008 and end in 2012). How on earth are this family not being audited into oblivion? The Cullens may be able to evade detection as vampires by feeding on animal blood, but the fact that they have evaded detection as multi-millionaires beggars belief even for fans who are willing to overlook more minor plot holes such as the missing pre-Volturi villains.
The Cullens do have an adept lawyer, but the little that viewers see of him in the Twilight movies is a ramshackle Better Call Saul-esque downtown operation that specializes in minor forgery. However, despite the seemingly small-time set-up owned and operated by J. Jenks, the unseen reality behind the Cullen’s riches is that this unassuming man is single-handedly laundering millions of dollars annually — and that’s just for this one family, so who knows what else the money mastermind is hiding in his spare time. The Twilight novels reveal that Jenks operates not only the shady, clearly not-above-board downtown office where Bella procures fake IDs in Breaking Dawn, but also an upscale, comparatively legitimate practice as “Jason Jenks,” Seattle’s premier legal counsel. Not only that, but the sneaky attorney has yet another practice in the suburbs as “Jason Scott,” with J. Jenks skimming some funds off the top of the Cullen’s considerable fortune to run his one-man, three-practice criminal justice empire. His role in the Twilight movies may be reduced to a glorified cameo but make no mistake, the little-seen behind-the-scenes operator J. Jenks is the one-man reason that the Cullens spend the action of Twilight and its sequels in Forks and not in prison alongside Jordan Belfort and Bernie Madoff.
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