The Big Picture
Alice Cullen, a beloved character from the
Twilight
series, deserves more attention and exploration of her backstory in the movies.
Alice’s past is marked by tragedy, as she was institutionalized by her own father after uncovering his involvement in her mother’s murder.
Alice’s transformation into a vampire and her visions play a crucial role in the central plot of the
Twilight
franchise, making her a key member of the Cullen family and ensuring Bella’s safety.
Twilight is a beloved film franchise enjoyed by teenage girls (and secretly enjoyed by adults despite their desire to hate it). The series is based on the books by Stephanie Meyer and follows the trials and tribulations of Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) in a town that is covertly overrun with vampires and werewolves. After moving to Forks, Washington to live with her dad, Charlie (Billy Burke), Bella encounters The Cullens and falls in love with the sparkly, brooding Edward (Robert Pattinson) and his spider-monkey ways. While the franchise centers around Bella, Edward, and Bella’s second crush Jacob (Taylor Lautner), the Fanpires of the series have grown to love each character for what they bring to the stories. One of the biggest fan favorites is Alice Cullen, portrayed by Ashley Greene.
Aside from the main protagonists, our favorite characters from the Twilight books don’t get the deep dive into their past that they deserve in the movies. It can be hard to take so much material from a book and turn it into an appropriately timed movie, so some of the details about our favorite characters fade into the background. Alice is one of those characters. Alice is quirky and has so much empathy for those around her. Her signature spiky pixie haircut and piercing gold eyes feel like a soothing presence for the family, and her support for her husband, Jasper (Jackson Rathbone), is so wholesome. She doesn’t even mind the eyes-wide blank stare or his baby-vamp status! She’s been gifted with the ability to see the future, but it’s that power that forced her into vampirehood. Alice is also one of the few members of the family whose story is tied into the central plot and other characters of Twilight. So, what is Alice’s background, and how did she end up as part of the Cullen family?
Twilight
When Bella Swan moves to a small town in the Pacific Northwest, she falls in love with Edward Cullen, a mysterious classmate who reveals himself to be a 108-year-old vampire.
Release Date November 20, 2008
Runtime 120 minutes
Has Alice Cullen Always Had Visions?
Alice was a small-town girl from Biloxi, Mississippi. She was born in 1901 under the name Mary Alice Brandon into a middle-class family and a fairly ordinary life, or so it seems. As mentioned before, she has premonitions of the future and those started happening before she even became a vampire. When she was young, she started having visions about things that would eventually happen. These visions started out small, like predicting the weather, and eventually started to grow more specific as she got older, and her powers grew with her. In her late teenage years, she started having visions of her mother’s death. Alice was understandably fearful of this result and would beg her mother to stay at home. For a while, her mother listened, but because Alice’s father didn’t believe her and thought it was ridiculous, her mother eventually started leaving their home again. This led to her mother’s murder, which was ruled an accident. Alice knew better than to accept it was an accident because of the premonitions she was having, but her father was basically gaslighting her into thinking she was wrong and crazy. After her mother’s death, her father remarried very quickly.
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Alice Cullen Was Institutionalized By Her Father
Image via Summit Entertainment
As if having your mother murdered isn’t enough, it’s even worse to come to find out that your father was responsible for it. Alice eventually had a vision that her father and her new stepmother were responsible for paying someone to kill her mother. In a frenzy, Alice tried to tell other family members and those close to her, but they either didn’t believe her or blamed her for bad things that had happened after she had visions. In true toxic father fashion, he found Alice and had her admitted to a mental hospital to keep his name clean and not be held responsible for her mother’s death. This is where Alice’s story starts to connect with the Twilight saga.
Alice Cullen and James Met Before ‘Twilight’ Happened
At the institution, Alice receives electroshock therapy that eventually erases all of her recent memories and gives her a happy, cheerful disposition. Electroshock therapy and lobotomies were huge during this timeframe, forcing the unfortunate participants into a state of unawareness and forced happiness. The only positive thing that happened to Alice at the asylum was being befriended by a benevolent vampire. Even though the shock therapy removed her memories, it didn’t get rid of her ability to see the future. Shortly after being taken under the kind vampire’s wing, she has a vision of a cruel tracker vampire that comes to kill her and her friend. That tracker vampire is James (Cam Gigandet), whom we meet during the infamous baseball scene in the first Twilight film. After revealing her vision to her vampire friend, he makes the rash decision to turn her into a vampire and put her in hiding, so James can’t find her. While she’s completing her vampire transformation, her friend is distracting James, and he never returns to find her, so we presume he was killed by James.
‘Twilight’ Picks Up When Alice Is Already Part of the Family
James eventually finds Alice, but she has no idea how or why she was turned into a sparkly being. James decides not to kill her, luckily, and Alice leans into her premonitions a bit more since she knows she can trust them. Some of these visions include Jasper, her eventual husband. Since she knows she can trust these visions, she decides to seek out Jasper. When she finds him, she also finds the rest of the Cullen clan. The two begin dating and that is where the Twilight movies pick up on Alice’s story. During the baseball scene, James and two other trackers, Laurent (Edi Gathegi) and Victoria (Rachelle Lefevre), come sauntering in and interrupt the home run derby. From here, the tracker vampires realize the Cullens are protecting and hiding Bella, and it’s up to Alice, Jasper, and the rest of the Cullens to get Bella to safety.
Alice’s story is one of the few that actually has links to the present-day happenings of Twilight’s plot. After knowing her dark and twisted past, one might wonder how she could still be so kind and generous even though she has every reason to be hardened by her family and those close to her. The Cullens welcomed her with open and loving arms and gave her a new chance at a good life. Alice remains a vital member of the family and is majorly responsible for Bella’s safety across the franchise. Her story is enough to constitute a film in itself, and with the current climate of movies and their off-shoot prequels and sequels and reboots, it’s not impossible to think she could have one. With the recent announcement that Lionsgate’s upcoming Twilight series will be animated, let’s keep our fingers crossed that this new medium will provide more time and space to give the dynamic fan favorite the spotlight she deserves.
Twilight is available to stream on Hulu in the U.S.
Watch on Hulu